In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood , two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent on air power . It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective , never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback. Meanwhile, […]