2003 was a different era. The United States waged a war of choice in Iraq; Vladimir Putin’s Russia was seen as a paper tiger; China’s economic boom roared but didn’t threaten; Dubai was unknown; and the United States seemed like it would forever be an oil importer.
Much has changed. But today, the price of oil dropped to $27 a barrel, last seen in the heady days of the first W. Bush Administration.
There’s a lot going on here. Let’s get super. (more…)
There are other shorter articles and they do a fine job of covering the basics. If that’s all you’re looking for, click on the link and consider yourself well-rewarded. But if you desire more than tidbits, read on. (more…)
It’s important to look forward as one year ends and another begins: to make resolutions, regret our mistakes and to wonder where it could all go wrong in the next twelve months.
There are fewer countries on Earth that have as much explosive potential in 2016 as Saudi Arabia.
Yes, there are failed or nearly failed states like Syria, Iraq, Somalia, the Central African Republic, etc. But such sores spots are in the blatant open: for them to get much worse seems difficult, considering how bad things are in such places.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has all the sheen of stability and security: massive oil reserves, stable institutions, a powerful monarchy headed up by a king who seems to know what he wants and an all-important alliance with the United States.
Don’t let any of that fool you. Saudi Arabia is facing its biggest crisis in its history and the odds are against the Kingdom navigating it well in 2016. (more…)
Caveats! “Bad” on this website is rarely used for moral condemnation. So there’s that.
“Bad” here refers to the fact that Saudi Arabia cannot win its war in Yemen. Best-case scenario is they escape with their tails between their legs. Worst case? The cracking of the Saudi state and chaos beyond imagining.
But let’s do some wayback and remember how we got here in the first place. (more…)
As the European migrant crisis is giving way to unprecedented humanitarian efforts from first Germany and now the Vatican, more than a few analysts have noted that for all Europe’s generosity, only a few Arab states have opened their doors to the masses fleeing war in Iraq and Syria.
That’s curious when one considers that the ultra-rich Gulf Cooperation Council states are far closer than Europe and the journey there involves no dangerous seafaring. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all have considerable oil and gas reserves and their citizens are much richer than those of other Arab states. Yet GCC governments have stayed mum even as the #ArabConscience has begun trending regionally. Why? (more…)
Most of the 193 countries that are part of the United Nations consider winning a temporary spot on Security Council a great honor. As the body’s sole authority on debating issues of international peace and security, countries in every region of the world are often quick to put themselves in the running in hopes of joining the exclusive club.
Not, it seems, Saudi Arabia. (more…)
Saudi Arabia took a big step this week in improving its diplomatic relationship with the Iraqi government, a neighbor that Saudi officials have long viewed with wary eyes and with much suspicion.
After postponing indefinitely its plans to reopen the Saudi embassy in Baghdad and dragging out its decision to appoint a permanent ambassador for Iraq, Riyadh finally tapped one of its diplomats to begin the work of rebuilding the kingdom’s relationship with its northern neighbor. While the ambassador of choice for the Iraq job is already the kingdom’s emissary to Jordan, the simple task of naming an ambassador to Baghdad is an enormous accomplishment for a country that has frequently viewed Iraq through foggy glasses.
There is also one more caveat to the nomination. Although Saudi Arabia will now open official diplomatic contacts with their Iraqi counterparts, the Saudi ambassador will remain at his residence in Jordan most of the time — an indication that the House of Saud will remain cautious in its new approach.
Saudi officials are quick to point to the lack of security in Iraq as a justification for the delay in reopening its embassy. And with shootings, roadside bombings and suicide bombers still a fact of life for many Iraqis in the capital (not to mention other parts of the country), that justification has often worked. Now that Iraqi-Saudi diplomacy is back on however, people will begin to wonder how much longer King Abdullah and his circle of advisors can continue to operate without a presence in Baghdad.
