Yesterday in a SUSRIS exclusive we presented the first of several items addressing the latest developments in US-Saudi relations with "The Rocky Road Ahead in US-Saudi Relations - A Conversation with Afshin Molavi." Today we are pleased to follow that interview with our conversation with Thomas Lippman, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, veteran journalist and author of "Inside the Mirage, America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia."

Determined to Remain Friends
A Conversation with Thomas Lippman

SUSRIS: Thank you for taking time today to talk about the recent visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the Middle East. Let’s start with the meeting in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah and other senior officials. Can you give us your analysis of what was on the table?

Lippman: The results of the Rice/Gates trip can be assessed in three parts. The first part is the bilateral US-Saudi relationship where things came out pretty well. Remember, this was not a really propitious moment in US-Saudi relations because there have been policy disagreements about Iraq, about Iran, about Palestine, and each side has been bruised a little bit by remarks made by the other side. 

There was what the King had to say at the Arab Summit conference about the “illegal occupation” of Iraq. And on the other side the Saudis were upset by what American officials including, most recently Ambassador Khalilzad said about Saudi cooperation in Iraq, or lack of cooperation in Iraq. 

Based on the public comments of Secretary Rice and Prince Saud al Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister, it appears they managed to work around that. Both sides acknowledge there are disagreements between friends, and they are determined to remain friends. On the question of the arms that was announced last week I think we can say it is going to go ahead. 

SUSRIS: Were there any notable developments when Rice and Gates met with senior Arab diplomats in Egypt?

Lippman: There is some very interesting material in the final statement that was issued by the so-called GCC plus 2 and the United States, after meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh. Clearly a lot of diplomatic spadework had gone into this. 

The Saudis and all the others committed themselves to trying to restrict the flow of terrorists and terrorist financing into Iraq. They reaffirmed support for the territorial and political unity of Iraq. Whether they mean it or not it is always good to have these commitments in writing. You can go back and say, “Look here, you signed your name to this, you promised this.” The participants, it says, urge all of Iraq’s neighbors to fully implement the UN resolutions and call for an end to all interference in Iraq, including supply of arms and training to the militia and extra governmental armed groups. And while they didn’t name anybody, they are clearly talking about Iran and Syria. All of this language will be quite satisfactory to the United States. The Saudis agreed to it and they also said they are thinking about sending an Ambassador to Iraq. Most of the Arab states as you know don’t have diplomatic representation in Baghdad. Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal said, in very careful language, that Saudi Arabia would seriously consider attending an Israel-Palestine peace conference that President Bush plans to convene in the fall, if its going to be substantive. 

There was a nice little sweetener there for the Saudis when this declaration noted, quoting now, that the grave threat posed to regional goal security by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and said that it is important to achieve the universality of the nuclear non proliferation treaty. Well, there is only one country in the region that is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and that is Israel. And it is Saudi policy that Israel should sign the NPT and help create a nuclear free Middle East. So this puts the United States on record as endorsing that policy. 

Overall, with their public remarks, and with the text of this agreement, I think the United States and Saudi Arabia have once again worked around the differences in approach. The Saudis still have a very difficult row to hoe in Iraq, because they don’t want to see the rise in Iranian influence Shiite domination in Iraq, but they also don’t want to undermine the American effort there. 

SUSRIS: Talk a little more about Iraq. That seems to be the current hot button issue in the relationship.

Lippman: That’s the second issue – Iraq and the larger question of regional security. And there the United States got, at least on paper as I said, a lot of what it wanted in terms of a very good commitment to do the right thing in Iraq: support the unity of the country; support political reconciliation, shun support of terrorism and the disruptive militias. They came out pretty well in that area.

The role that the arms sales announced by the Administration played in any of this is still an open question. I was a little surprised that Under Secretary Burns said on the record that the purpose of the arms sales to the GCC countries is not about Iran, that its about reinforcing our friendship and our security support for them. But it is not about Iran. Well I don’t think anybody believes that. It clearly is about Iran, and while most of these are going to be defensive weapons, it clearly sends a message to the Iranians that there is unity of strategic thinking on the Arab side of the Gulf.

The third area is the challenge of Israel and Palestine. They didn’t achieve much there, but who could be expected to achieve something under the present circumstances with a weak government in Israel and a divided government in Palestine. They are moving forward, on moving forward. People always are; people dash here and there, 

I didn’t expect much of substance to come out on that and I don’t think there was much. However, I didn’t get the sense that there are any big irritants or disputes that would disrupt the work of creative diplomacy, which is going to continue to go on. 

So all and all, I come out of this thinking that contrary to the practice of the Bush Administration in its first term, it seems there was a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting that went into the preparation of this trip. A communiqué like the one that came out of Sharm el-Sheikh, are pretty much drafted in advance. You have to get your ducks lined up before you show up and they seem to have done that. So on the whole I found this a worthwhile exercise. 

SUSRIS: Lets break down some of the pieces here. On Iraq, you talked about people making commitments and holding press conferences, and it all sounds good. But is there likely to be any changes in what, on the ground, appears to be, for example, Saudi support to Sunni tribes.

Lippman: Well you know it is very difficult to pin that down, because if you read the text of the Sharm el-Sheikh communiqué it says, for example, the participants reiterated their commitment to prevent the transit of terrorists to Iraq, arms for terrorists, and financing that would support terrorists and for strengthening cooperation in this regard. It called on all of Iraq’s neighbors to take all necessary steps to interdict such transit. Now if you don’t regard the Sunni militias as terrorists then this doesn’t apply to you. 

