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Saudi King Abdullah’s declaration that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq amounted to an “illegitimate foreign occupation” were met with surprise in Washington. “We were a little surprised to see those remarks,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters. The King’s proclamation was far from surprising and it indicates that Saudi Arabia is now shifting from words-words that Washington apparently ignored, given its terming Abdullah’s comments a “surprise”-to actions to safeguard its own critical interests.
A March 2006 report commissioned by Saudi Arabia’s Government warned that Shia-led Iraq was becoming a “key vehicle” that Iran was “using to achieve its military security and intelligence aims.” The report also stated, “Saudi Arabia has a special responsibility to ensure the welfare and security of Sunnis in Iraq.” In an op-ed piece published in the November 29, 2006 edition of The Washington Post, Nawaf Obaid, an advisor to the Saudi Government, took a more robust approach as the civil war in Iraq and ethnic cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods intensified. Obaid wrote:
Over the past year, a chorus of voices has called for Saudi Arabia to protect the Sunni community in Iraq and thwart Iranian influence there. Senior Iraqi tribal and religious figures, along with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries, have petitioned the Saudi leadership to provide Iraqi Sunnis with weapons and financial support. Moreover, domestic pressure to intervene is intense. Major Saudi tribal confederations, which have extremely close historical and communal ties with their counterparts in Iraq, are demanding action. They are supported by a new generation of Saudi royals in strategic government positions who are eager to see the kingdom play a more muscular role in the region.
He then warned that Saudi Arabia would not tolerate a “massacre” of Iraq’s Sunni population, as it would imperil Saudi Arabia’s critical regional interests. “To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia’s credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran’s militarist actions in the region,” he stated. Afterward, the point being made, he was “fired” and then days later, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Turki al-Faisal, resigned for “Saudi domestic matters.”
Even as the U.S. was working out a new strategy for stabilizing Iraq, Vice President Cheney was publicly arguing that the U.S. should give up efforts to win over Iraq’s Sunni minority. Ultimately, the new strategy centered around the existing Shia-led Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, even as it maintains highly visible ties to Shia sectarian militias and has continued to show little inclination toward national reconciliation for all of Iraq’s peoples. Since the current approach in Iraq was launched in January, the United States has done little to insist on the development of a truly national Iraqi government. It has not pushed Prime Minister Maliki to bring about a coalition government with Sunnis. Instead, it has allowed the sectarian Maliki government a relatively free hand, even when it acted to discredit Sunni rape victims and cast disproportionate blame on the Sunnis for Iraq’s sectarian violence in which Shia militias have played a major role. To the Saudi leadership, such a course amounted to little more than an unwillingness to listen to Saudi Arabia’s concerns, indifference to Saudi Arabia’s critical interests, and essentially a “business as usual” course that could only erode Saudi Arabia’s regional position.
With the situation in Iraq being only slightly improved from that of a few months ago, even as the Iranian standing in the Middle East has increased, Saudi Arabia has now concluded that the U.S. is unwilling and/or unable to protect Saudi Arabia’s critical regional interests and those of the Middle East’s Sunni population. As such, given what it perceives to be the choice of accepting increasing regional instability coupled with rising Iranian power or diverging from U.S. policy interests and goals, Saudi Arabia has determined that it is in its national interest to begin cutting deals to safeguard its own critical regional interests and those of the Middle East’s Sunnis.
Saudi Arabia is no longer willing to abet a situation that sustains Iraq’s sectarianism, even if that means taking on U.S. policies. “In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism,” King Abdullah declared, almost certainly in such harsh terms that Iraq’s Sunnis would be assured that Saudi Arabia is now coming to their aid and, more importantly, that the U.S. might begin listening to Saudi Arabia’s longstanding concerns on Iraq’s sectarian evolution. An Iraq that is a Shia-satellite of Iran would pose a major threat to Saudi Arabia’s most vital interests.
In the longer-term context, these rumblings mark the first tremors of a changing alignment of interests in the Middle East. As often happen, when a nation’s geopolitical credibility wanes, its allies scramble to safeguard their own national interests. U.S. credibility in the Middle East has diminished as a result of its poor performance in Iraq. Now, Saudi Arabia believes it can only secure its own interests by acting on its own, even if its course may complicate some U.S. regional priorities and preferences.
Saudi Arabia is not going to become an enemy of the U.S. However, it will fill the diplomacy vacuum that the U.S. has created in its very limited willingness to engage in direct negotiations with the major states that have influence over Iraq’s sectarian actors. That means, Saudi Arabia will begin using its standing to negotiate deals to try to stabilize Iraq and mitigate the risks of possible Iranian dominance in the Middle East.
What does the U.S. have to do?
- First, Congress needs to act responsibly. Tying military funding to arbitrary deadlines, even if it is politically popular at home, only further diminishes U.S. credibility in a region in which it is widely viewed, among allies and enemies alike, as a declining power. Softer goals that accommodate domestic public opinion, while accommodating the on-the-ground reality and geopolitical interests in their non-binding nature, would be better.
- Second, the U.S. needs to make clear that it backs the formation of a truly national and legitimate Iraqi government in which Shia, Sunnis and Kurds have sufficient power to protect their basic rights and no single ethnic group has the ability to dominate the country and thereby oppress the other ethnic groups. In contrast, continuing unconditional and unwavering support for a sectarian Iraqi government can only widen divisions between the U.S. and important Sunni Arab States such as Saudi Arabia.
- Third, the U.S. needs to be willing to engage in direct and unconditional diplomacy when it comes to stabilizing Iraq. The issue of stabilizing Iraq is a wholly separate matter from Iran’s nuclear issue and needs to be treated as such. Otherwise, with the U.S. bowing out of diplomatic routes, Saudi Arabia will undertake the task itself in order to safeguard its own critical regional interests and those of the Middle East’s Sunnis.
In the end, the geopolitical costs of failure in Iraq-and, as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, Shia domination is as much a failure as an all-out civil war-are so great that Saudi Arabia and others who would bear the adverse consequences are now willing to act on their own. Unless the U.S. recognizes this situation and takes corrective action as defined in the above three steps, it will increasingly lose its ability to influence the evolution of events, both in Iraq and also in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is now responding to what it believes to be a shift in the regional balance of power to protect its critical interests.
Don Sutherland has researched and written on a wide range of geopolitical issues.