The reestablishment of direct contact between Iraqi and Saudi officials is all the more remarkable when considering the contentious history that the two countries have had with one another for the past three decades.
Even before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saudi officials constantly viewed Saddam Hussein as a principle Arab competitor for regional leadership. Iraq’s enormous oil reserves, coupled with Hussein’s penchant for military adventurism, would give any leader sleepless nights. But for the Saudis, who shared an enormous desert border with Iraq and had the most to lose from an assertive Baghdad, Saddam was an irritant that could not be ignored. His quick triumph in Kuwait and threatening posture toward the kingdom during the early 1990s was undoubtedly the lowest point in the relationship between the two countries.
The collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime provided only short relief. Iraq’s Shia community would ascend as the new power brokers in the Iraqi government, all of a sudden depriving Sunnis of the position of privilege that they had held on to for so long. The growth of Shia power in Iraq was naturally taken advantage of by Iran, the so-called guardian of Shia Islam and Saudi Arabia’s biggest adversary in the Middle East today.
The personal relationship between King Abdullah and Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was none too neighborly (PDF) either, with the Saudi king calling Maliki an Iranian puppet and the prime minister complaining about the kingdom’s unwillingness to crack down on anti-Shia sermons. Maliki also refused to hide his absolute disdain for Saudi Arabia’s lax border controls which gave Saudi jihadists the opportunity to enter into Iraq and join the country’s surging anti-American and anti-Shia Al Qaeda branch.
With all of this in mind, the nomination of an ambassador to Iraq will not heal all of the wounds. Both countries hold major grievances with one another, which Maliki has unfortunately resisted in resolving with his increasingly autocratic behavior toward Iraqi Sunni leaders more broadly. Formal conversations among Saudi and Iraqi officials, however, will finally bring both countries face to face, in the same forum.
With South Korea having cut ties to Iranian petrochemical and oil imports after American pressure, it was a forgone conclusion that Seoul would be looking for new suppliers to fill the resulting void.
South Korean president Lee Myung-bak toured the Middle East last week, including stops in both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in hope of brokering agreements to alleviate that recent loss of Iranian crude oil and petrochemical exports, as well as to increase South Korean defense exports to the region.
The trip shapep up to be a successful one for President Lee.
South Korea and Saudi Arabia agreed Wednesday to significantly bolster their defense cooperation to elevate relations in noneconomic sectors to match those of their prospering business ties, an official said Wednesday.
A defense cooperation pact could be signed if and when the Saudi minister visits Seoul, Choe said. If Salman is unable to pay a visit to Seoul, South Korea’s defense minister Kim Kwan-jin will visit Riyadh for talks, the official said.
“The focus of this visit is to lift cooperation in noneconomic areas to the level of the economic sector,” the press secretary said. “What is important is that the two sides agreed to elevate defense cooperation as well to match such a level.”
Choe declined to offer specifics on cooperation in the defense industry but sources said the two sides have been in talks on weapons projects, such as exporting ammunition and howitzers to the Middle Eastern nation.
While howitzers and ammunition aren’t big ticket items in the grand scheme of the $3 billion dollars in arms sales that South Korea is hoping to export in 2012, President Lee headed home with both a pledge from the Saudi government of a secure oil supply and a foot in the door to new venues for South Korean arms exports. His visit has to be considered something of a great success.
It will be interesting to watch South Korea venture further into the region, how they handle the many layered politics of the Middle East, and their ability to balance their growing relationship with Israel and their blossoming ties with other surrounding Middle Eastern nations. It will also be worth noting how far Seoul dives into the region with or without the assistance of the United States, though one can imagine that the ROK won’t be selling arms to states that lack American approval.
Worth watching will also be how these international deals affect President Lee’s popularity in Seoul during his final year in office and the ramifications these developments will have for his party in the coming 2012 elections.
This story first appeared at Asia Security Watch, February 9, 2012.
