Long time ago I traveled throughout the ME.
I found the Iranians (they like to be known as Persians) to be smarter than the Saudis by far. When the Shah was in charge, Iran was a rather sophisticated country and very pleasant to spend a vacation, while life in Saudi is dismal.
And don’t you ever call an Iranian an Arab — them are fighting words, for sure.
It has been the greatest tragedy of US foreign policy that it has aligned itself against one of the more civilised and tolerant (Jews and Christians practice their religion with a degree of freedom in Iran that is unheard of in Saudi Arabia) nations of the Mid-East, a country whose middle classes are very pro-western and actually elected a reform-minded government, Iran.
Instead the US supports a corrupt, savage, intolerant, cowardly, theocratic sh!thole like Saudi Arabia, a country that loathes the US and everything it stands for.
Saudi Arabia repaid US help in getting Saddam out of Kuwait and protecting its own oil-fields, something the Saudis’ armed forces were incapable of doing, by sending the 9/11 attackers out to attack America.
And yet Iran is treated as the enemy despite never having attacked US interests in three decades and Saudi Arabia the origin of 9/11 and backers of ISIS are “our Saudi friends”.
It truly baffles me.
Not only smarter but more cunning too.
Interesting....