The weekend meeting between the US President Barack Obama and the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud was an extraordinary event in the seven-decade old strategic relationship between the two countries.
It was a two-hour long meeting at the King’s opulent desert retreat, with delegations present on both sides, dispensing with any one-on-one or any state banquet in honor of the visiting dignitary, although Obama stayed overnight on Saudi soil in a hotel suite in Riyadh.
Obama took a solitary engagement on the second day in Riyadh before returning home – honoring a local women’s rights activist. There’s nothing wrong with that for a US president who lauds human rights globally, except that the activist happens to be a Saudi establishment figure. Ironically, no sooner than Obama left, Saudi Arabia announced new sweeping laws that threaten up to 20 years in prison for secular citizens who commit ‘thought crimes’ in the same category as violent terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch, Saudi Hebollah or the Muslim Brotherhood.
Again, on the eve of Obama’s arrival in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah issued an unprecedented decree appointing a new deputy crown prince to allay concerns over the leadership’s frail health and to pave the way for the next generation of rulers, at the vanguard of which are Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef al-Saud and the king’s son, Minister for the Saudi Arabian National Guard Prince Miteb bin Abdullah al-Saud. Riyadh signaled, in essence, that the Arab Spring has no means to enter the Saudi portals for generations to come, and there isn’t going to be any dynastic crisis.
Speaking frankly
Obama held no separate meetings with the Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz who is the de facto Saudi ruler today. The media briefing by the White House on the eve of the visit described it as a mere "opportunity to reaffirm the importance of the relationship." Senior US officials later summed up the visit in measured words: "The President [Obama] underscored how much he values the strategic relationship. The United States has had an important relationship with Saudi Arabia for decades on security, energy, economics, and regional security issues. And the President wanted to make clear that he believes that continues to be the case."
In a departure from the usual hype spokesmen give to the high-level exchanges of their political masters, the US officials were notably restrained and freely admitted that the "two leaders spoke frankly about a number of issues and what might be or might have been tactical differences or differences in approaching some of these issues." The US officials flagged that the bottom line is that despite the tactical differences that have appeared in the US-Saudi ties, "our strategic interests remain very much aligned."
On the whole, it is a fair assessment of the state of the US-Saudi relationship. During the recent months, high-ranking Saudi officials and diplomats have been openly voicing criticizing discontent over the Obama administration’s regional policies in the Middle East through public utterances, media interviews and opinion-pieces. Some of them even made veiled threats that unless Obama did serious rethinking, Saudi Arabia would be left with no option but to project itself regionally without US cover and even to seek out new strategic partnerships in the wider non-western world with a view to reduce the heavy dependence on American support.
The discord can be traced back to the ousting of the former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. The initial wedge widened substantially and assumed the nature of an open rift when Obama pulled back from launching any military attack on Syria and soon after made the historic outreach to Iran without even consulting the Saudi leadership.
Rightly or wrongly, Riyadh feels aggrieved that Obama did not make any serious attempt to salvage Mubarak’s chestnuts out of the fire and remains ambivalent on Syria and, most important, that he is on a naïve enterprise to appease arch foe Iran, which goes to empower Tehran and tilt the regional power dynamic in the Gulf and the Middle East as a whole to the detriment of Saudi interests.
All this has been happening against the backdrop of the Arab Awakenings that threaten to redrawing the political map of the Muslim Middle East through the past 3-month period, which the Saudi leadership perceived as posing a stark threat to their own authoritarian rule. Somehow, the Saudis believed that Obama could have turned the tide of the current history if he had genuinely wanted to, and could have bolstered the position of Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Aliin. Meanwhile, the uprising in next-door Bahrain and Yemen drove up Saudi anxieties, while the Obama White House’s aversion to spearhead a military campaign in Syria to oust President Bashar Al-Assad and the commencement of the negotiations with Iran reinforced the Saudi feeling that its strategic partner is no longer dependable.
A tough sell
It is inconceivable that Riyadh harbors any lingering hopes of a US-led war against the Syrian regime. Nor is the Saudi leadership expecting the Obama administration to jettison the US’ engagement with Iran. Most certainly, the Saudis are well aware that the Obama administration not only refuses to regard the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, but regards the movement to be a legitimate player in the Middle East’s political transformation. So, what is it that Obama’s perfunctory visit to Saudi Arabia is intended to convey? In a nutshell, as the Guardian newspaper’s Martin Chulov aptly foretold, "Obama’s main message to his hosts will be that he is not neglecting them… He is also expected to insist that no other country in the region can replace the US as a security guarantor."
By all indications, it proved to be a tough tell. The US officials made it clear in the media briefing that Obama treaded the familiar line that the US got into the nuclear negotiations with Iran with "eyes wide open" and with no illusions; the interim accord has "halted Iran’s nuclear program and set it back in important respects; and, that Washington aims at a comprehensive solution that "meets the criteria… of stopping Iran from having a weapon, and ensuring that its program is exclusively peaceful." In sum, Obama held out the sage counsel to King Abdullah that the Iran deal will actually do a world of good for Saudi Arabia since it is in the interest of regional stability.
Indeed, Obama didn’t budge from the US’ stated position. The only promise he made was that "we won’t accept a bad deal; and that the focus on the nuclear issue doesn’t mean we are not concerned about… Iran’s meddling in other counties in the region". But then, Obama also added the caveat that "stopping Iran from a nuclear weapon itself will curb Ira’s ability to continue its destabilizing activities throughout the region."
