RIYADH, Saudi Arabia–President Barack Obama sought to quell tensions with America’s most important Arab ally, holding talks with Saudi King Abdullah amid disagreements between Washington and Riyadh over the civil war raging in Syria and the U.S.’ overtures to the kingdom’s regional nemesis Iran.
Following the two hour meeting Thursday at the Saudi kings desert farm north of Riyadh, the capital, the U.S. put a positive spin the talks, hailing the “strong relationship” between the worlds’ biggest economy and largest oil exporter.
The discussions between the two leaders follow a particularly rough patch in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which has been strained recently over Washington’s refusal to provide more support to Sunni rebels battling Syria’s Shia-backed regime as wells as attempts by the U.S. to forge a nuclear agreement with Iran, a Shia power detested by Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy.
Riyadh and other Sunni gulf kingdoms have backed their Sunni brethren battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which receives support, including fighters, weapons and money, from Iran and the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah. The Saudis seem to view Syria’s sectarian conflict– in which a government controlled by the country’s minority Alawite sect is attempting to put down a rebellion dominated by Syria’s Sunni majority—- as a proxy war against Shia Iran and as a modern day reincarnation of the Battle of Karbala, the 680 AD clash in modern day Iraq that solidified the split between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
The Saudis have repeatedly called on the U.S. ramp up its support– which now consists of small arms and non-lethal aid– for the Sunni insurgents, and have been angered by Washington’s refusal to provide heavy weapons, including so called man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) to the rebels, who have radical al-Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters in their ranks. Washington has worried that the weapons could end up in the hands of the fanatical Sunni Islamist rebel factions who now dominate Syria’s armed opposition, including the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and has refrained from dispatching heavy arms to even vetted insurgent groups.
The Saudis were outraged last August after Obama backtracked on a threat to strike Syria following a government chemical weapons attack on a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital.
The Obama administration’s refusal to publicly support the coup that ousted Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, provided another irritant in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which had already been strained by what Riyadh saw as America’s abandonment of Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian president, after massive anti-government demonstrations erupted in early 2011. Riyadh views the Muslim Brotherhood and its brand of political Islam as a threat to the stability of the region, and welcomed the coup that removed Morsi, immediately pledging $5 billion in aid to the government that replaced Morsi’s Islamist administration.
But it is perhaps Washington’s flirtation with a nuclear deal with Iran, a Shia Persian theocracy that the Sunni Arab kingdom views with suspicion and outright contempt, that has ruffled Riyadh’s feathers the most. After Tehran and the P5-Plus-1, a diplomatic bloc comprised of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, forged a temporary six month nuclear agreement in November, Riyadh reacted angrily to the prospect of a permanent accord that could allow Iran to maintain any type of enrichment capacity– the ability to turn raw uranium into nuclear fuel that could power an energy–generating nuclear power plant, or if enriched to a higher level, form the core of an atomic device.
The Saudis, who view Iran as a destabilizing force in the region, insist that Tehran should not be allowed to have any sort of enrichment program and want pressure against the Islamic Republic ramped up, not scaled back. They view negotiations between Tehran and the P5-Plus-1, which are aimed at forging a permanent agreement to replace the six month accord reached in November, as a ploy by Iran to buy time and earn sanctions relief.
Riyadh wants Tehran to be confronted, not co-opted, and opposes a scaling back of sanctions or a final deal that would allow Iran to continue its uranium enrichment program, which the Saudis view as an effort by Iran to build nuclear weapons. Tehran maintains that its enrichment program is solely for producing nuclear fuel for electricity-generating power plants as well as for creating medical isotopes used to treat cancer and other illnesses.
Sources: Al Jazeera, BBC News, Israel National News, The Washington Post
Photo: International Business Times