by Thomas W. Lippman

It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.

At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.

At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the Persian Gulf is iron-clad and will not change. The U.S Navy’s Fifth Fleet and the 35,000 soldiers and sailors in the region are staying, they said, and Iran will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons. They reminded the audience that President Barack Obama, his secretaries of state and defense, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told all this to Gulf Arab leaders over and over, most recently during the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia in March.

“We are present in a major and significant way,” one senior Pentagon official said at this gathering, organized by the Atlantic Council. “We are not leaving and we are not inattentive.”

The next morning, different panelists, assembled by the Middle East Policy Council, acknowledged that the message had been delivered unequivocally and often, and agreed that Obama and the others were no doubt sincere. Unfortunately, they said, Gulf Arab leaders don’t believe it.

“They think we don’t have the will to uphold our principles,” said Mark T. Kimmitt, a former senior official of both the State and Defense departments. “It’s not about our strength on the ground. It’s about our willingness to use it.” Given the record of the past few years, he said, “There’s not a lot of reason for the Gulf Arabs to be happy.”

“There are deep structural sources of anxiety” about the United States among leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, said Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Obama’s first term. First among these, he said, is “the widespread perception that the United States is simply politically exhausted” after more than a decade of war and has no appetite for further involvement. Witnessing the U.S. troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “They wonder when the U.S. will begin to draw down in the Gulf.” The GCC leaders were taken aback, he said, by the strong popular opposition among Americans to military intervention in Syria, and drew their own conclusions.

Michael Gfoeller, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis and others have been disconcerted by the way the United States and its partners have conducted nuclear negotiations with Iran without input from them. In their view, he said, Washington is proceeding “with almost no input from us and yet we are going to be the front line of what we think is going to be a nuclear armed Iran…They think that when we don’t consult with them it’s a sign that we don’t take their national security seriously.”

These panelists said it was useful that President Obama went to see King Abdullah and other senior princes in Riyadh, but not sufficient to overcome the doubts that have been built up about U.S. staying power. Ford Fraker, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that a week ago he asked Prince Muqrin, now second in line to the Saudi throne, how he assessed the Obama-Abdullah meeting. Muqrin, who speaks fluent English, “looked at me and said, ‘We did have the opportunity to clarify a number of important issues,’ and that’s all he said,” Fraker reported.

The two forums amounted to a fascinating but also baffling conversation about a topic that has been a focus of analysis in Washington and the Gulf states for months. The United States and its allies in the region have compelling interests in common — combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates, seeking a solution in Syria, ensuring the free flow of oil through the Gulf, stabilizing Yemen and Iraq, and countering what they see as the malign activities of Iran in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Bahrain. The Gulf states buy American weapons, depend on the United States for military training and assistance with cyber-security issues, and share intelligence about terrorist financing. And these relationships have been in place for many years. Why, then, have the Gulf leaders, and particularly the Saudis, been so vocally unhappy about U.S. policy?

The first answer participants gave was the nuclear negotiations with Iran, from which they are excluded. In the view especially of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, panelists said, these negotiations are dangerous either way: if they fail, nothing will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but if they succeed, sanctions will be lifted, Iranian oil exports will surge, and Iran will be free to pursue its quest for regional hegemony. Moreover, in the Gulf view, if the negotiations succeed, the United States will have another incentive to reduce its military commitments in the Gulf.

Gulf Arab leaders, panelists said, are well aware of the constraints that are curtailing Pentagon spending. Cuts will have to be made somewhere, and they see their region as a target, especially if the United States reaches some accommodation with Iran.

The Gulf leaders were shocked by the alacrity with which Washington turned its back on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak after demonstrations against him broke out in 2011. They think “Maybe the United States won’t be a reliable ally for them,” Kahl said. These doubts have been stoked, he and other panelists said, by all the talk about growing U.S. oil output in the fracking boom, and the possibility that the United States will feel itself safely insulated from developments in the Gulf.

Despite assurances from Washington to the contrary, panelists said, the Saudis and Emiratis believe that the United States is focused exclusively on the nuclear issue in its negotiations with Iran, ignoring other troubling aspects of Iranian policy. Kahl said it’s actually a good idea to confine the current negotiations to the nuclear issue because Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani does not control the other Iranian activities that so trouble its neighbors. Those matters are under the jurisdiction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kahl said, and it would be counterproductive to bring the IRGC into the nuclear discussions.

In a separate commentary published during the same week as the panel discussions, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that, “One Saudi businessman complained to me recently that there was no discernible U.S. global strategy, and that its absence makes it impossible for Saudi Arabia to construct any strategy at all. The quandary is common among many U.S. allies, and it raises fundamental questions about U.S. commitments abroad. Is there anything for which U.S. allies can rely on the United States, and under what circumstances might it change? Equally confounding, how can America’s friends make themselves vital to the United States if the United States has no clear understanding and ordering of its own interests?”

