Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Bernard Haykel

I’m in Riyadh and the sense I get from the Saudis is that the Bush visit was a success for the President in two ways.

First, Bush was told that while the Gulf States’ leaderships are against an attack on Iran, preferring instead diplomatic and UN-based initiatives, they would not stand in the way of an attack. They might make some grumbling noises should an attack take place, but this would not amount to a principled position against the attack nor would it be followed up by more substantial anti-U.S. policies. More important, it seems that the United States could use the facilities afforded by the Gulf countries for this attack.

Second, Saudi Arabia has understood that the price of oil needs to be brought down through an increase in output, and the Kingdom has something like one half of all the oil rigs in the world trying to accomplish this. The fear here is that the high oil price will end up forcing the West to find alternatives to oil in the long term, and in the short term this might lead to a world recession, depressing the demand for this commodity. The experience of the 1990s, when prices were very low and Riyadh had serious budgetary difficulties, has not been forgotten.

The Saudis did push the president to do something substantial on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and want their 2002 Beirut initiative to be taken seriously. The constant refrain in Riyadh is that the Palestinian situation is a source of embarrassment for the regime with its own public, and is a source of tension in its relations with the United States. Riyadh wishes to see the Palestinian problem resolved so that the Kingdom can re-invent its relationship with the United States on the basis of containing Iran and, more generally, act as the bulwark for stability in the Gulf region.