CONSERVATIVE: Iran hostage release the day of Reagan's inauguration "not a coincidence"

[patrice]

19. I forget what the breakdown is but those Islamic religious tribes in the region are living in at

least 3 different countries, Iran, Iraq, & Saudi Arabia, and their ties as religious factions are stronger than their national ties, since those national borders were drawn by the British after WWI. So the smallest but most radical fundamentalist contingent, of the Shia, I believe, are living in Saudi Arabia, where they are a pain in the ass to the royal family, because being religious fundamentalist they criticize the hell out of the religiously corrupt house of Saud in the press and the royals can't do much about it because its religious matters. The War on Iraq united those transnational factions against us, got the radical off of the house of Saud's back, for a while anyway, and gave the Sauds plenty of opportunities to look like the sympathetic neighbor, thus pressuring Iran to improve its own status by sabre rattling at Israel.

Some of that is in (DU's and Truthout's) William River's Pitt's book War on Iraq and some of it Seymour Hersh published in 2003 or '04.