OPINION_ Fury in the Kingdom

Op-Ed Columnist

Fury in the Kingdom

By ROGER COHEN
Published: October 28, 2013 3 Comments


DUBAI — Here’s how the Saudis see it: President Obama has sold out the Syrian opposition, reinforced President Bashar al-Assad after having called for his departure, embarked on a dangerous duet with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, played the wrong cards in Egypt, retreated from initial criticism of Israeli settlements that promised a more balanced American approach to Israel-Palestine, tilted toward the Shiites in the growing regional Sunni-Shiite confrontation, and generally undercut the interests of the kingdom.

To say Saudi Arabia is livid would be an understatement. Hence the Saudi decision to give up a seat on the Security Council that it had long coveted. It was not aimed at the United Nations. It was aimed above all at the United States.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former director of the Saudi intelligence services, put it this way recently: “Washington is not able to reach a cohesive and comprehensible policy vis-à-vis particular situations.” He continued, “On Syria, of course, it has been a continuous retrogression from first statements within a couple of months of the situation in Syria when President Obama said Assad must go until today.”

The Saudis, of course, always talk a good line and are happiest when others — read the United States — do the heavy lifting for them. But they remain an important ally. The pursuit of U.S. interests in the region is made more difficult with the Saudis fuming. The alienation of the kingdom smacks of carelessness from an Obama administration now intent on scaling back expectations in the Middle East even as it declares a nuclear deal with Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace to be President Obama’s foreign policy priorities. Neither of these objectives will be able to circumvent Saudi Arabia.

It is not only the Saudis who are wondering. In Dubai and Abu Dhabi there is a perception of American weakness and retreat. The claim in Dubai that the Statue of Liberty would fit inside the atrium of the tallest building in the world, the 2,722-foot Burj Khalifa tower, amounts to a boast freighted with symbolism.

I am not sympathetic to the Saudi view on Egypt, where its cash had a destructive impact on whatever chance the most populous Arab nation had of establishing a stable democracy. The Saudi approach was short-sighted in its relentless push to restore the Egyptian Army to authority and oust the Muslim Brotherhood. Nor, however, has the Obama administration’s zigzagging Egyptian policy been helpful.

On Syria, Saudi outrage is altogether understandable. The United States came out in support of the Free Syrian Army, promised military backing and failed to deliver. Western leaders recognized the opposition alliance as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people but now deal with Assad. American “red lines” proved malleable. A border-crossing Sunni-Shiite confrontation spreads. Lawless zones, those great breeders of terror, grow. Nobody has any idea how to put Syria together again. This was not inevitable. A year into the war there were just 30,000 refugees. Now there are more than two million. Opportunities were missed.

But it is over Iran that the Saudis are most exercised — and it is not the Iranian nuclear program that has them so upset. Rather, it is the idea that the pre-revolutionary relationship between Iran and the United States could somehow be revived, extending Iranian influence in the region and relegating Saudi Arabia to being, as it once was, the lesser party of America’s “twin pillar” policy in the region.

The Saudis have already watched with concern as the U.S. invasion of Iraq served Iranian interests; they see Iran’s influence and military presence growing in Syria. What they fear above all is an Iranian irredentism aimed at stirring up of the Shiite populations in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

It was not lost on Saudi Arabia that Rouhani wrote in The Washington Post in September that, “We must join hands to constructively work toward national dialogue, whether in Syria or Bahrain,” just a few days before Obama spoke at the United Nations of working to resolve “sectarian tensions” in Syria and Bahrain.

Nothing can set Saudi alarm bells ringing quite like that: U.S. and Iranian presidents speaking to each other on the telephone, having aired similar sentiments on Bahrain, where the Saudi-backed Sunni monarchy has engaged in fierce repression of an opposition led by members of the Shiite majority, which is pressing for broader rights and political inclusion.

It is hard to say whether Israel or Saudi Arabia is more anxious today over the possibility of an American-Iranian breakthrough. That possibility remains extremely remote. The right deal — one that prevents the Islamic Republic from going nuclear while drawing it back into the community of nations — is in the U.S. interest, but current Saudi fury is one measure of the difficulty and of a U.S. Middle Eastern policy that is falling short.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 29, 2013, in The International New York Times.



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