Saudi Arabia’s longtime defense minister and crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud passed away in a New York City hospital over the weekend, raising concerns among Saudi watchers of a succession process that could result in a resurgence of conservatism in the world’s leading oil state.
Crown Prince Sultan, who was probably in his mid eighties, born in an era when dates or birth weren’t usually recorded in Saudi Arabia, battled health problems for most of his life.
His condition was thought to be grave in the minds of American diplomats stationed in Saudi Arabia who sent cables back to Washington raising concerns about Sultan’s health. Indeed, Sultan’s death is not exactly surprising to those who have been watching the inner dynamics of the Saudi royal family in detail. In 2009, the United States embassy in Riyadh claimed that the next in line to the thrown was largely “incapacitated by illness,” unable to perform his duties as the oil kingdom’s top defense official. Sultan was also rumored to be battling cancer — the disease medical officials attributed to his death last week — but government employees in the kingdom kept this news under wraps for most of his illness.
Although Sultan was frequently overshadowed as crown prince by his half brother, King Abdullah, he is often credited by the Saudi royal family and regional analysts for building up the Saudi military and modernizing its warfare equipment. From the time Sultan was tapped to be the defense minister in 1962 until his death, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia experienced a rapid quantitative and qualitative growth in its armed forces. It was ordinary for the Sultan-led Defense Ministry to purchase bulks of military hardware from the United States, projected to be worth in the billions of dollars. Most of the planes and helicopters that the Saudi air force uses were purchased from Washington under Sultan’s direction. The partnership not only improved Saudi Arabia’s military posture in the Gulf but also strengthened its strategic alliance with the United States.
After three days or mourning, the Al Saud will quickly be put to work on the succession process. The crown prince is the second highest position in Saudi Arabia, so King Abdullah will likely concentrate most of his energy on naming his potential successor fast enough to preempt questions from outsiders about the royal family’s internal unity. The top choice is Prince Nayef, the interior minister who was chosen by Abdullah in 2009 to be the second deputy prime minister, a formal position that is commonly referred to as the second in line to the thrown.
Like so much about the Al Saud, the beliefs of Prince Nayef are often kept in secret. American and Saudi analysts generally view Nayef as a staunch social and political conservative. In contrast to King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan, Prince Nayef is seen by most as closer to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi religious establishment, giving him a head start over other candidates with impressive religious credentials.
Nayef’s four decades of experience at the Interior Ministry could serve the kingdom well at a time of tremendous upheaval in the Middle East. Nayef, 77 years old, is recognized by the United States and other Saudi allies in the Middle East as the man responsible for killing, arresting, intimidating and expelling scores of Al Qaeda fighters from Saudi soil, most of whom found refuge in neighboring Yemen.
Nayef is not without criticism. Women’s issues are a particular thorn in his side. He has stated that it is unnecessary for women to serve in the Saudi government despite recent attempts on King Abdullah’s part to expand the franchise to include women.
A few months after 9/11, Nayef blamed Zionists for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, refusing to admit that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi citizens. American officials don’t particularly care for the prince’s record on democracy either — protests for better governance and social services in the country’s Eastern Province were crushed after a single day. His ministry saved the Kingdom of Bahrain from being swallowed up by its protesting Shia majority. Nayef is also keen on blaming the kingdom’s problems on foreign elements with Iran often being cited as the hidden hand encouraging Saudi Arabia’s religious minority to challenge the Al Saud monarchy.
Ultimately, Prince Nayef will only be promoted to crown prince if King Abdullah and his Allegiance Council approve. But with Nayef boasting his seniority over 20,000 other princes, it would be the ultimate surprise if he passed off for another candidate.
When international diplomats travel to other countries, they normally don’t expect to have their personal security jeopardized during their stay. Very rarely are diplomats caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time, in a middle of a warzone without adequate protection or trapped in their embassy surrounded by an angry crowd (Israel’s ambassador to Egypt is the latest exception). Diplomats are especially not concerned with their safety if they happen to work in Washington DC — the most secure city in the entire United States of America.
