by Jim Lobe
Paul Pillar has a blog up at the National Interest on the possibility that Saudi Arabia and Iran are moving toward some form of rapprochement. The latest development, as Paul points out, is the long-awaited invitation this week by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal to his Iranian counter part Mohammad [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Paul Pillar has a blog up at the National Interest on the possibility that Saudi Arabia and Iran are moving toward some form of rapprochement. The latest development, as Paul points out, is the long-awaited invitation this week by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal to his Iranian counter part Mohammad Javad Zarif.
The Saudi-Iranian relationship is, of course, critical to any prospect of stabilizing the region, particularly the Levant, as Riyadh and Tehran have been the principal external supporters of the main protagonists in Syria’s catastrophic civil war. As noted by Paul, the Saudis’ decision to return their ambassador to Beirut offers another signal that they are interested in preventing the conflict next door from further destabilizing Lebanon, and perhaps a broader willingness to reduce Sunni-Shia tensions across the region.
Tom Lippman has been following the evolution of Saudi policy on this blog since last Fall when former and then-serving senior officials, including former Saudi ambassadors to Washington, Princes Bandar and Turki, were denouncing Obama’s failure to take strong military action against Syria after chemical weapons killed hundreds of people in a Damascus suburb last August. Beginning with Riyadh’s refusal to take its seat on the UN Security Council, you can find Tom’s analyses over the succeeding months here, here, and here.
At the end of March, however, Obama tacked on to his tour of Europe a stop in Riyadh for a meeting with King Abdullah, and while the press coverage of the visit maintained that things had gone poorly — Obama was greeted by lower-level officials and didn’t even get dinner — subsequent events suggest that there may indeed have been a certain meeting of the minds.
Thus, within a couple of weeks, Prince Bandar, reportedly much disliked by the Obama administration, was relieved of his post as the country’s intelligence chief — in which position he had been directing Saudi efforts to support the Syrian insurgency — while Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a favorite of Washington’s who had already replaced Bandar on Syria, appeared to have further boosted his position among the top policy-makers. Around the same time, the Obama administration announced that it was going through with the transfer of ten Apache helicopters to Egypt despite the military-backed regime’s deplorable human rights performance. Washington’s previous suspension of certain kinds of military assistance and cooperation with Cairo after the military coup that ousted the elected president, Mohammed Morsi, had infuriated Riyadh, which became and remains the regime’s most important financial backer and cheerleader.
Other U.S. gestures that may be meant to appease Saudi Arabia and put it in a more cooperative frame of mind include permitting the first-time delivery of advanced anti-tank, anti-armor TOW missiles (probably from Saudi Arabia’s own stocks, I am told) to allegedly carefully CIA-vetted “moderate” Syrian rebels, the upgrading of the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s (SOC) offices here to quasi-diplomatic status, and the reception of its president, Ahmad Jarba, here in Washington. Although he didn’t get the surface-to-air “MANPADs” he was seeking, Jarba did get a personal meeting with Obama, another sign of the kind of increased U.S. support — even if mainly symbolic — that Riyadh has been urging for months and months.
Moreover, we haven’t heard very many public complaints about U.S. policy in the region from Saudi princes since Obama’s visit. Meanwhile, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel is in Jeddah for the first meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) “joint defense council” where he is no doubt assuring his hosts that Washington is not about to sell them out and will continue plying them with lots of very expensive and sophisticated weapons systems, as well as guarding their borders and sea lanes with U.S. firepower for the indefinite future.
As noted by Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the GCC meeting was made somewhat more confusing by a major shake-up in Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry that, among other things, saw the departure of Prince Bandar’s half-brother, Deputy Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Sultan, who, according to Henderson, was Bandar’s “perceived alter ego”, particularly with respect to Riyadh’s Syrian operations. Henderson speculates that all of this may have to do with the continuing maneuvering around the succession of King Abdullah, but its coincidence with the invitation to Zarif “suggest that Saudi Arabia may be reconsidering its regional strategy.” He places the emphasis on the “may” in that sentence, arguing “…it is almost certainly too early to say that the kingdom is softening its tough approach to Iran, especially after its unprecedented April 29 parade display of Chinese-supplied missiles capable of hitting Tehran — a gesture that followed the largest military exercise in Saudi history, involving 130,000 men.” On the other hand, I would add, one always wants to go into negotiations after a show of strength.
