person:imam mahdi

  • War with #Iran seems likely as #Trump cosies up with Saudi Arabia - The Unz Review
    http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/war-with-iran-seems-likely-as-trump-cosies-up-with-saudi-arabia

    It is absurd to imagine that the four or five Shia countries have the ambition or the ability to take over the fifty or more that are Sunni, though Sunni fundamentalists accuse tiny Shia minorities in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Indonesia of plotting to do so. Prince Mohammed appears to give credence to the theory of a grand anti-Sunni conspiracy orchestrated by Iran, saying that, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran has been trying to “control Muslims in the Islamic world and spread the Twelver Jaafari [Shia] sect in the Islamic world so Imam Mahdi comes.”

    There is more at play here than Prince Mohammed whipping up religious and nationalist feelings in Saudi Arabia to secure his own power base and fend off his rivals within the royal family. None of his foreign ventures have so far achieved their aims: in Syria in the spring of 2015 Saudi Arabia gave support to the so-called Army of Conquest, consisting primarily of the al-Qaeda affiliate the al-Nusra Front and its then ally Ahrar al-Sham. This won a series of victories against pro-Assad forces in Idlib province but their success led to Russian military intervention later the same year that was a turning point in the war. Saudi influence was marginalised, something that he blames on “former American President Barack Obama [who] wasted many significant opportunities he could have seized to achieve great change in Syria.” In practice, Saudi Arabia was hoping for US military intervention to enforce regime change in Syria along the lines of Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011. Obama was privately critical of Saudi actions and the tradition of the Washington foreign policy establishment of giving automatic support to Saudi Arabia and its allies.

    #Arabie_saoudite #Etats-Unis

  • Nasrallah sur la rhétorique en cours de nombreux chiites libanais sur la « fin des temps » et la « venue du mahdi »,
    http://mideastwire.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/hezbollahs-nasrallah-brings-shiite-discourse-back-to-reality-

    We do not need a religious justification to fight in Syria and we’re not fighting to implement the signs which narrations say would pave the ground for the emergence” of Imam Mahdi, said Nasrallah.

    “We are rather fighting to defend Lebanon and the region and to prevent a repetition of what (Islamic State chief) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did against the Iraqi Albu Nimr tribe,” added Nasrallah, referring to a fresh wave of mass killings by the IS extremist group in Iraq’s Anbar province.

    Hizbullah’s chief warned that “linking everything that is happening to the ‘signs of emergence’ has dangerous cultural and ideological repercussions, which can only lead to #aberration.”