Why the Saudis Are Reluctant

Of all the states in the Middle East, none is strategically more important than Saudi Arabia, with its massive oil resources and key location.

And so in the looming confrontation between the United States and Iraq, few Middle Eastern states are as crucial as the Saudi Kingdom. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s announcement late Monday of limited support from Saudi Arabia for the U.S. hard line on Iraq--with the question of U.S. bases left unresolved--emerges as a symptom of the complications in U.S.-Saudi relations.

For more than half a century, Saudi Arabia has been given a special position in U.S. calculations involving the Middle East and global energy markets. Indeed the privileged ties between America and the desert kingdom have survived the vicissitudes of Middle East politics since President Franklin Roosevelt’s visit to King Ibn Saud.

Yet despite such a close relationship, the Saudis may well decline to support a major U.S. armed action against Iraq except in the unlikely instance that Saddam Hussein makes an aggressive move toward the Saudis. Thus the country that played host to Operation Desert Storm in 1991 could well reject a U.S. request to use its territory to launch bombing raids on Iraq.

The reasons for Saudi reluctance spring from the shifting political winds within the kingdom and its Middle East milieu. Although the Saudis deeply fear and dislike Saddam, he is not perceived as major a threat as he was in 1990-91. Even more crucial is the recent growth of anti-American sentiment in the Arab world triggered by U.S. inability to push forward the Arab-Israel peace process and the emergence of a U.S.-Israeli-Turkish alliance presumably directed against the Arabs. The Saudi authorities can ill afford to distance themselves from mainstream Arab opinion, nor can they turn a deaf ear to their Islamist constituency both at home and abroad.

Although the Islamists have been weakened politically in recent years through coercive and cooptative policies, the Saudi Islamists remain an important element in the kingdom’s foreign policy decisions. It is worth noting that it was the Saudi decision to host Desert Storm that led in 1991 to the emergence of a vocal Islamic opposition for the first time in Saudi history. The Islamists criticized the Saudi regime for permitting non-Muslim forces to fight Iraq from the kingdom’s holy territory. The Islamists’ anti-U.S. rhetoric was followed by their 1995 truck bombing of a Riyadh building housing U.S. military advisors. Then, in 1996, came the attack on the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 American servicemen. These attacks prompted the removal of most American personnel to a special desert encampment, where they remain today.

Thus far the Saudis have maintained a low profile toward the Iraq-U.S. faceoff while cementing their relations with Iran and Arab neighbors. If faced with the certainty of an American decision to attack Iraq, the Saudis may oppose the attacks and declare their air bases off limits to the U.S. military; express mild opposition to U.S. attacks while quietly permitting the use of some Saudi facilities but not their air bases; or declare neutrality in the conflict.

However, if faced with protracted American pressure, the Saudi government may permit limited use of its air bases with extreme reluctance.