President Obama with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah © PA Images
President Barack Obama’s trip to the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh in mid March is arguably the most important foreign visit of his five years in office. It is an attempt to confront the collapse in relations with an old ally, after US actions—or inaction—in Egypt and Syria confounded the region’s expectations.
It’ll be hard for it to work. There’s a certain amount he can do by explaining why the US has done what it’s done, in the face of Saudi mystification. “We know where the misunderstanding comes from,” said one senior US military adviser. “They thought we promised to send cruise missiles to take out [Syria’s President Bashar Assad] but we only promised to get rid of the chemical weapons, which we may have done through negotiation”. The Saudis may even persuade Obama’s team to clarify their muddled position on Egypt.
But at the heart is a real difference. It suits the Obama Administration to explore a less antagonistic relationship with Iran, as part of the proposed deal in which Iran will suspend part of its nuclear programme in return for a lifting of sanctions. Yet the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia to be the region’s dominant power—“The new Cold War”, as we called it in Prospect’s February cover story—is now redrawing the map of allegiances.
Predicting how this will play out—and how Britain, the rest of the EU and the US should respond—was the subject of the recent Prospect roundtable entitled ”The Rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran—the new Cold War? How should the West respond?”
The group (see list of attendants) split broadly into two: those who wanted to give Iran the benefit of the doubt and to work energetically to “bring it in from the cold”, and those arguing for caution—and for more understanding of Saudi concerns.
There was a brisk initial discussion about whether the “Cold War” term, used by Gregory Treverton director of the RAND Centre for Global Risk and Security in his article for Prospect, fitted this new rivalry; although many argued that the analogy was awkward, there was broad acceptance that the framework usefully captured the sense of rivalry and new alliances. Many described how the UAE, Jordan and Kuwait were lining up together on some issues—notably the choice of which group to back in Egypt and Syria—with Iran and often Qatar on the other side.
There was strong support among one or two participants for the notion that Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new president, was committed to opening up Iran to the world, and prepared to freeze the nuclear work in return. They were too generous, I thought, both to him, given his public statements; to the authority they presumed he could wield; and to the idea that the Iranian leadership—including the Supreme Leader—would act as one on this singularly controversial question. Statements from Tehran in the past few weeks have only confirmed the case for caution.
But Obama is also right to push Congress not to impose new sanctions—as many of those present also argued. Some kind of lasting deal with Iran on the nuclear front is the precondition for containing the arms race already developing in the region, although Anthony Cordesman, the distinguished security analyst from the CSIS think tank in Washington, rightly noted in his penetrating and detailed article for us that it would have to be verifiable and enforceable.
Saudi scepticism is understandable. The leaders doubt that an Iranian deal will really prevent the regime from putting itself within easy reach of a nuclear weapon (if not actually taking the final step of building one). In this, they have rare agreement with leading Israeli politicians. Prince Turki al-Faisal, one of those who speaks for the Kingdom’s foreign policy, warned that if sufficiently alarmed on this front, Saudi Arabia would seek to acquire nuclear weapons capability itself.
The arms race, as Cordesman has described, has already begun between the two countries through a buildup of conventional weapons. Although Iran is severely hampered by sanctions from acquiring technology that in any respect deserves the word “modern”, and Saudi Arabia is still a prime customer for the latest developments from the US, Iran has acquired a formidable “asymmetric” capability—using comparatively low-tech means to threaten, for example, closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much oil and gas traffic flows.
On that note, the shift in US attitudes—the loss of close attention to Saudi concerns—is clearly partly inspired by the rise of fracking. Energy independence remains more a figure of speech than a reality; the US will, as Cordesman also points out, continue to remain dependent on the import of fossil fuels for decades. But it has noticeably shifted the mindset in Washington.
That, and enthusiasm for democracy, even in its tumultuous forms, may explain why the US so badly misread the reaction in the region—and in Riyadh—when it backed the popular uprising that led to the downfall of autocrat President Hosni Mubarak. It ended up, in effect, appearing to support the Muslim Brotherhood as it then “hijacked the revolution”, as many put it, consolidating its grip on parliament and other institutions. Seen from Riyadh, what was starkest was the speed with which the US ditched its long-time ally in favour of the crowds in the street.
That, and the confusion of US intentions in Syria, are the hardest questions for Obama to answer next month. His team has to maintain either that their actions were right—and therefore they did things that the Saudi leadership dislikes–or that they were wrong. The visit itself will count for a lot. But there are real differences between the two countries. The result may be that Saudi Arabia looks to cultivate other allies and never quite looks at the US with the warmth that it once did.
