by Zalman Shoval
Toward the end of World
War II, then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Saudi
Arabia's King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy, which was anchored at
Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal, and forged the U.S.-Saudi Quincy
Agreement, based on the idea of security in exchange for oil.
Now, 69 years later,
the agreement is beginning to unravel, and U.S. President Barack Obama
hurried to Riyadh on Friday to try to tighten it up once again.
Despite advances in independent energy production, the U.S. still imports 15 percent of the oil it consumes from Saudi Arabia.
However, it is doubtful
that Obama succeeded in his efforts, as the "unraveling" is of his
doing and the Saudis are increasingly losing their faith in his foreign
policy in general, and his Middle East policy in particular. The Saudi
elite resents what it sees as Washington's negative role in the ousting
of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and criticizes its chilly
relationship with the new Egyptian leadership, headed by Gen.
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. The Saudis are angered by Washington's refusal to
provide weapons to the Syrian rebels and its reversal on Syria's
chemical weapons. They wonder about what they see as a complete
misunderstanding on the part of the Americans of the implications of the
Arab Spring, and, like Israel, they are skeptical and concerned about
Obama's decision to shrink the U.S. military and the consequences this
will have on America's allies in the Middle East.
This is only a partial
list, but what bothers Riyadh more than anything, and what causes it to
question the United States' leadership abilities, is the Obama
administration's policy on the Iranian nuclear issue, a policy it sees
as mistaken and indecisive to the point of being at peace with a nuclear
Iran. Obama seemingly tried to convince the Saudi leadership that his
Iran policy works to Saudi Arabia's benefit and to the benefit of its
allies in the Gulf.
However, one can assume
that his claim did not have much of an effect on King Abdullah and the
Saudi elite, who see their rivalry with Iran as centering on regional
hegemony and influence in the Middle East. They see Tehran's standing in
the region growing stronger, between achieving nuclear weapons and
newfound harmony with the United States.
Riyadh is also worried
that if America and its partners declare that negotiations with Iran
have reached a favorable outcome (without waiting to see if Tehran has
truly curbed its nuclear ambitions), Washington will have another
argument to support transferring the focus of its foreign policy and
security from the Middle East to the Far East, leaving Iran's subversive
activities in the region to continue unchecked.
The Saudi elite sees
two conflict fronts around it that sometimes work together, and
sometimes separately: Between the Sunni camp, under its own leadership,
and the Shiite crescent under Iran's leadership, and between the
moderate Sunni camp under its leadership and the Muslim Brotherhood who
represent a political Islam that endangers the long-standing Sunni
regimes. The conflicts within the Sunni camp recently saw the return of
Saudi, Egyptian and Gulf state ambassadors from Qatar, which adopted a
policy in support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a stance expressed
most notably in Doha-based Al Jazeera news reports.
We don't know if the
Abdullah-Obama meeting pushed some of the obstacles between the two
countries out of the way, but according to the clues in statements
released afterwards, it seems that despite the smiles, the disagreements
persist, particularly regarding the Iranian issue.
So, what are the implications for
Israel? Although there is no talk of any kind of official relationship
between Saudi Arabia and Israel emerging in the foreseeable future, and
the former's recent refusal to grant the Jerusalem Post's Washington
bureau chief a visa testifies to this, their parallel interests on
issues including Iran, Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood is creating a
new reality with many possibilities. To add flourish to its new
situation, Israel can consider re-examining the Saudi peace initiative,
on the condition that they remove the clauses and definitions that made
it seem like a diktat rather than a possible basis for negotiations.
Zalman Shoval
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7907
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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