There is no ‘Middle East.’ There’s a Levant America loves and a Gulf China needs

involvement in the Middle East, it was Saudi Arabia’s king Abdul Aziz Ibn-Saud who reached out to Washington in late 1947 to delink the two sub-regions: “Although we differ enormously on the question of Palestine but still we have our own mutual interests and friendship to safeguard … I do not anticipate that a situation will arise whereby I shall continue reading …