President Barack Obama’s trip to the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh in mid March is arguably the most important foreign visit of his five years in office. It is an attempt to confront the collapse in relations with an old ally, after US actions—or inaction—in Egypt and Syria confounded the region’s expectations.
It’ll be hard for it to work. There’s a certain amount he can do by explaining why the US has done what it’s done, in the face of Saudi mystification. “We know where the misunderstanding comes from,” said one senior US military adviser. “They thought we promised to send cruise missiles to take out [Syria’s President Bashar Assad] but we only promised to get rid of the chemical weapons, which we may have done through negotiation”. The Saudis may even persuade Obama’s team to clarify their muddled position on Egypt.
But at the heart is a real difference. It suits the Obama Administration to explore a less antagonistic relationship with Iran, as part of the proposed deal in which Iran will suspend part of its nuclear programme in return for a lifting of sanctions. Yet the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia to be the region’s dominant power—“The new Cold War”, as we called it in Prospect’s February cover story—is now redrawing the map of allegiances.
Predicting how this will play out—and how Britain, the rest of the EU and the US should respond—was the subject of the recent Prospect roundtable entitled ”The Rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran—the new Cold War? How should the West respond?”
The group (see list of attendants) split broadly into two: those who wanted to give Iran the benefit of the doubt and to work energetically to “bring it in from the cold”, and those arguing for caution—and for more understanding of Saudi concerns.
There was a brisk initial discussion about whether the “Cold War” term, used by Gregory Treverton director of the RAND Centre for Global Risk and Security in his article for Prospect, fitted this new rivalry; although many argued that the analogy was awkward, there was broad acceptance that the framework usefully captured the sense of rivalry and new alliances. Many described how the UAE, Jordan and Kuwait were lining up together on some issues—notably the choice of which group to back in Egypt and Syria—with Iran and often Qatar on the other side.
There was strong support among one or two participants for the notion that Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new president, was committed to opening up Iran to the world, and prepared to freeze the nuclear work in return. They were too generous, I thought, both to him, given his public statements; to the authority they presumed he could wield; and to the idea that the Iranian leadership—including the Supreme Leader—would act as one on this singularly controversial question. Statements from Tehran in the past few weeks have only confirmed the case for caution.
But Obama is also right to push Congress not to impose new sanctions—as many of those present also argued. Some kind of lasting deal with Iran on the nuclear front is the precondition for containing the arms race already developing in the region, although Anthony Cordesman, the distinguished security analyst from the CSIS think tank in Washington, rightly noted in his penetrating and detailed article for us that it would have to be verifiable and enforceable.
Saudi scepticism is understandable. The leaders doubt that an Iranian deal will really prevent the regime from putting itself within easy reach of a nuclear weapon (if not actually taking the final step of building one). In this, they have rare agreement with leading Israeli politicians. Prince Turki al-Faisal, one of those who speaks for the Kingdom’s foreign policy, warned that if sufficiently alarmed on this front, Saudi Arabia would seek to acquire nuclear weapons capability itself.
The arms race, as Cordesman has described, has already begun between the two countries through a buildup of conventional weapons. Although Iran is severely hampered by sanctions from acquiring technology that in any respect deserves the word “modern”, and Saudi Arabia is still a prime customer for the latest developments from the US, Iran has acquired a formidable “asymmetric” capability—using comparatively low-tech means to threaten, for example, closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much oil and gas traffic flows.
On that note, the shift in US attitudes—the loss of close attention to Saudi concerns—is clearly partly inspired by the rise of fracking. Energy independence remains more a figure of speech than a reality; the US will, as Cordesman also points out, continue to remain dependent on the import of fossil fuels for decades. But it has noticeably shifted the mindset in Washington.
That, and enthusiasm for democracy, even in its tumultuous forms, may explain why the US so badly misread the reaction in the region—and in Riyadh—when it backed the popular uprising that led to the downfall of autocrat President Hosni Mubarak. It ended up, in effect, appearing to support the Muslim Brotherhood as it then “hijacked the revolution”, as many put it, consolidating its grip on parliament and other institutions. Seen from Riyadh, what was starkest was the speed with which the US ditched its long-time ally in favour of the crowds in the street.
That, and the confusion of US intentions in Syria, are the hardest questions for Obama to answer next month. His team has to maintain either that their actions were right—and therefore they did things that the Saudi leadership dislikes–or that they were wrong. The visit itself will count for a lot. But there are real differences between the two countries. The result may be that Saudi Arabia looks to cultivate other allies and never quite looks at the US with the warmth that it once did.