Frank and honest
We won’t know what thoughts crossed King Abdullah’s mind when Obama had "the chance to look him in the eyes and explain" the raison d’etre of the US-Iranian engagement. It is highly improbable that the King was convinced when the assurance was held out that "the President and the United States are going into this [engagement with Iran] eyes wide open, there’s no naivete."
The US officials were conspicuously evasive. They said the king "listened very carefully", but they wouldn’t comment on "what he took away or his response." They merely said King Abdullah was "very gracious", held an "open conversation with Obama, and appreciated the fact that the US president came "to see him face-to-face."
Nonetheless, we get a vague sense of what transpired when a senior US official observed, "the King is known for being frank and honest. So I’m not going to say he claimed that there were no differences and everything – that we saw everything eye-to-eye on every single issue."
The US-Saudi difference was equally palpable on the other major item in the discussion, namely, Syria. The US officials admitted, "There clearly was some difference about the US not taking military action inside of Syria." They insisted that the objective of the contemplated military action last year was the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, whereas, "we, frankly, don’t believe that there’s a US military option that could bring that conflict to a conclusion and that there needs to be political settlement, but that needs to be reinforced by opposition for the opposition."
In the weeks before Obama’s trip to Saudi Arabia, media reports suggested that Riyadh had "pre-positioned" advanced weaponry in Jordan and hoped to coordinate with the US their dispatch to the rebel forces inside Syria. There was much talk specifically about the supply of MPADS (shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles). But the US has held on to the position that certain types of weapons such as MPADS could pose a "proliferation risk" if introduced into Syria.
Notably, the US officials were pretty blunt about the ground realities in Syria. As one official put it while detailing Obama’s talks with the Saudi King, "You have a relatively unified Assad regime under this dictatorship fighting a vast array of disparate groups both on the armed side and the unarmed side, and if you want any change of changing the balance such that you’re going to get the political transition that we believe is the only way to bring civility back to Syria, it’s only if you can unify those groups in the opposition, both on the armed side and on the civilian side."
Egypt didn’t figure in the talks but Obama couldn’t have satisfied King Abdullah on that topic, either. In a press gaggle en route to Riyadh, US deputy national security advisor Benjamin Rhodes had said that much as Washington shared the Saudi interest in a stable Egypt, "we [US] have always said and continue to say that that stability will be well served by Egypt sticking to a democratic roadmap… So our point on Egypt is going to be that… the US wants to have a strong relationship with Egypt, but that stability ultimately is going to be best served by Egypt following through on its commitment to transition to free and fair elections and democratic governance."
Indispensable and irreplaceable
What emerges from Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia is that Washington’s strongest relationship in the Arab world, which has been with Riyadh, is in historic shift. Arguably, the US’ path to energy independence dilutes the dense economic interdependence between the two partners but that is not the whole story and is probably not even the main story.
The disagreements on Syria and Iran cannot be papered over easily and in the coming months when the Syrian regime consolidates even further and when the Iran nuclear deal sails into view, the Saudi anxieties will surge. Even within the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi leadership is being increasingly challenged – by Qatar in particular – and the Iranian regional diplomacy is proactive.
Curiously, the US is willing to acknowledge the difficulty in bridging the differences with Saudi Arabia and seems to use the disagreements to create space to reposition itself and to develop a freer hand in shaping its Middle East policies. This implies a definite lessening of the Saudi influence in Washington.
The heart of the matter is that Saudi Arabia fears that Obama is pursuing a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, which may eventually end the US economic sanctions against Iran and, in turn, "empower" Tehran to play an optimal role in regional affairs… On the other hand, the US continues to stress the closeness of the relationship on security (counter-terrorism, in particular) and defence cooperation, which is indeed of equal interest to the Saudi side as well.
It also needs to be factored in that despite the common perception that the US’ growing energy independence is altering the strategic framework of the relations with Saudi Arabia, the latter will remain a critical player in globally linked energy markets, especially in China’s energy market, which, in turn, impacts the US’ global strategies. China’s customs data show that the country imported 53.9 million tons of Saudi crude in 2013, or about 1 million barrels per day, which is a 28 percent jump during the past 5-year period.
Equally, from the US perspective, Saudi Arabia will have a continuing role as the only major oil producer with spare capacity, allowing it to increase supply in the face of any major disruptions due to regional conflicts or turmoil in some major oil-producing country in the world. At the end of the day, Saudi Arabia has the capacity to produce an additional 3 million barrels of crude a day, or just over 3 percent of global demand. Furthermore, according to the International Energy Agency, once the US’ domestic shale oil boom peters out and the overall oil production begins to slowly decline (which could be anytime after 2020), the US may still need Saudi Arabia’s oil in the long term.
Suffice to say, there is no lack of clarity in Washington that the Saudi partnership is for the long-term and is indispensable and irreplaceable. In political terms, therefore, given the acute realization (on both sides) that the strategic partnership is of immense mutual benefit and for the long-term, they are presently having a window of opportunity to reset their relationship. This thinking provided the underpinning for Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
The friction over Iran or Syria or Egypt does not mean that the US is signaling withdrawal from the Middle East. The US is instead reassessing its regional priorities. The coming weeks and months will bear out how far Obama succeeded in re-framing the US-Saudi strategic partnership. Meanwhile, in immediate terms, he had a modest agenda, which was to arrest the deterioration of the relationship. And in that, he probably succeeded.