Unfortunately, normality is hardly universal in geopolitics, particularly when your state has enemies that are more than willing to make your life miserable. This was made abruptly obvious on Tuesday when Attorney General Eric Holder held a news conference detailing the foiling of an Iranian plot designed to assassinate Saudi ambassador Adel al-Jubeir at his favorite Washington restaurant. Much to the delight of Mr Jubeir, the assassination attempt was discovered early enough to arrest the perpetrators and disrupt its execution, thanks to some topnotch investigative work by the FBI.
According to the official affidavit that was released by prosecutors at the Southern District of New York, two Iranians — one residing in the United States and the other in Iran — were involved in the operation. The person doing most of the legwork was a man named Manssor Arbabisair whose status as a naturalized American citizen allowed him virtually unfettered access inside the country. The man whom Arbabisair was conspiring with is named Gholam Shakuri, an Iranian that the United States government has called an official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) most elite unite — the Quds Force. And therein lies the plot’s direct connection to the Iranian government.
The details of the assassination are remarkable, including Arbabisair’s attempt to enlist the help of a drug cartel to do the shooting in exchange for a hefty $1.5 million in compensation. Unfortunately for Arbabisair, the drug trafficker that he spoke with was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration who promptly alerted his handlers that an Iranian was prepared to kill a high level Saudi official right inside the Beltway.
FBI director Robert Mueller referred to the Iranian operation as “a Hollywood script.” Indeed, this was no ordinary assassination attempt, where a perfect marksman would step right up to the Saudi ambassador and put a bullet in his chest. Rather, the Iranians were reportedly prepared to use a large amount of explosives to do the job, killing an untold number of civilians and American government officials in the process.
Arbabisair is now in custody, cooperating with interrogators while revealing the most intimate aspects of his effort. Shakuri is still in Iran and therefore free from arrest but his name has moved to the forefront of American intelligence databases.
What the Iranian government, or more specifically the IRGC, hoped to accomplish is another matter. Iran and Saudi Arabia may be rivals in the Middle East; deliberately hatching a plan to kill a senior government official would seem to be a step above Tehran’s normal activities.
Why the Iranians decided to kill Jubeir in the United States instead of in Saudi Arabia is another question that remains unanswered, although an obvious reason would be to embarrass Washington and perhaps cause a rupture in the American-Saudi relationship, allowing Tehran to marginalize two of its key opponent in the region. But a successful operation would surely have led American investigators to the Islamic Republic eventually, for the Iranian intelligence services are known to harbor the most hostile of sentiments toward their Saudi counterparts.
With all of these caveats in mind, we should be asking questions before fully committing to the “Iran tried to kill a Saudi” story. Of course, this type of stunt is not beyond the likes of the IRGC, who have used agents before to conduct killings and bombings. It was only fifteen years ago when the Iranians were accused of bombing the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Tehran’s intelligence network in the 1980s is also known to have killed political dissidents in Europe. Yet in both cases, Tehran used people they trusted and could control. Relying on a used car salesman and a Mexican drug dealer to bomb a Washington area restaurant doesn’t seem to be a part of Iran’s DNA.
This is not to suggest that the Iranians were not involved or that the FBI and Justice Department may be lying about who is ultimately responsible. Rather, it is to shed further light on a very strange story — an operation that, if Iran planned, was doomed to fail from the beginning.
Whatever the rationale, the FBI has scored a big win for their record. Now the world awaits Riyadh’s response.
Those in the Middle East who have been shouting for democracy and a greater respect for human rights are perhaps the most powerful popular force that the region has seen in decades. Yet the sheer determination that millions of Arab citizens have come to rely upon to fuel their protest is also the element convincing Arab leaders to use every weapon available to them to counter the unrest and maintain their authority. (more…)
American, Arab and European armed forces may be intensively focused on operations over Libya but something just as dramatic is unfolding on the other side of the Middle East. Although this conflict may not be as violent as the one currently underway in Libya, it is nevertheless highly significant for every country that has even a remote interest in the region.