In some ways, however, as several of the panelists noted, it is not just the United States that seems to be groping for an effective regional strategy. The six monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council have deep policy differences among themselves, about Iran, about Syria, and about the dangers of religious extremism. Oman, for example, hosted the secret diplomacy that led to the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and is reportedly planning a $1 billion natural gas pipeline link to the Islamic Republic. And on Saturday, the Washington Post reported that the United States has identified Kuwait as the major source of funding for jihadist groups fighting in Syria — groups that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are trying to defeat. If Alterman’s Saudi friend is having difficulty discerning a comprehensive U.S. strategy in the region, perhaps it’s not surprising.

Several of the panelists said that the key to assuaging the anxiety among GCC leaders is more and closer consultation, more often. It’s well and good for the president and cabinet members and officers from the U.S. Central Command to go to the region from time to time, they said, but the Gulf leaders want to see the deputy assistant secretaries and other policy worker bees out there more often. To some extent they made the Gulf leaders sound like spoiled children demanding mommy’s full attention right this minute.

Photo: President Barack Obama meets with King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during a bilateral meeting at Rawdat Khuraim in Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

by Thomas W. Lippman

It might be a mistake to jump to conclusions about the removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan from his post as chief of Saudi Arabian intelligence. When it comes to senior jobs held by the royals, the Kingdom’s decision-making process is entirely opaque and there is no way [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

It might be a mistake to jump to conclusions about the removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan from his post as chief of Saudi Arabian intelligence. When it comes to senior jobs held by the royals, the Kingdom’s decision-making process is entirely opaque and there is no way to know at this point whether the flamboyant former ambassador to the United States was pushed out or bailed out.

A terse announcement by the official Saudi Press Agency on Tuesday said King Abdullah relieved Bandar of his duties “upon his request.” That’s what the SPA almost always says; sometimes it’s true, sometimes not, but the people involved in such high-level decisions never explain them to the outside world.

In Bandar’s case it might even be true. At the age of 65 he is relatively youthful among senior Saudi princes, but he has nursed various ailments for years and recently was absent from his post for months, reportedly recuperating in Morocco after surgery in the United States.

The standard narrative about Bandar for some time has been that he fell from the king’s favor because he failed to carry out his most urgent mission: to bring about the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an outcome to which King Abdullah is committed. Bandar, who for years was a powerhouse in Washington, was unable to forge a common strategy on Syria with the United States, which is seeking the same outcome. He was unable to unite the disparate Syrian rebel groups or curb the influence among them of radical jihadis. And on a visit to Moscow last summer, of which no details were ever made public, he apparently failed to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to back off from his support of Assad. In February Bandar was relieved of responsibility for Syria, replaced by Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the powerful minister of interior, who had made the rounds in Washington a few weeks earlier.

Whether Mohammed can salvage the operation in Syria, where the military trend has clearly been in the government’s favor lately, remains open to doubt, despite assertions from the Saudis and the United States that they got back on the same page when President Barack Obama visited Riyadh last month.

Iran’s Fars News Agency, reporting that Bandar had been “sacked,” appended to its article a photograph of Bandar crossed out by a big red X. “In September,” the Fars article said, 17 Saudi princes “in a letter to King Abdullah protested at Bandar Bin Sultan’s failure in coaxing the US into a war on Syria to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s government.” Could be, but Fars and other Iranian news organs regularly report unsupported nonsense about Saudi Arabia if they think it makes the Saudis look bad.

Bandar apparently retains at least for now his position as head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council, although his responsibilities in that post have always been murky. Even if Bandar is in the king’s doghouse, this latest development does not necessarily mean that he is permanently excluded from the inner circles of power. After all, he was appointed to the intelligence job in 2012 after the king dismissed his predecessor, Prince Muqrin bin Abul Aziz. Muqrin not only survived that apparent display of kingly displeasure, he recently was elevated to the position of “deputy crown prince,” putting him second in the line of succession after Abdullah. Even Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, a half-brother of Abdullah who distanced himself from the royal family decades ago by supporting Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and other Arab nationalists, was politically rehabilitated by King Abdullah a few years ago.