Although Paul doesn’t mention these latest events, they form a larger context in which to understand his argument. And, if, as Paul suggests, we are seeing an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement on the horizon, it’s pertinent to recall Obama’s own words about his ambitions for the region when he spoke with the New Yorker’s David Remnick earlier this year:
“It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other,” he told me. “And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion—not funding terrorist organizations, not trying to stir up sectarian discontent in other countries, and not developing a nuclear weapon—you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.
In any event, here’s Paul’s post.
Photo: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shakes hands with Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Tehran, Abdul Rahman Bin Garman Al Shahri on March 3, 2014. Credit: ISNA/Hamid Forootan
]]>via IPS News
As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.
The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support [...]]]>
via IPS News
As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.
The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support for the coup is seen here as having encouraged Cairo’s defence minister Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood and resist western pressure to take a conciliatory approach that would be less likely to radicalise the Brotherhood’s followers and push them into taking up arms.
Along with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia did not just pledge immediately after the Jul. 3 coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi to provide a combined 12 billion dollars in financial assistance, but it has also promised to make up for any western aid – including the 1.5 billion dollars with which Washington supplies Cairo annually in mostly military assistance – that may be withheld as a result of the coup and the ongoing crackdown in which about 1,000 protestors are believed to have been killed to date.
Perhaps even more worrisome to some experts here has been the exceptionally tough language directed against Washington’s own condemnation of the coup by top Saudi officials, including King Abdullah, who declared Friday that “[t]he kingdom stands …against all those who try to interfere with its domestic affairs” and charged that criticism of the army crackdown amounted to helping the “terrorists”.
Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East analyst who has advised the Obama administration, called the comments “unprecedented” even if the king did not identify the United States by name.
Chas Freeman, a highly decorated retired foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Riyadh during the Gulf War, agreed with that assessment.
“I cannot recall any statement as bluntly critical as that,” he told IPS, adding that it marked the culmination of two decades of growing Saudi exasperation with U.S. policy – from Washington’s failure to restrain Israeli military adventures and the occupation of Palestinian territory to its empowering the Shia majority in Iraq after its 2003 invasion and its abandonment of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and its backing of democratic movements during the “Arab awakening”.
“For most of the past seven decades, the Saudis have looked to Americans as their patrons to handle the strategic challenges of their region,” Freeman said. “But now the Al-Saud partnership with the United States has not only lost most of its charm and utility; it has from Riyadh’s perspective become in almost all respects counterproductive.”
The result, according to Freeman, has been a “lurch into active unilateral defence of its regional interests”, a move that could portend major geo-strategic shifts in the region. “Saudi Arabia does not consider the U.S. a reliable protector, thinks it’s on its own, and is acting accordingly.”
A number of analysts, including Freeman, have pointed to a Jul. 31 meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Riyadh’s national security council and intelligence service, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, as one potentially significant “straw in the wind” regarding the Saudi’s changing calculations.
According to a Reuters report, Bandar, who served as Riyadh’s ambassador to Washington for more than two decades, offered to buy up to 15 billion dollars in Russian arms and coordinate energy policy – specifically to prevent Qatar from exporting its natural gas to Europe at Moscow’s expense – in exchange for dropping or substantially reducing Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
While Putin, under whom Moscow’s relations with Washington appear to have a hit a post-Cold War low recently, was non-committal, Bandar left Moscow encouraged by the possibilities for greater strategic co-operation, according to press reports that drew worried comments from some here.
“[T]he United States is apparently standing on the sidelines – despite being Riyadh’s close diplomatic partner for decades, principally in the hitherto successful policy of blocking Russia’s influence in the Middle East,” wrote Simon Henderson, an analyst at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
“It would be optimistic to believe that the Moscow meeting will significantly reduce Russian support for the Assad regime,” he noted. “But meanwhile Putin will have pried open a gap between Riyadh and Washington.”
As suggested by Abdullah’s remarks, that gap has only widened in the wake of the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on the Brotherhood this month and steps by Washington to date, including the delay in the scheduled shipment of F-16 fighter jets and the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises next month, to show disapproval.
