Gird your loins: Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Dies

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

I don't know, Saudi Arabia has had a better relationship with the U.S. and Israel the last 50 years than it has with Iran. I can't see either of them leaving the kingdom to contend with Iran on its own. In fact in my conspiratorial little brain I would even go so far as to say the three are at this very moment working together to regin in Iran.

Definitely, the snag is how far they can go without themselves becoming stuck in the mire. Iran is pushing big in Iraq and Syria, and the US and Israel are both reluctant to get deeply involved militarily in either. So Iran is doing the ground-work while the US bombs from above.
Yemen is a different matter, Iran is a bit extended there, they might be able to push Iran out of Yemen, but Yemen is really a side-show for Iran, an opportunity for expansion if possible but the main theatre is really Iraq/Syria, and Saudi Arabia is struggling to keep up with events there.

It's really a matter of how much the US wants to stay involved in the Middle East, there's a heavy push-back against US involvement post-Afghanistan and Iraq from both the general public of the US and several of its political powerbases. Israel is going to be facing internal and external problems from its strategy with Palestine. I think the post-Gulf wars malaise is going to give Iran a lot of opportunities in the region, and I think that in the long run it's going to result in the sort of Iran that used to be called Persia back in the 1800s.