As of now, only two things are knowable with certainty about this latest move: Bandar is out as intelligence chief, and has been succeeded by an obscure deputy, Yousef al-Adrisi, who has stayed so far out of the public eye that a Google search turned up little beyond Wednesday’s announcement. The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement last year saying he had been promoted to the rank of “general staff” upon the recommendation of Prince Bandar. He may be well known in the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies, but his public profile is the polar opposite of Bandar’s. It will likely be many months before it becomes possible to assess his performance or to know the degree to which, as a non-royal, he has genuine authority over intelligence operations.

by Thomas Lippman

For the United States, Saudi Arabia, other supporters of the rebels in Syria, and for the rebels themselves, this has been a month of fast-paced, intense diplomatic and political activity. It is tempting after so much time and so many deaths to dismiss all the events [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas Lippman

For the United States, Saudi Arabia, other supporters of the rebels in Syria, and for the rebels themselves, this has been a month of fast-paced, intense diplomatic and political activity. It is tempting after so much time and so many deaths to dismiss all the events since mid-January as the inconclusive comings and goings of people who simply don’t know what to do about the intractable conflict, but it’s also possible to add it all up and see the possibility of an emerging new energy, cohesion, and perhaps more effective action.

At the very least, the events and consultations since mid-January seem to have put the United States and Saudi Arabia back on the same page.

A useful point to begin this review is the visit to Washington in mid-January of Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s minister of interior and the most powerful man in the country other than the king. Nayef, who is respected in Washington for his leadership of Saudi Arabia’s struggle against an al-Qaeda uprising a decade ago, saw everyone in the U.S. national security establishment, plus key members of Congress. Not much was said publicly about the outcome, but within a couple of weeks events began to unfold rapidly.

On Feb. 3, a few days before Prince Muhammad left for Washington, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia issued a royal decree making it a crime, punishable by prison time, for any Saudi citizen to fight in a foreign conflict. This reflected Riyadh’s concern about the hundreds of young Saudis who have joined extremist rebel groups in Syria and could some day return to make trouble at home. It also was aimed at deflecting criticism from Washington, where some officials have said Riyadh was not doing enough to cut off the flow of fighters.

That same day, Feb. 3, the White House confirmed reports that Obama will visit Saudi Arabia in late March. This has been a difficult year for U.S.-Saudi relations due to disagreements over Iran’s nuclear program and policy toward Egypt, as well as over Syria. Obama’s planned visit is clearly intended to smooth over some of these differences; the conversations would have been more difficult still if the issue of Saudis going to Syria to fight with the jihadi extremists were still on the table.

On Feb. 12, according to the Saudi embassy, Prince Muhammad met with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and with Under Secretary Wendy Sherman. She holds the administration’s Iran nuclear portfolio and has strongly defended its interim agreement with Tehran, a deal that caused heartburn in Riyadh. While in Washington, Muhammad also met with CIA officials and with the intelligence chiefs of Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and other supporters of the rebels, according to press reports.

Then the pace of events accelerated.

On Feb. 12, King Abdullah II of Jordan, whose country is straining under the burden of supporting Syrian refugees, met with Vice President Joe Biden to discuss “ongoing efforts to bring about a political transition and an end to the conflict in Syria,” the White House said. Two days later, Abdullah conferred with Obama.

On Feb. 15, the UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva ended, predictably, in failure. Secretary of State John Kerry put the blame squarely on the Assad regime’s intransigence, but regardless of who was responsible, that avenue now appears to have come to a dead end.

The next day, the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army — that is, the non-extremist rebels whom Washington and presumably Riyadh support — announced that Gen. Salam Idriss, the overall military commander who had been increasingly criticized as ineffective, was being replaced. His successor, backed by the Saudis, is Brig. Gen. Abdul-Illah Bashir al-Noeimi. It is too early to know whether he will be able to enlist the support of all the often-divided rebel factions, who are battling extremist forces aligned with al-Qaeda as well as the Syrian army.

Back in Washington, the White House announced on Feb. 18 that Robert Malley, a veteran Middle East hand from the Clinton administration, would return to the National Security Council. His assignment is to manage relations with the often-fractious allies of the Arab Gulf states, a group that includes Saudi Arabia.

A day later, Feb. 19, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Prince Muhammad bin Nayef had taken over as boss of the kingdom’s effort to arm and strengthen the Free Syrian Army and other non-extremist groups. The Post’s Karen de Young reported the next day that the intelligence chiefs, at their Washington gathering a week earlier, had agreed on how to define which rebel groups were eligible for new aid, and on new arms shipments to them. Muhammad, a firm if low-key operative, replaced the mercurial Prince Bandar bin Sultan, whose personal charisma had evidently not impressed the rebels.