U.S. officials have told reporters that Washington is also likely to suspend a shipment of Apache attack helicopters to Cairo unless the regime quickly reverses course.
Meanwhile Moscow, even as it joined the West in appealing for restraint and non-violent solutions to the Egyptian crisis, has also refrained from criticising the military, while the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma’s upper house blamed the United States and the European Union for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
“It is clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia prefer stability in Egypt, and both are betting on the Egyptian military prevailing in the current standoff, and are already acting on that assumption,” according to an op-ed that laid out the two countries’ common interests throughout the Middle East and was published Sunday by Alarabiya.net, the news channel majority-owned by the Saudi Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC).
Some observers argue that Russia and Saudi Arabia have a shared interest in containing Iran; reducing Turkish influence; co-operating on energy issues; and bolstering autocratic regimes, including Egypt’s, at the expense of popular Islamist parties, notably the Brotherhood and its affiliates, across the region.
“There’s a certain logic to all that, but it’s too early to say whether such an understanding can be reached,” said Freeman, who noted that Bandar “wrote the book on outreach to former ideological and geo-strategic enemies”, including China, and that his visit to Moscow “looks like classic Saudi breakout diplomacy”.
But reaching a deal on Syria would be particularly challenging. While Riyadh assigns higher priority to reducing Iran’s regional influence than to removing Assad, some analysts believe there are ways an agreement that would retain him as president could be struck, as Moscow insists, while reducing his power over the opposition-controlled part of the country and weakening his ties to Tehran and Hezbollah.
But Mark N. Katz, an expert on Russian Middle East policy at George Mason University, is sceptical about the prospects for a Russian-Saudi entente, noting that Bandar has pursued such a relationship in the past without success.
“I’m not saying it can’t work, but this has been his hobby horse,” he told IPS. “Whatever happens in Saudi-American relations, however, the Saudis don’t trust the Russians and don’t want them meddling in the region. Everything about the Russians ticks them off.”
He added that Abdullah’s harsh criticism was intended more as a “wake-up call” and the fact that “the Saudis are on the same side [in supporting the Egyptian military] as the Israelis has emboldened them”.
Photo Credit: Analysts worry about the effect of Egypt’s ongoing crisis on U.S.-Saudi relations. Above, CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz in February. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/CC by 2.0
]]>Of course the similarities between the two countries, comprising two-thirds of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” are limited. North Korea is a self-imposed “hermit kingdom.” Iran, much to the dismay of those calling for ever tighter sanctions, is eager to establish both trade and political links with both its neighbors and allies around the world.
The week started with what appears to be widely held assumptions that Iran and North Korea may have collaborated on Pyongyang’s HEU facilitity, or North Korea might transfer the technology to Iran, or Tehran might have transferred technology to Pyongyang. This leaves a lot of room for questions. However, the conventional thinking is that there is a link — with no agreement on how, or if, a technology transfer has occurred.
The WSJ‘s Jay Solomon interviewed the Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s (WINEP) Simon Henderson, who told him:
One has to assume that Iran either has the P-2 centrifuge from North Korea, or could get it very easily.
And former UN ambassador, outspoken hawk, and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow John Bolton wrote in the LA Times:
There is substantial reason for concern that Tehran’s capabilities and its penchant for cooperating with the North exceed U.S. intelligence estimates.
Indeed hawks from WINEP and AEI are not the only ones making assumptions about how Pyongyang’s announcement might impact Iran’s nuclear program.
The extremely well informed Nelson Report, an insider newsletter which focuses on U.S.-Asia policy, suggested that a technology transfer may have occurred from Iran to North Korea. An anonymous expert who told them:
From what we’re seeing, you have to think the components of this plant were moved-in from elsewhere and set up, which is a stunning defeat for our intelligence, since it could equally imply there are many HEU-related facilities elsewhere in N. Korea, in addition to whatever was imported from Pakistan and/or Iran.
The Report also wrote:
Every expert we touched base with today felt that despite its years of known effort to achieve HEU capability, the equally known assistance and information sharing with Pakistan, and the presumed but not proven cooperation with Iran, leads the experts to assume that the DPRK had help with the current HEU facility.
