The new king of Saudi Arabia is familiar to most Americans from the photo op showing him holding hands with President Bush on a visit last April to his ranch.
Despite the warm fuzzies in Texas, the Saudi leader’s hand has American and Israeli blood on it.
Crown Prince Abdullah, who has been running the kingdom during his late half-brother King Fahd’s long illness, has been playing a two-faced game in the war on terrorism.
He continues to claim to be a partner in the all-out war his friend Bush is leading, but his government continues to be the major source of financial backing and foreign fighters for the Iraqi insurgency, as well as the religious incitement that is spreading the jihadist cause worldwide.
Abdullah has used his close ties to the Bush family to great advantage. He turned down an invitation to meet the newly elected Bush, making it known he felt the new president was too pro-Israel. The new president’s father promptly phoned Abdullah to assure him that his son, who was in the room with him, “would do the right thing” by Saudi Arabia because his “heart is in the right place.”
When Abdullah announced his own Mideast peace plan, Bush embraced it and became an enthusiastic supporter even though the prince quickly abandoned it.
Instead, Abdullah, like the nephew he is sending to Washington as his ambassador — Prince Turki, the former head of intelligence and the kingdom’s longtime link to Osama bin Laden — claims that the 2003 attacks on the kingdom were the work of Zionists.
Abdullah, 81, quickly named his half-brother, Prince Sultan, 76, to be crown prince and his successor. The two men loath each other, according to John Bradley, author of “Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis.” Sultan’s appointment is seen as a signal to the powerful Wahhabi religious hierarchy that any talk of political reform is back in the deep freeze.
Fahd’s death was not unexpected; he had been ill for years. One sign of his imminent demise was the recent return to Riyadh of his nephew, Prince Bandar, the dean of the Washington diplomatic corps. Bandar reportedly wanted to be on hand to claim a slice of the power pie that will be sliced up in the succession shuffle.
Bandar, the illegitimate son of Sultan, has been the most influential diplomat in Washington, enjoying such close ties to the first family that he was nicknamed Bandar Bush.
Saudi standing in Washington, despite the royals’ personal relationships with the Bushes, has been steadily deteriorating since it turned out that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 attackers, like Osama bin Laden, were Saudis. Millions of dollars worth of PR campaigns have failed to change the fact that most Americans consider Saudi Arabia an enemy, not a friend.
The incoming ambassador, Prince Turki, has blamed that problem on “the Jewish lobby.” The truth, however, is that the Saudis’ wounds are self-inflicted.
Members of both houses have introduced the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005, which aims to “halt Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure full Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents.”
It’s a tough-sounding bill that contains loopholes huge enough to allow any president to declare Saudi Arabia is helping to fight terrorism or just too important to bother. Since the kingdom is the world’s largest exporter of oil, we’re the world’s largest consumer and the Saudi military is the Pentagon’s most lucrative cash customer, the legislation — on the remote chance it ever becomes law — will be rendered toothless.
There may not be any more Saudi telethons to benefit the suicide bombers who kill Israelis, but the money still flows in copious quantities to Palestinian terror groups.
The Saudis have a stake in the inter-Muslim power struggle playing out in the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah seeks to assert itself as the leading anti-Israel force in the area, in competition with the Sunni Hamas and Islamic Jihad (most Palestinians, like most Saudis, are Sunni). The two branches of Islam may make temporary alliances against Israel, but the Saudis want to stem rising Shiite influence in the region, particularly in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.
Saudi Arabia speaks with two voices when it comes to fighting terror. At home the royal family depends on the extremist Wahhabi clerics to secure the regime’s legitimacy, while looking to the United States to assure national survival.
“They talk abroad about backing the war on terror, while at home they are on the other side,” Bradley said in an interview. “Their alignment with America is superficial because they have to appease the Wahhabi establishment, which is their domestic power base, and the Wahhabis believe that attacks on America and Israel are legitimate and to be encouraged.
“For the Saudi rulers to come out and openly do something about the problem would be to undermine those on whom they depend for their domestic survival,” he added.
Although the U.S. State Department has branded the kingdom one of the world’s worst human rights abusers and most intolerant regimes, don’t expect any pressure from Washington for change. For all its talk about Mideast democratization, the administration is not serious about democracy or freedom for Saudis; the new king knows it and the Saudi people know it.
“The royal family has no legitimacy among its own people or among Arab leaders. They are kept in power by the U.S. government, presidents of both parties. They are a regime steeped in oppression, corruption, nepotism,” said Bradley. “The hostility toward America by many Saudis is related to their resentment that America is in large part responsible for keeping the repressive, corrupt regime in power.”
The price of appeasing despots should be clear. Today’s Iran is a product of American indulgence of an oil-rich corrupt and authoritarian dictator combined with failure to press for meaningful reform. The pattern could easily be repeated in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is a Washington, D.C.-based political consultant who was formerly chief legislative lobbyist for AIPAC.