That same day, Feb. 19, Deputy Secretary Burns delivered a speech that was widely depicted as a preview of what Obama will say to King Abdullah next month: the United States is committed to its strategic partnership with the Arab Gulf states, and will not be bamboozled into a permanent agreement with Iran that would leave Tehran with any path to nuclear weapons. Telling the Saudis what they want to hear, Burns said that in Syria, “the simple truth is that there can be no stability and no resolution to the crisis without a transition to a new leadership.” That is, Bashar al-Assad must go, as the Saudis and Obama himself have long demanded, and Riyadh should not interpret the agreement by which Syria is due to give up its chemical weapons as U.S. acquiescence in Assad’s legitimacy.

Meanwhile, of course, Syrians are dying by the thousands as the government continues to bomb civilian areas, and there is no end in sight. Even if Assad steps down, Burns said, the United States has “no illusions” about “the very difficult day after — or, more likely, the very difficult years after.” 

Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah are still supporting Assad. It is possible that he could survive to preside over some rump state. But it does appear that the working program of those who want to get rid of him is, at least, less messy and disorganized than it was a month ago.

*This post was revised on Feb. 25 to make an adjustment to the sequence of events.

Photo: Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud (left) with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul Azi

by Alireza Nader

Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) came tantalizingly close to reaching a nuclear deal this past weekend in Geneva, but the talks ended without an agreement.

Although both Iran and the United States expressed optimism that much was achieved, a blame game [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Alireza Nader

Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) came tantalizingly close to reaching a nuclear deal this past weekend in Geneva, but the talks ended without an agreement.

Although both Iran and the United States expressed optimism that much was achieved, a blame game between the different players soon ensued.

The international media reported that the French Foreign Minister had “sabotaged” the talks at the last minute, while Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Iran had walked away from a deal.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in turn blamed the United States for “gutting” the deal at the last minute.

The failure to achieve a deal in Geneva has given members of Congress, Israel, and Saudi Arabia a chance to mobilize against what they view as a “bad” deal.

Motivating factors

All the countries involved undoubtedly want to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons capability, but the Middle East’s geopolitical balance is also at play.

Israel and Saudi Arabia fear that a U.S.-Iran rapprochement may hurt their interests, while France appears to view negotiations as a means to enhance its influence with Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government faces perhaps the hardest and most complicated task of all: to stop Iran’s nuclear program, reduce tensions with Tehran, mollify its closest allies, and achieve a deal in the face of fierce opposition at home.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was reportedly concerned that the agreement between Iran and the P5+1 did not adequately address Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor.

Reputable organizations such as the Arms Control Association have identified Arak as a long-term proliferation concern that can be addressed in the later stages of nuclear negotiations.

It appears that while Iran would not complete Arak under the first step of the proposed nuclear agreement, it would have nevertheless been able to continue Arak’s construction.

Israel is also particularly worried about Arak, as it could provide Iran with a plutonium-based option to produce nuclear weapons.

The Israelis would also be unable to bomb Arak once it’s completed, as a military strike would create an environmental catastrophe affecting the whole region.

Geopolitics at play

France may have had other motivations in taking a harder line and obstructing what appeared to be a done deal.

Regional American allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia are unhappy about U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Tel Aviv, which saw Iran become ostracized and increasingly weak under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fears that the new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani will be able to dig Iran out from its state of crisis and restore its position as a major player in the region.

Israel has demanded the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, perhaps knowing that this unrealistic objective may create enough congressional pressure to scuttle a possible détente between Tehran and Washington.

The Saudis also disapprove of U.S. policies in the region, particularly in light of the Arab Spring.

They see the Obama administration’s “abandonment” of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and its lack of ironclad support for the embattled and repressive Bahraini monarchy as signs of American fecklessness, or at worst, a lack of U.S. commitment to Saudi security.

Riyadh is particularly unhappy about the U.S. decision not to attack and ultimately overthrow the pro-Iranian Assad regime in Syria.

France appears to have sensed an opportunity to exploit this, and is eager to shore up its alliance with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and perhaps sell more weapons to each.

The struggling French economy could not only benefit from weapons sales, but could attract even more Saudi investments in important economic sectors such as agriculture.

For their part, Rouhani and Zarif are eager to increase Iran’s regional influence by striking a nuclear deal that lifts sanctions while allowing Iran to save face by keeping a significant portion of its nuclear capabilities.

This would allow Iran to fully resume its oil and natural gas exports, and attract much needed Western investment into its energy sector.

Major economic powers such as the UK and Germany, which supported the Geneva deal, may be eager to resume their commercial relations with a more pragmatic and less ideological Islamic Republic.

The French may not be welcomed in Tehran for some time to come.

As for the United States, a nuclear deal would not only stop nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, but also decrease tensions with Iran, which, while weakened by sanctions and isolation, is still capable of destabilizing the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East.