Indeed, uncertainty continues to run rampant over the extent of the DPRK-Iran relationship and how a technology transfer may have played a role in Pyongyang’s HEU announcement. The lack of details hasn’t slowed hawkish pundits from translating this week’s artillery attack and the earlier Cheonan sinking into the conclusion that containment is a failed policy. Thus, the U.S. should take any and all actions to prevent Iran from reaching North Korea’s level of nuclearization.
Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot writes in Commentary (my emphasis):
]]>For those who advocate containment as the solution to the Iranian nuclear threat, it is worth noting how destabilizing a nuclear-armed rogue state can be and how hard it is to contain. Even now, North Korea could be planning to export nuclear know-how or uranium to Iran. If so, what are we going to do about it? My guess: not much. That is an argument for stopping Iran by any means necessary before it crosses the nuclear threshold and becomes as dangerous as North Korea.
Birnbaum interviews Bahrain’s ambassador to the U.S., Houda Nonoo, who tells [...]]]>
Birnbaum interviews Bahrain’s ambassador to the U.S., Houda Nonoo, who tells him that:
Iran has had claims in the past on Bahrain[...]
The latest was on their 30th anniversary in February 2009, where they mentioned Bahrain as the 14th province. Very similar to [Saddam Hussein's] Iraq mentioning Kuwait as their 19th province.
Nonoo, whose country is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, pointed out that Bahrain is just 26 miles from Bushehr and “If Iran has [a nuclear] capability, nobody is going to be able to stop them.”
What exactly Nonoo thinks will be unstoppable is unclear, but Birnbaum attempts to lead her into endorsing a military strike.
According to Birnbaum she “declined to express a preference” and only said “That’s the million-dollar question.”
But that wasn’t direct enough for Birnbaum, who was doing his best to breathe life back into a story from July when the United Arab Emirate’s ambassador to the U.S. may or may not have endorsed a military strike.
What is known is that the UAE rejected the ambassador’s comments is the strongest language possible.
The Wall Street Journal wrote on July 7th:
The U.A.E.’s assistant foreign minister for political affairs, Tareq al-Haidan, meanwhile, said Mr. Otaiba’s comments were taken out of context and “are not precise,” according to a statement by the country’s official news service released Wednesday.
“The U.A.E. totally rejects the use of force as a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue,” Mr. Haidan said, adding: “The U.A.E., at the same time, believes in the need of keeping the Gulf region free of nuclear weapons.”
Birnbaum, failing to get an Arab endorsement for the military option cobbles together quotes from U.S. and Israeli-based Iran-hawks.
He interviews the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Simon Henderson who makes the following unverifiable claims:
I’ve visited Bahrain and spoken to senior Bahraini officials, and although in public they are cautious not to inflame their delicate relations with Iran, they say in private that Iran is a malevolent force against the region in general and Bahrain in particular.[...]
At the very least, they fear instability in their own country but also Iranian-supported insurrection and, in a worst-case scenario, an Iranian takeover.[...]
If they woke up tomorrow and there was smoke emerging from Natanz after a bombing raid, they would be very happy.
Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Israel-based Institute of Policy Strategy, told Birnbaum:
They’d be very relieved despite the fallout… This is not speculation.
Birnbaum rounded out his set of interviews with a comment from John McCain. While known for his hawkish views on Iran, McCain surprisingly comes well short of endorsing a military strike.
He says:
The reality is that it may be too late to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Now, I’m not saying we should quit trying. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to take every measure that we can. But some of these measures, I think, could have been far more effective if we’d have taken them some years ago — and I think that’s the opinion of most experts.
An article which includes claims that unnamed Arab diplomats would welcome a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities offers no verifiable evidence that this is actually the case.
Only two individuals with serious policy-shaping roles are interviewed by Birnbaum. The most he can get is an unclear statement from Nonoo that “If Iran has [a nuclear] capability, nobody is going to be able to stop them.” John McCain seemingly accepts the possibility that “the reality is that it may be too late to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
While Birnbaum is eager to suggest that countries in the Arab world would welcome a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, his dependence on second-hand interviews–via U.S. and Israel based Iran-hawks–with unnamed officials may indicate how far Birnbaum must stretch to support his thesis.
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