It also says that they reaffirmed the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and national unity of Iraq, the inviolability of Iraq’s international recognized borders, and their adherence to the principal of non-interference with Iraq’s internal affairs. And it says that they want to end all interference in Iraq including the supply of arms and training to the militia and extra governmental armed groups. The language is unequivocal. However, it’s hard to say what that really means in terms of Saudi Arabia’s known commitments going all the way back to the Washington Post oped by Nawaf Obaid – in terms of Saudi Arabia’s commitment to restrain Shia influence and protect and support the Sunnis in Iraq is really hard to say. We may not have hard information on that until General Petraeus decides to tell us about it. However, I would say the language is unexceptionable. You couldn’t ask for a clearer statement in terms of diplomatic commitment.

SUSRIS: What impact will the recent diplomatic rounds, along with President Bush’s call for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in the fall have on any movement in this area?

Lippman: Secretary Rice has said that President Bush is not interested in inviting people to a photo op and that she would probably have to go back to the region at least twice more to do the preparatory spadework for this. However, you have a fundamental difference here. The Palestinians have said that they want to go to the so-called final stages issues, but the Israelis are not prepared to do that. The Israeli government is so politically weak that it is just not in any position to take any risks. It has no mandate to do anything really controversial. 

Given that nobody has decided what to do about Gaza and the Hamas takeover there, I read Saud al Faisal’s statement as saying, “If you can convince us that you are really going to cut the Gordian knot at this conference and make things happen that bring historic change, count us in – parens -- but we don’t believe it for a minute and we want to keep our options open -- closed parens. That’s the way I read his statement. And I don’t blame them. They’ve heard that song before. After all the Saudis have been upfront with the so called Abdullah plan in their commitment to accepting Israel and making peace on honorable terms, on what they would consider honorable terms. It’s now forty years, and nobody has devised honorable terms to deal with the Palestinian refugees.

SUSRIS: Does the Rice/Gates visit signal a development in the confrontation between the United States and Iran?

Lippman: I tend to think not. The people who were hearing the war drums in Washington about Iran are hearing something I’m not hearing. I say that for several reasons. There was a very prominent Israeli politician in Washington last week following up on the visit of Prime Minister Olmert. He was in the Israeli cabinet until recently. He laid out this very, very scary long term scenario that Israel sees. They see the Iranians busily creating a militant, anti-Israel, Shia dominated coalition that would extend from Beirut to Islamabad and from Ashgabat to Oman, with Israel as the center of it -- the encirclement of the Israelis in this nuclear arms squeeze sort of the way that say that Turkey and Greece looked at the Soviet Union after WW II. That may be happening, but the United States, at the moment, hasn’t openly endorsed that long term strategic scenario as the problem here. They are looking at short-term terrorism threats from Iran and short-term interference in Iraqi affairs by Iran. So the Bush Administration doesn’t see some long-term existential threat to Western Civilization coming out of Iran. 

When Undersecretary Burns says the purpose of the arms sales is not primarily about Iran, it suggests to me that the United States is trying to build a community of like-minded strategic planners in the region, rather than to directly instigate or orchestrate action against Iran. I just don’t see military action coming up, and I don’t think the Saudis would sign on to that. The Saudis don’t want military action against Iran. 

SUSRIS: Then what signal are the Gulf states sending to Iran by participating in the arms deal -- further militarizing the situation?

Lippman: The situation is different depending on where you are. You know there was this recent dust up about Bahrain when an editorial in an influential Iranian newspaper – connected to the Supreme Leader – reasserted Iran’s old territorial claim. That doesn’t apply to lets say, Kuwait or Oman. So the views may be a little different from country to country over there. My sense is that at the moment Iran is more a part of the problem than it is the solution. So they went with this – the arms deal. It doesn’t really require them to do anything. And nothing is going to happen in the short term anyway. Burns said that the specific details of the arms package wont be formulated for months and he wouldn’t even put a ballpark price figure on the whole thing. He said he didn’t know where the $20 billion figure came from. It probably came from a briefing at the White House, which is where the New York Times and the Washington Post got it over the weekend. In any case, answering your question about the Gulf states sending a signal, I think the situation varies from country to country. 

SUSRIS: Where does all this leave the relationship between Washington and Riyadh? 

Lippman: Well, closing the circle on where we started – the bruising remarks back and forth. I think it’s an example of how people should think twice before they pop off. If the United States government headed by President Bush doesn’t really endorse what Ambassador Khalilzad said in the New York Times oped and on CNN, then he shouldn’t have been allowed to say it. Nobody runs those things in the New York Times without having to run them through the White House Communications shop. The Americans ought to make up their minds what they really want to say before they say it. 

Now as you know, Prince Saud al Faisal was asked about what the King had said at the Arab Summit about the “illegal occupation” of Iraq. His response was that he makes it a policy not to speak for his monarch. So, if President Bush wants to say stuff like this fine. 

In any case they worked through it, because as has often happened in the past -- even when they were trying to find a way out of the oil embargo in the early 70s -- the mutual interest in working together far overrides anybody’s interest in scoring rhetorical points.

SUSRIS: Thank you for sharing your insights with SUSRIS readers.

[Mr. Lippman was interviewed by phone from his Washington, DC office on August 3, 2007.]