Reduced tensions with Tehran would also allow Washington to lessen its dependence on Gulf Arab states.

American partners such as Saudi Arabia appear to perceive some of their interests as diverging from those of the world’s remaining superpower. A more balanced relationship could therefore benefit both sides.

However, a nuclear deal with Iran will not likely change the fundamentals of the U.S.-dominated regional order.

Neither France nor any other foreign power can replace the United States as the region’s security guarantor.

Saudi Arabia is highly dependent on U.S. weaponry and military technology and needs the United States to deter regional powers such as Iran.

Despite tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv, the Israeli government is unlikely to find a more committed and powerful ally than the United States.

And even Tehran, faced with tremendous economic pressure, needs America more than it would like to admit.

The blame game in Geneva should come as no surprise; the stakes are high for all countries involved, and each one is nervous about its own interests.

But instead of suspecting American motives, Israel and Saudi Arabia should realize that a nuclear deal is meant to preserve a regional order that has benefitted both countries.

Much in the Middle East has changed in the last few years, but America’s fundamental interests and commitments remain the same.

– Alireza Nader is a senior international policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

Photo Credit: U.S. Mission Geneva / Eric Bridiers

by Thomas W. Lippman

A dozen or so of your basic Washington types—lobbyists, consultants, think-tankers — were talking with a U.S. senator the other day about the linkages between energy, foreign policy, and national security. The conversation would not have gone down well in Riyadh.

If there was one point of [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

A dozen or so of your basic Washington types—lobbyists, consultants, think-tankers — were talking with a U.S. senator the other day about the linkages between energy, foreign policy, and national security. The conversation would not have gone down well in Riyadh.

If there was one point of consensus, it was that it is in U.S. economic and strategic interests to forge a working relationship with Iran, a more sophisticated, potentially more congenial and ultimately more important country than Saudi Arabia will ever be. Nobody suggested that the United States should abandon its longtime commitment to Saudi security, or believed that a deal with Iran will be easy to reach, but everyone, including the senator, agreed that sustained, long-term hostility between Washington and Tehran is not good for the United States.

That kind of thinking among Americans inspires anxiety among the Saudis and is eroding their confidence in U.S. assurances. Beneath all the noise about the kingdom’s rejection of a U.N. Security Council seat that it had labored for years to get, it is clear that the principal driver of Saudi security decision-making these days is fear of Iran.

The Saudis see Iranian troublemaking all around them: in Iran’s support for the Assad regime in Syrian, in its backing of the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon, in its influence over the Maliki government in Iraq, in its suspected instigation of anti-government protests in Bahrain, in its support — real or imaginary — for dissident Shiites in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, and in the threat posed by Iranian gunboats to critical Saudi oil and water installations on the Gulf coast.

This is why the Saudis are so determined to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and so dismayed by President Obama’s decision not to take military action against the Assad regime: King Abdullah loathes Assad, but, beyond that, Riyadh believes that Assad’s fall would break apart the network of alliances that Tehran has forged all through the region. It is also, according to Saudi officials, the basis of their apprehension about a possible U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement. Riyadh fears that the United States will accept a rapprochement with Iran based solely on the nuclear issue, an outcome that in Riyadh’s view would only enhance Iran’s ability to throw its weight around the region because Tehran would be free of some of the crippling economic sanctions imposed against it over the nuclear standoff. The combination of an unconstrained Iran and survival of its ally Assad would be a nightmare for the Saudis.

In a recent speech in Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the kingdom’s former ambassador to the United States, went so far as to criticize what he said was President Obama’s “open arms approach” Iran. That idea is, to be blunt, ridiculous. The president and all his senior foreign policy officials have stressed that any rapprochement is far in the future and that it will be forged, if at all, only the basis of wide-ranging assurance of Iranian good behavior, in addition to restraints on its nuclear program. Other than the America-Firsters and pro-Israel absolutists of the political right, Americans generally welcome the possibility of better relations with Iran, but nobody advocates giving away the store.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry addressed this concern head-on after meeting in Riyadh with King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal earlier this week. “The first topic is nuclear,” he said, but that is not the only topic. “We are well aware of Iran’s activities in the region. Obviously, we Americans have never forgotten what happened with Khobar Towers. We know that there were plots involving the ambassador from Saudi Arabia to the United States. We are well aware of other activities, and they concern us. It concerns us that Iran has personnel on the ground in Syria. It concerns us that Hezbollah is active in conjunction with Iran’s support. But the first step is the nuclear step, which we hope will open the door to the possibility to be able to deal with those [other issues.]”

