The Greatest Rift Valley

Even as our European partners remain dependent, the United States does not import a drop of Saudi oil. We access our own supplies as well as regional petroleum, notably from neighboring Canada and Mexico. In “fracked,” because of controversial extraction techniques, the U.S. is expected to be the earth’s largest producer of oil within the next three years, outstripping oil giant Saudi Arabia.  This creates a seismic shift in petro-geopolitics. For those who doubt how the United States dictates its foreign policy when dealing with “difficult” regimes, let this blog be a fundamental lesson to you all. Oil is a tad less important to our strategic interests these days.

Saudi Arabia has been America’s staunch Middle Eastern ally for decades. They have purchased our deficit debt instruments and paid well for our military hardware, even as they have funded Taliban efforts and fundamentalist madrassa schools, fomenting extremist unrest in sensitive parts of the world… like Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have helped moderate high profile Muslim leaders with Western/anti-American hate on their mind, even as they deny voting rights and even the right to drive to women. The Russians are happy to remind the world that these are the kinds of dictators that America supports. Balancing the hardliners in Iraq and Iran and supporting moderation in Palestine and Egypt, Saudi influence and their excess cash have yet nudged and shifted the hearts and minds of power brokers all over the Middle East, often to U.S. strategic vectors.

The Saudi Royal Family is about as fundamentalist/Sunni as it gets, and in a world where Sunnis constitute 85% of the world’s Muslims, you’d think that would put them in the catbird seat among the Muslim elite. Except in their ‘hood… Iran is over 90% Shiite, Iraq 65%+ Shiite. But don’t Sunnis hate Shiites? I mean, Sunnis believe in the literal word of the Qur’an, but Shiites insist it is a mystical tome that only their most senior cleric can interpret, right? So isn’t Iran’s nuclear program as much as a threat to the anti-Shiite Saudi monarchy as it is to Israel? Yup! And is Saudi Arabia happy about America’s leading the charge to negotiate a nuclear-weapons containment agreement with Iran, easing sanctions along the way? Nope!

“For decades, Washington depended on Saudi Arabia — a country of 30 million people but the Middle East’s largest reserves of oil — to shore up stability in a region dominated by autocrats and hostile to another ally, Israel. The Saudis used their role as the dominant power in OPEC to help rein in Iraq and Iran, and they supported bases for the American military, anchoring American influence in the Middle East and beyond.

“But the Arab uprisings altered the balance of power across the Middle East, especially with the ouster of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, a close ally of both the Saudis and the Americans… The United States has also been reluctant to take sides in the worsening sectarian strife between Shiite and Sunni, in which the Saudis are firm partisans on the Sunni side… At the same time, new sources of oil have made the Saudis less essential. And the Obama administration’s recent diplomatic initiatives on Syria and Iran have left the Saudis with a deep fear of abandonment.” New York Times, November 25^th. Buddy-buddy no more? Hmmmm….

“Those days are over. The Saudi king and his envoys — like the Israelis — have spent weeks lobbying fruitlessly against the interim nuclear accord with Iran that was reached in Geneva on [November 24^th]. In the end, there was little they could do: The Obama administration saw the nuclear talks in a fundamentally different light from the Saudis, who fear that any letup in the sanctions will come at the cost of a wider and more dangerous Iranian role in the Middle East…

“The United States always had important differences with the Saudis, including on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the spread of fundamentalist strains of Islam, [F. Gregory Gause III, a professor of Middle East studies at the University of Vermont noted]. But the Obama administration’s determination to ease the long estrangement with Iran’s theocratic leaders has touched an especially raw nerve: Saudi Arabia’s deep-rooted hostility to its Shiite rival for leadership of the Islamic world.

“Saudi reaction to the Geneva agreement was guarded on Monday, with the official Saudi Press Agency declaring in a statement that ‘if there is good will, then this agreement could be an initial step’ toward a comprehensive solution for Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“In recent days, Saudi officials and influential columnists have made clear that they fear the agreement will reward Iran with new legitimacy and a few billion dollars in sanctions relief at exactly the wrong time. Iran has been mounting a costly effort to support the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, including arms, training and some of its most valuable Revolutionary Guards commandos, an effort that has helped Mr. Assad win important victories in recent months.” NY Times. Saudi Arabia is clearly terrified of a Shiite country with a nuclear arsenal.

But wait, there’s more. Saudi Arabia and Israel are now pushing for the same result? Yup! Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a special security specialist to communicate with the Obama administration with pretty much the same, “don’t close that deal with those untrustworthy Iranian bastards” message. At least Israel has the Jewish vote in the United States, but all Saudi Arabia has is oil… and today, oil we’ve got. End of lesson.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you detect a touch of cynicism in my voice today, good guess!