I noted the media reports on Hillary Clinton’s meetings with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Saud Al Faisal this last week with a great deal of interest, particularly Secretary Clinton’s comments about Iran’s decline into a military dictatorship and the Prince’s doubts about international sanctions as a “workable” solution to Iran’s nuclear buildup. Ten years in the Kingdom taught me to pay close attention to these carefully choreographed and scripted exchanges. I don’t pretend to be a diplomat, but the craftily worded statements are an easily deciphered code for increased American involvement.
The Saudis are masters at getting others to do their dirty work, as evidenced by the more than 7M expatriates in the Kingdom engaged in jobs Saudis don’t want to do. They are equally adept at getting other nations, mainly the US, to protect their interests and wage their wars, while they publicly talk of limiting western intervention in Islamic affairs and privately fear President Obama’s strategy of engagement with Iran. Despite lofty exchanges at the diplomatic level, the conventional wisdom on the street is much different and highlights the Saudi cultural proclivity for avoiding conflict at all costs.
Saudis were happy with the results of the first Gulf War that taught Saddam Hussein a lesson, protected amassed wealth in Kuwait and Saudi, and cost them virtually nothing beyond “in-kind” support for America…another code phrase for holding our coats while we fought the neighborhood bully. The second war, however, is a different situation.
Quietly, Saudis on the street received the second Iraq war with far less enthusiasm. While they hated and feared Saddam, they realized he fulfilled two important functions: keeping control of a deeply sectarian country and keeping Iran at bay. They vocalize concerns that continued western involvement only fuels fundamentalist fervor and increases Iran’s influence in the region, not a good thing for anyone, especially not the Saudis. Some distance between Saudi and the US on “religious” grounds is a good political move for their relations with other Islamic countries, but when it comes to dealing with international problems the Saudis prefer to “walk softly and carry a big stick”, and the big stick is us.
As a result, it’s only natural the Saudis are now hinting that there’s a new bully in the neighborhood, this one a lot more technologically savvy, well funded, and posing even bigger threats. Worse, compared to Saddam’s lust for power and personal comfort, Iran’s drivers are ideological and bent on destruction of the “Evil Empire” (that’s us), and view the royals on the Arabian peninsula as collaborators in western immorality. We all know the Iran problem dates back to pre-Jimmy Carter and our failed strategy to support the Shah, but the difference now is that Iran’s enormous oil revenues support religious fundamentalism rather than a pampered potentate. Clearly the Saudis don’t want their oil rich desert to become Iran’s nuclear weapons testing ground or get in the middle of their Jihad against the west.
Time has proven that international sanctions mean nothing to rogue states and the Saudis know it. In order to gain US support for the fights they want to sidestep, the Saudi royals barter their same tired, insipid support for the “Mid-East Peace Process” that so far has netted nothing, and drag out the same old half-hearted support for ending the violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Past US administrations, some with personal interests in “Big Oil”, have bought in to the ruse fearful of having the world’s petroleum supply in the hands of fanatics.
So far the Saudi strategy has proven effective. While the US has incurred horrendous losses in human life and mounting debt in Iraq, the Saudis retain their position of neutrality that minimizes internal terrorist threats against them by not lifting an obvious finger against their Islamic brethren.
Let’s see if this administration is smart enough to see the Saudi behavior for what it is…getting someone else to do the dirty work.