That phraseology is unlikely to have reassured the Saudis. Like the Israelis, they fear that Iran will  keep the current round of negotiations with the P5 + 1 going as long as possible and use the time gained to achieve nuclear-weapons capability.  But if that Tehran’s plan, it only becomes more urgent to pursue the nuclear negotiations to ascertain Iran’s true intentions, without cluttering up the discussions with extraneous issues such as the role of Hezbollah in Syria. Those matters are important, but as Kerry said, it would be easier to address them if the nuclear issue were resolved.

Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.”  No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands [...]]]> by Thomas W. Lippman

Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.”  No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands behind the conversation and how deep the ties are between America and Iran.”

Never mind that there are no “ties” between Washington and Tehran, let alone “deep” ones. His article reflected concern among Saudis that the United States might negotiate some wide-ranging settlement of its issues with Iran and that any such deal would automatically be detrimental to Saudi interests.

Such anxiety has surfaced in Riyadh many times over the past two decades, dating to Madeleine Albright’s unsuccessful efforts to reach out to Iran when she was secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s second term. No doubt many prominent Saudis share the journalist’s sentiment, not just in the ruling family but in the Sunni religious establishment.  In their short-sighted view, regional security is a zero-sum game: if it benefits Iran, it must be bad for Saudi Arabia. To this group, as the authors of a major RAND Corp. study noted in 2009, “the prospect of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement (or even near-term coordination on Iraq) would appear to jeopardize the privileged position Riyadh has long enjoyed in Gulf affairs.”

Since that study appeared, Saudi antipathy to Iran has only increased. Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, its all-out support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its perceived instigation of civil unrest in Bahrain have exacerbated Saudi anxieties and reinforced the kingdom’s determination to keep Iran isolated and economically constrained.  At the same time, the Saudi perception that the United States abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a longtime ally, and might do the same to them if regional circumstances changed, has led some Saudis to doubt the long-term reliability of the United States as anchor of the kingdom’s security. Their doubts were not alleviated when panelists at a Gulf security conference in Washington earlier this year projected a reversal of the regional alignment over the coming decade, with Iran emerging as more friendly to the United States and Saudi Arabia less so.

The Saudis have also been peeved about the inability of the United States to deliver on its commitment to a two-state solution that would end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That diplomatic stalemate has allowed Iran, which refuses to acknowledge Israel’s existence and openly supports Hezbollah, to present itself to the Arab world as the true champion of justice for the Palestinians,  as opposed to the Saudis, who have offered a comprehensive plan for peace with Israel.

Furthermore, the Saudis went all-in to try to engineer the ouster of Assad, believing that they were in tune with U.S. policy. Now they may be feeling exposed as the United States and Russia appear to be pursuing a different course.

And it is certainly true that many of Saudi Arabia’s leading officials, including some diplomats in the foreign ministry, harbor a deep loathing for, and suspicion of, all things Shia. A softer U.S. line on Iran would not make those Saudis more comfortable in the bilateral relationship.

Moreover, the Rouhani initiative, assuming it is genuine rather than cosmetic, coincides with a growing realization in Saudi Arabia that the United States is becoming steadily less dependent on Gulf oil. Could the Obama administration’s announced shift of strategic resources to Asia presage a reduction of U.S. commitments in the Gulf? Senior U.S. officials say no: Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few months ago that “You can take it to the bank” that the U.S. will maintain its posture in the Gulf for the foreseeable future.

Thus, recent reports of anxiety in Riyadh about a possible shift in relations between Washington and Tehran were predictable, and may well have some basis in fact.

But there are also Saudis who understand that a better relationship between Washington and Tehran might actually benefit the kingdom. After all, the two countries shared a strategic alignment with the United States before the Iranian revolution. In that era, Iran was far more powerful than Saudi Arabia militarily and economically, but the Saudis did not perceive it as a strategic threat, partly because it was influenced by the United States and partly because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq provided a protective buffer — a buffer that the United States dismantled with its invasion of Iraq a decade ago.

Even during the past decade, when tensions were high over Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and other issues, the Saudis and Iranians found ways to work cooperatively when it was in the interests of both countries. “Such calculations often take place independently of U.S. pressure or encouragement,”  the RAND report noted, adding that in past times of tension with Washington the Saudis have been more flexible, rather than less so, in their regional rivalries.

