There are reports that the house of Saud is arming the rebels in Syria:

Saudi Arabia is delivering military equipment to Syrian rebels in an effort to stop bloodshed by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, a top Arab diplomat said on March 17.

“Saudi military equipment is on its way to Jordan to arm the Free Syrian Army,” the diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“This is a Saudi initiative to stop the massacres in Syria,” he added, saying that further “details will follow at a later time.”

The announcement came two days after the conservative Sunni-ruled kingdom said it had shut down its embassy in Syria and withdrawn all its staff.

It also followed a brief meeting on the Syrian crisis last week between Jordan’s King Abdullah II and the Saudi monarch King Abdullah in Riyadh.

There was no official reaction to the statement from the Saudi capital, but Jordan flatly rejected the report.

“Jordan categorically denies the report,” government spokesman and information minister Rakan Majali told AFP.

What we need to understand is that the actions of the Arab league are being driven by the House of Saud, and their goal is to take down the more secular regimes, and to ensure Sunni control of societies wherever possible.

They see this as an essential action for preserving their (completely corrupt and dysfunctional) regime.

They need to play up sectarian conflict, and they need to take down regimes like Qaddafi’s and Assad’s, because they have largely pushed religion out of the public sphere in order to distract their population. 

That’s why they are continuing to support (occupy, really) Bahrain, even though the crack-down there is so bad that the US is delaying weapons sales.

While our relationship with the House of Saud is good for the defense industry they are allies much in the same sense as the Pakistanis are.