The drama in question concerns the rebellion in the island kingdom of Bahrain, a small nation barely visible on a map but a geostrategic hub where the Arab world’s most fractious political and social fault lines converge: sectarianism, class, religion and age. (more…)
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are usually described in the press as the “big” American allies in the Middle East — the countries that hold the most geostrategic weight and the ones whose leaders are most willing and able to help the United States in the region when it cannot help itself. Before Hosni Mubarak was thrown out of his palace, all three states were also seen as the most politically stable, at least in the short term when compared to the tinderbox that is Lebanon and the young Iraqi democracy.
This line of thinking has guided American foreign policy in the Middle East for the last three decades. Saudi Arabia is used by the United States to counter the influence of Iran in the Persian Gulf while Egypt in the Mubarak era was a key (if not the key) partner in counterterrorism missions. But with Arabs now waking up to anew reality — a reality that clearly exhibits the strong and windy force of “people power” — Barack Obama’s administration has rightly begun to rethink the myriad that is the American foreign policy status quo.
Putting aside Egypt’s young transition to democracy for a moment, no other country today is more emblematic to America’s predicament in the region than the tiny kingdom of Bahrain; that little known island smack in the middle of Iran and the Sunni Arab world. (more…)
What do you do when a developing power insists on continuing its nuclear weapons program Well, you could impose “crippling” sanctions as a penalty and hope that your enemy capitulates to the pressure (as President Barack Obama is doing now). Or if you were a neoconservative, you could use (or threaten) military action and hope that those operations don’t result in a full-scale armed conflict. Either way, both choices are based on a word that isn’t exactly dependable in international relations — hope.
But there is a third option. Sensing that a military strike is too dangerous and economic sanctions are too ineffective, a world power (like the United States) could pump arms into the region in order to boost the deterrence capabilities of its key allies. For instance, the United States could sell advanced military hardware to Israel, Saudi Arabia or Jordan before Iran decides to turn the screws on full weapons development. This is good old-fashioned deterrence at its finest, and the concept has worked remarkably well for the United States throughout the twentieth century.
Absent evidence to the contrary, all indications seem to conclude that deterrence will continue to work well. At least that’s Washington’s perspective.
So the United States are selling some $60 billion in weaponry to Saudi Arabia in order to further isolate Iran from the Middle East. Granted, the sale still has to be approved by Congress, which is undoubtedly concerned that this transaction may weaken Israel’s own deterrence capability in the region. But if the package is signed off, it would include the sale of 84 new F-15 fighter planes, 70 Apache attack helicopters, 72 Black Hawk helicopters, and 36 Little Bird (troop carrying) helicopters. If that doesn’t put a little scare in Iran’s strategic calculation, then perhaps Tehran’s leadership is more ideological than I previously assumed.
If conventional wisdom were any guide, the proposed American-Saudi arms agreement would sound like a big deal. The New York Times overhypes the story by writing that the package could “shift the region’s balance of power over the course of a decade.” But when we take history into account, this sale is anything but new. The United States pursued a similar policy in the late 1980s and 1990s, when Saudi Arabia purchased American planes and the United Arab Emirates bought American manufactured weapons systems in bulk (they continue to do so, by the way). Of course, the rationale back then was to box Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into a corner. The only thing that has changed over the past twenty years is the antagonist.
We now wait and see if Congress approves the plan. Some are rightly concerned that placing more weapons into an already volatile region could push Iran to either manufacture its own weapons as a response or buy them through the black market. Others are probably worried that the scheme will simply not work. Tehran may go ahead, as planned.
But absent other options, providing moderate Middle Eastern regimes with an improved defense capability is perhaps the most logical. At least it won’t start a war.