“With the ‘moderation’ discourse strengthened during the presidency of recently elected Hassan Rouhani, pragmatism will be enhanced in Iran’s regional policy,” the columnist Kayhan Barzegar, an experienced analyst of Gulf affairs, predicted in the online magazine al-Monitor after Rouhani was inaugurated. “This development will weaken the existing ‘mutual threat’ perception between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is rooted primarily in the policies of both countries in response to regional issues. Such a development will also consequently strengthen relations between the two. Iran and Saudi Arabia are not interested in an intensification of sectarian or geostrategic regional rivalries. They are well aware that such rivalries will eventually be instrumentalized and used politically, draining energy from both sides. The result will be increased instability and growth of extremist trends in their backyard. Conflict between the two also provides an opportunity for other rival actors, such as Turkey and Qatar, to play an active role in regional issues at their expense, such as happened with the Syrian crisis, which is not currently welcomed by the Iranians or the Saudis.”

In fact, there are several ways in which a lessening of tensions between Iran and the United States could actually benefit Saudi Arabia. To achieve some form of rapprochement with the United States now, Iran would be required to forgo definitively any attempt to build or acquire nuclear weapons — a development that could hardly be depicted as detrimental to Saudi interests. The United States would also press Iran to curtail the aggressive policies that have destabilized the region for years. If Iran’s leaders truly want relief from international economic sanctions, they will have to persuade the countries that imposed them that they will be good neighbors to Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states. Would that not assuage some of the security concerns that have prompted Saudi Arabia to spend tens of billions of dollars on new U.S. weapons?

If Iran were to curtail its support for Hezbollah in order to improve relations with Washington and the West, it might forfeit its position as “more Arab than the Arabs” on the issue of Israel, another development that could be to Saudi Arabia’s advantage.

And Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbors such as Qatar might no longer feel the need to hedge their bets by keeping some distance between themselves and Saudi Arabia and maintaining correct relations with Iran, thus facilitating Saudi Arabia’s desire to exert the regional leadership to which it feels entitled.

On a visit to South Asia when she was secretary of state, Albright chided the Pakistanis for opposing a U.S. initiative to expand economic ties with India. The initiative was not aimed at undermining Pakistan, she said, and might actually be helpful if an expanding Indian economy brought greater cross-border trade.

The Pakistanis didn’t buy it, but that did not diminish the validity of her message. It might be useful now for Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry to explain to the Saudis that any deal with Iran will be a long time in the making and will not damage U.S. ties with Riyadh unless the Saudis want it that way.

– Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.

by Thomas W. Lippman

Whenever a Saudi Arabian king or senior prince publicly criticizes U.S. policy, they inevitably touch off speculation about how the Saudis may be rethinking their security alliance with the United States.

The Saudis have lost confidence in the Americans…the Saudis are fed up with Washington’s support for Israel…The [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Thomas W. Lippman

Whenever a Saudi Arabian king or senior prince publicly criticizes U.S. policy, they inevitably touch off speculation about how the Saudis may be rethinking their security alliance with the United States.

The Saudis have lost confidence in the Americans…the Saudis are fed up with Washington’s support for Israel…The Saudis think the U.S. should have acted sooner…the Saudis think the U.S. should not have intervened…Riyadh is having new conversations with Moscow, or Beijing…the Saudis are looking to diversify their sources of weapons.

A new flurry of such analysis appeared recently when King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz strongly proclaimed his government’s financial and political support for the military government in Egypt with language that some writers interpreted as critical of the United States.

“Let the entire world know,” he said, “that the people and government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stood and still stand today with our brothers in Egypt against terrorism, extremism and sedition, and against whomever is trying to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs.” Translation: You Americans should stop bleating about democracy in Egypt because all it did was put the Muslim Brotherhood in power, and we won’t accept that.

Examining the king’s statement, Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis, said it reflected Saudi anger about other regional issues, not just Egypt:

It’s important to recognize, first of all, that from the Saudi and GCC point of view they see the U.S. as not following through on promises made earlier in the year concerning some type of armed intervention into Syria. Consequently this failure to act has led to the declining victories and growing losses for the Free Syrian Army. It has also allowed a greater Al-Qaeda presence within Syria, which also is troublesome for the region and especially Saudi Arabia and the GCC.

The second point here is that Saudi Arabia and the GCC take Washington’s notion of the strategic pivot very seriously, and their inclination is that they’re being abandoned by Washington in favor of the Pacific theater. That’s their perception regardless of how much equipment is pre-positioned in the Gulf region or how many training programs and weapon sales are going on.
Finally, Saudi Arabia and the GCC are anxious with the possibility that under the new Iranian President Rouhani that there may be a strategic bargain made between Washington and Tehran that would cut out Saudi and GCC security interests. In other words, Saudi Arabia and the GCC feel that they are slowly being pushed aside on what concerns them in the region because of America’s self-interest.

The King’s comments were “unusual,” according to The Guardian, because Abdullah was “aiming his words” at the United States as well as Qatar, which he accused of “fanning the fire of sedition and promoting terrorism, which they claim to be fighting.”

