ARAB DISSENTERS – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  Israel isn't the only country looking at the Iran agreement with dismay.  The Sunni Arab states, especially the Gulf states, believe they've been sold out, thrown under that bus parked outside the White House.  From The Times of Israel:

Saudi officials may have been masking their dismay over the framework nuclear agreement reached last week in Switzerland between world powers and Iran, but the kingdom’s official media outlets are expressing a sense of betrayal loud and clear.

“Gulf states — and especially Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain — have been experiencing the nightmare of an Iranian attack for decades,” the former editor-in-chief of Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abdul Rahman Rashed, wrote in an op-ed titled “Iran vs. Saudi Arabia” on Monday. “Now, after the nuclear agreement, there is no doubt that the danger has doubled. People are angry with the Obama administration for selling this region cheaply. He left it to its own devices to face an evil state.”

US President Barack Obama’s vague recent promise to defend Saudi Arabia’s borders from possible Iranian aggression requires better clarification, Rashed insisted.

“As long as the Americans don’t explicitly state their commitment to defend Saudi Arabia from Iran and Iraq, we will face large-scale regional anarchy as a result of the nuclear deal,” he asserted. “The Iranians are claiming that Obama is uninterested in the security of the Gulf and his American allies in the region. This Iranian thinking will lead to more regional wars.”

COMMENT:  Gee, don't hold anything back.  The anger is obvious, the sense of betrayal clear.  One intriguing question:  Will this belief that Obama has abandoned our allies in the region lead to an informal alliance of moderate Arab countries and Israel?  It would make sense, if the Arabs could overcome their ideologies for a few moments. 

Obama has invited the leaders of the Gulf states to meet with him in Washington to discuss the Iran deal.  They may come, but I don't think they're willing to trust anything this president has to say.

April 6, 2015