Secretary of State John Kerry recently traveled to Riyadh to reassure the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that the U.S. stood with them. “Nothing has changed” as a result of the nuclear pact with Iran, he insisted.
Washington’s long relationship with Riyadh was built on oil. There never was any nonsense about sharing values with the KSA, which operates as a slightly more civilized variant of the Islamic State. The royals run a totalitarian system which prohibits political dissent, free speech, religious liberty, and social autonomy.
At a time of heavy U.S. dependence on foreign oil a little compromise in America’s principles might have seemed necessary. Today it’s hard to make a case that petroleum warrants Washington’s “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia. The global energy market is expanding; the U.S. will soon become a petroleum exporter. The royal regime cannot survive without oil money and has continued to pump even as prices have collapsed.
In recent years Washington also treated Riyadh as an integral component of a containment system against Iran. Of course, much of the “Tehran problem” was made in America: overthrowing Iranian democracy ultimately led to creation of an Islamist state.
Fears multiplied as Tehran confronted its Sunni neighbors along with Israel and continued the Shah’s nuclear program. Overwrought nightmares of Islamic revolution throughout the region encouraged America’s fulsome embrace of the KSA and allied regimes.
But this argument for supporting the Saudi royals has become quite threadbare. Saudi Arabia is well able to defend itself. In 2014 it came in at world number four with $81 billion in military expenditures, a multiple of Iran’s total.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/stop-reassuring-saudi-arabia-worse-threat-middle-east-iran
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