Other commentators offered similar assessments of the king’s apparent irritation with Washington, their views enhanced by speculation over the significance of a July meeting in Moscow between President Vladimir Putin and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi intelligence director, which was announced but has not been explained. Could the Saudis have given up on Washington and tried to reach an agreement with the Russians over Syria? (A writer for the Infowars web site, on the other hand, went the other way, reporting that not only did Bandar fail to cut a deal with the Russians to end their support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he threatened to arrange terrorist attacks on the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi if that support continues.)

It may be true that the rulers of Saudi Arabia are unhappy over some aspects of U.S. policy toward Syria, Iran and Egypt, but it does not follow that they will therefore seek to detach the kingdom from its longstanding security alliance with the United States. To understand why, it is useful to review the history of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and examine the reality of the security partnership today to evaluate whether Saudi Arabia would really consider recasting its international security ties.

In the seven decades since the United States and Saudi Arabia established military and security links during World War II, there have frequently been policy differences, misunderstandings and angry recriminations, beginning with Saudi anger over U.S. recognition of Israel in 1948. At that time, King Abdul Aziz was under intense pressure from other Arab leaders and from his son, Prince Faisal, to punish the Americans by revoking the Aramco oil concession. Much as he resented what he thought was a breach of promise by Washington, he refrained from taking that dramatic step because, he said, his impoverished country needed the money and technology that only the Americans could provide.

In the ensuing years there have been similar strains, from both sides, over many issues: Saudi Arabia’s ostracism of Anwar Sadat over the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; Riyadh’s distress over the U.S. invasion of Iraq and over what it perceived as Washington’s unseemly abandonment of Hosni Mubarak, the exclusion of U.S. energy companies from major natural gas exploration contracts; Saudi Arabia’s refusal to do business with the Maliki government in Iraq; the fallout from the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia’s funding of extremist groups; Saudi Arabia’s mediation between Fatah and Hamas; President George W. Bush’s aggressive campaign to export democracy to the Arab world; King Abdullah’s denunciation of what he called an “illegal occupation” of Iraq; and Saudi anxiety about the Obama administration’s announced strategic “pivot” to Asia. None of these has resulted in any open breach or abridgement of the strategic partnership, because the Saudis had nowhere else to go and the Americans were not about to cut them loose. Even the most serious conflict of all, over the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, lasted just a few months, and after the embargo ended, bilateral U.S.-Saudi relations emerged closer than ever with the creation in 1974 of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia Joint Economic Commission.

Today, the security and defense forces of the United States and Saudi Arabia are deeply entwined, and neither side has any incentive to rupture the partnership. Americans are training and equipping the Saudi National Guard, the Saudi regime’s primary domestic security force, as they have since 1977, and are performing the same functions in the creation of a 35,000-member Facilities Security Force, which is being deployed to protect oil installations, desalination plants, power stations and other critical facilities. Saudi Arabia is in the midst of one of the largest military purchases in history, a $60 billion plus package of aircraft and other equipment, all of it American.

In addition, various U.S. agencies are helping the Saudis to improve security at airports and diplomatic facilities, and protect themselves against cyber-attacks such as the one that knocked out computer networks at Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, last year.

The creation of the Facilities Security Force resulted from a 2006 attempt by al-Qaeda commandos to attack the giant oil processing installation at Abqaiq. That attempt failed, but it exposed multiple security vulnerabilities, compelling the Saudis to recognize they needed help. They sought it from the United States, the only country they would trust with such an endeavor. The United States dispatched a team from the Sandia National Laboratory, in New Mexico, to help the Saudis evaluate and prioritize their security needs. Riyadh was not going to turn to China or Russia for that.

The attempt on Abqaiq “exposed some weaknesses in command and control, and in coordination — and the fact that the [previous] Aramco protective force were not allowed to carry any weapons,” a friend at the Ministry of Petroleum told me last year. “That’s all changed now with American help. A very well trained force is being deployed. But where the Americans really helped was with satellite and cellphone intercept information.” (At least the Saudis appreciate the work of the U.S. National Security Agency, even if many Americans are unhappy about some aspects of it.)

It is true that Saudi Arabia has greatly diversified its trade patterns and is no longer dependent on American firms for its major construction projects. China has been the biggest buyer of Saudi oil since 2009. Chinese contractors built the rail transit system in Mecca, and the Saudis are likely to hire South Korean firms if they go ahead with their plans for nuclear energy. That is a natural evolution as the Saudi economy has modernized and global trade patterns have evolved since the end of the Cold War. It should not be taken as a sign that Saudi Arabia’s royal rulers are planning to jettison the strategic partnership that has ensured their survival in the midst of a regional upheaval.

– Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.