Daily Times

Obama’s upcoming visit to the kingdom has been described as a “fence-mending” one. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal, at a joint press conference alongside visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry last November, hinted that fences might not be mended because “a true relationship between friends is based on sincerity, candour, and frankness rather than mere courtesy.” What Prince Al Faisal described as “frankness” is still missing. His brother, prince Turki al-Faisal, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last December, blasted the Obama administration for keeping his country in the dark on its secret talks with Iran: “How can you build trust when you keep secrets from what are supposed to be your closest allies?”

“The Saudis have good reason to feel besieged and fearful,” Immanuel Wallerstein was quoted as saying by Al-Jazeera America on March 1. Senior associate of Carnegie’s Middle East Programme Frederic Wehry on March 10 wrote: “There is a growing sense in Gulf capitals … led by Saudi Arabia” that, “the United States is a power in retreat that is ignoring the interests of its steadfast partners, if not blithely betraying them.” What Burns described as “tactical differences” with Saudi Arabia and its GCC co-members, the Saudis are acting on as much more strategic differences and accordingly are overstretching their search for alternative security guarantees worldwide because they seem to disagree with Burns that “our Gulf partners know that no country or collection of countries can do for the Gulf states what the United States has done and continues to do.”

Three threatening developments have led to Saudi distrust in US security assurances. The first was selling out a US ally like the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the second was Qatari, Turkish and US coordination with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) regionally and the third was the assumption to power of the MB in Egypt. The first development set the precedent of selling out a long regional US ally against the fervent public advice of the kingdom. Mubarak’s ouster set red lights on in Riyadh of a possible similar scenario in Saudi Arabia. The second development put the kingdom on alert against the emerging MB, Turkey, Qatar and the US axis that would have encircled Saudi Arabia had the kingdom allowed this axis to hand power over to the Brotherhood in Syria in the north and in Egypt in the west. The MB is influential in Jordan, the kingdom’s northern neighbour, and in Yemen, its southern neighbour. Hamas’ affiliation with the MB in the Palestinian Gaza Strip would complete what a Saudi analyst called the “Brotherhood crescent” in the north, west and south, to squeeze the kingdom between the rock of this “Brotherhood crescent” and the hard place of Iran in the east. The third development surrendered the western strategic backyard of the kingdom to the MB, which has become untrustworthy politically in view of its membership in the emerging US-led “Brotherhood crescent” after decades of sponsoring MB leaders who found in the kingdom a safe haven from their suppression in Syria and Egypt and using them against pan-Arab regimes in both countries and against the pan-Arab and communist political movements.

Unmercifully pressured between the “Brotherhood crescent” and what King Abdullah II of Jordan once described as the “Shiite crescent” extending from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, let alone the al Qaeda offshoots, which have deep roots inside the kingdom and in its immediate surroundings and have emerged as a major threat to regional as well as to internal stability, in addition to what the Saudis perceive as the withdrawal or at least rebalancing of US power out of the region, the kingdom seems poised to find an answer to the question which Bruce Riedel asked about whether or not the “revolution in Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable.” The Saudi answer so far has been reactive more than proactive. “It is difficult to avoid the impression that Saudi policy is more reactive than proactive,” Sir Tom Phillips, British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia 2010-12 and an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Programme, wrote on February 12. Following the lead of the US and Europe who have come to deal with the fait accompli that Iran as a pivotal regional power is there to stay for the foreseeable future, a more Saudi proactive regional policy that engages Iran and Syria would be a much shorter and cheaper route to internal security as well as to regional stability, instead of reacting to their alliance by engaging in a lost and costly battle for ‘regime change’ in both countries. Or much better, the kingdom could follow the lead of Oman, which risked breaking away from the GCC should it go along with the 2011 Saudi proposal for transforming their ‘council’ into an anti-Iran military ‘union’. Regardless of what regime rules in Tehran, since the time of the Shah, Oman has been dealing with Iran as a strategic partner and promoting an Iranian-GCC regional partnership. Qatar takes a middle ground between the Saudi and Omani positions vis-à-vis Iran. On March 17, the Qatar-Iran joint political committee convened in Tehran.

Feeling isolated, besieged and threatened by being left out in the cold as a result of what it perceives as a withdrawing US security umbrella, the kingdom’s new experience of trying to cope on its own is involving the country in counterproductive external policies in the turmoil of the aftermath of the shock waves of the Arab popular uprisings, which have raged across the Arab world since 2011, but its tide has stopped at the Damascus gate of the Iranian-Syrian alliance, which is backed internationally by the emerging Russian and Chinese world powers. At the end of the day, the kingdom’s recent historical experience indicates that the Saudi dynasty lived its most safe and secure era during the Saudi-Egyptian-Syrian trilateral understanding, which was developed as a regional axis of stability, as the backbone of the Arab League regional system and was reinforced by trilateral coordination in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The revival of Saudi coordination with Egypt in the post-Morsi presidency was a crucial first step that would lead nowhere unless completed by an overdue Saudi political U-turn on Syria that would revive the old trilateral axis to defend the Arabs against Israel. A partnership with Iran would be a surplus; otherwise the revival of the trilateral coordination would at least serve as a better Saudi defence against Iran. However, such a Saudi U-turn would require of course a strategic decision that would renege on the kingdom’s US-inspired and ill-advised policy of dealing with Syria and Iran as ‘the enemy’, while dealing with Israel, which still occupies Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories, as a possible ‘peace partner’ and co-member of an anti-Iran and Syria “front of moderates”, which successive US administrations have promoted. It would first require as well a change of foreign policy decision-makers in Riyadh, but such a change will continue to be wishful thinking until a man of historic stature is at the helm of the Saudi hierarchy. Until that happens, it might be too late. Meanwhile, it is increasingly becoming a possibility that the “revolution in Saudi Arabia is no longer unthinkable.”

(Concluded)

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories