< continued from - Working With Washington  [Part 7] >

Conclusion

In the near term, the U.S. and Saudi perspectives on Iraq will be quite similar, with both countries tightly focused on the restoration of peace and order. Beyond that, however, there is ample room for divergence, between Riyadh and Washington as well as between Riyadh and Baghdad. In the best of times, the Saudi-Iraqi relationship has historically been uneasy; at times, it has been overtly hostile. There is no reason to assume that the departure of Saddam Hussein will automatically overcome eight decades of distrust.

Saudi Arabia will not welcome and will not assist�but will also be unlikely to interfere with�U.S. efforts to introduce a democratic form of government into Iraq. Saudi leaders will do their best to live with Shia domination of Iraqi politics, but they will not like it, and we can expect their discomfort to continue erupting into public view from time to time. The Saudi public and the traditional establishment are apt to be even less circumspect in expressing their misgivings. Depending on how the kingdom�s own Shia population responds to political developments north of the border, those misgivings could find expression through anti-Shiite actions within Saudi Arabia or attempts to meddle in Iraq by means of the Sunni Arab population, a population that has become increasingly attuned to its religious identity in the last decade and thus, perhaps, more susceptible to Wahhabi blandishments.

When American analysts explain why Saudi Arabia is important to the world, two themes always come to the fore: oil and Islam. Saudi analysts and officials reverse the order of the two, but oil is nevertheless always near the top of the kingdom�s foreign policy agenda. With demand high and production going full blast, there is no basis for contention between Saudi Arabia and Iraq over oil policy, but this is a situation that will not continue forever. Again, it is quite likely that the Saudi interest in moderate prices and preserving market share will run afoul of the Iraqi need for maximum production at high prices to fund national reconstruction. The United States may well find itself torn between its interest in the future of Iraq and demands for cheap energy at home.

Under King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia values its ties to Washington and will go out of its way to demonstrate willingness to cooperate on matters, such as Iraq, that the United States considers important. But its ability to cooperate will be limited by regional and domestic pressures, and its attention will frequently be distracted by the bumps and potholes on its own developmental path. Meanwhile, there will be strong tendencies in the kingdom, particularly on religious issues, that could make Saudi-Iraqi interactions deeply troublesome for U.S. strategy. Ensuring that Saudi Arabia is a force for stability in the Gulf rather than a source of disruption will be a continuing challenge for U.S. diplomacy.

Notes

1. Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, �News conference with Adel al-Jubeir, Foreign Affairs Adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, D.C. Subject: The November 9 Terrorist Attack in Riyadh,� Washington, D.C., November 14, 2003. Online. Available: . (Accessed September 30, 2004.)

2. Richard Boucher, �State Department Noon Briefing,� Washington, D.C., July 13, 2004: �We�ve worked with neighbors of Iraq to try to get the kind of cooperation that we do have with the Saudi government to control borders from foreign fighters and others trying to get into Iraq.�

3. Susan B. Glasser, ��Martyrs in Iraq Mostly Saudis,� Washington Post, May 15, 2005, A1.

4. Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, �Foreign Policy Adviser Adel al-Jubeir on MSNBC Addresses Alleged Cross-Border Infiltration into Iraq,� Washington, D.C., August 28, 2003. Online. Available: . (Accessed September 30, 2004.) This fear has recently been echoed by U.S. intelligence analysts, as cited in Warren P. Strobel, �Iraq Now Is No. 1 Extremist Training Spot, Studies Say,� Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 2005. For an in-depth assessment of the composition of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq, see Amatzia Baram, Who Are the Insurgents? Sunni Arab Rebels in Iraq. Special Report, no. 134 (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, April 2005).

5. These fears have been borne out by studies of Saudis who joined or tried to join the fighting in Iraq; see Bryan Bender, �Study Cites Seeds of Terror in Iraq,� Boston Globe, July 17, 2005.

6. Dominic Evans, �Saudi Arabia Says Ready to Beat Militants from Iraq,� Reuters, July 10, 2005.

7. Private conversation with senior Saudi diplomat, Washington, D.C., August 10, 2004.

8. Prince Saud al-Faisal, �The Fight against Extremism and the Search for Peace� (address to Council on Foreign Relations, New York, September 20, 2005). Online. Available:  (Accessed November 9, 2005.)

9. On January 8, 2004, the deputy chairman of Ahmad Chalabi�s Iraqi National Congress, Mudar Shawkat, was quoted as saying, �Iraqi-Kuwaiti problems were created by Britain, which demarcated the border, denying Iraq important sea access to the Arab Gulf. . . . Iraq�s interest prompts us to demand that Iraq have this sea access to the Arab Gulf�; Isam Fahim, �Iraqi National Congress Demands Kuwait Give Iraq Sea Access to the Gulf,� Al Ra�y al-Amm (Kuwait), January 8, 2004. Then, on February 21, 2004, the chairman of the Interim Governing Council, Muhsin Abd al-Hamid, responded to a question about Iraqi territorial claims against Kuwait and Jordan not by disavowing such claims outright, but by suggesting that they could be taken up at a future date; �Iraq May Claim Jordan, Kuwait,� Agence France-Presse, February 22, 2004, published on Al Jazeera, February 22, 2004; online; available: click here (accessed August 17, 2005).

10. Private conversation with senior Saudi diplomat, Washington, D.C., August 10, 2004.

11. �Iraqi Slurs Saudi Official: �Bedouin Riding a Camel, �� Washington Times, October 3, 2005, 1.

12. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Avon, 1989), 510.

13. The author has heard the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, explain this justification for the rule of the House of Saud to U.S. officials on a number of occasions over the course of a decade. It is also set forth in Prince Saud al-Faisal, �The Fight against Extremism.�

14. Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2004), 147. 

15. Ibid., 194.

16. Of course, it remains to be seen whether, in the face of limited spare capacity and burgeoning demand, the Saudis� production clout can still bring prices back under control as it could in the past. 

17. These are the nominal design capacities of these lines; actually operating them at those capacities would require major repairs.

18. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, �Saudi Arabia,� Country Analysis Briefs, August 2005. Online. Available: click here.)

19. Prince Saud al-Faisal, �The Fight against Extremism.�

20. Private conversation with senior Saudi diplomat, Washington, D.C., August 10, 2004.

21. Ibid. For the background of the episode, see Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1970), 207�8. 

22. The Zogby International survey questions were: �Should Iraq have an Islamic government, or should the government let everyone practice their own religion?� and �On which country would Iraqis like to model their government�Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United States, or the United Arab Emirates?� February 11, 2005. Online. Available: click here and click here. (Accessed August 15, 2005.)

23. Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi�is of Iraq, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 28.

24. Ibid., 155.

25. Such as the addition of the phrase �Ali is the saint of God� to the Muslim creed��There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God��as well as the dramatic re-enactments of the martyrdom of the 

26. Saudi-U.S. Information Service, �Overcoming Mutual Apprehensions: Prince Saud al-Faisal on Relations with the West,� March 19, 2005. Online. Available: click here. (Accessed August 12, 2005.)

27. See, for example, the comments of Prince Turki al-Faisal, then�ambassador to the United Kingdom, in Barry Moody and Jeremy Lovell, �Interview�Saudi Ambassador Says More Troops Needed in Iraq,� Reuters, October 28, 2004.

28. Abdulla Mustafa, �Riyadh Pledges $1bn for Iraq Reconstruction,� Arab News (Riyadh), June 23, 2005. Online. Available: click here
(Accessed August 12, 2005.) 

29. Oliver Klaus, �Stability and Fraternity,� Middle East Economic Digest 49, no. 31 (August 5, 2005), 4�5.

30. U.S. Department of Energy, �Saudi Arabia.� 

31. �Sultans of Swing,� Middle East Economic Digest 49, no. 18 (May 6, 2005), 4�5.

32. See, for example, �The Israeli Presence in Iraq,� Al-Riyadh (Riyadh), July 29, 2004; and Fahd al-Uwaydi, �Muslim World League�s Constituent Council Says in Its Final Statement: Zionist Organizations Are Infiltrating into Iraq and the Solution in Darfur Should Be Sudanese and Islamic,� Al-Yawm (Dammam), September 21, 2004.

• Part 1 - Summary/Introduction

• Part 2 - The Primacy of Stability

• Part 3 - A Context of Distrust

• Part 4 - Oil Rivals

• Part 5 - Reform in Iraq, Reform in Saudi Arabia

• Part 6 - The Religion Card

• Part 7 - Working with Washington

• Part 8 - Conclusion

Complete Report (PDF):
Saudi Arabia and Iraq: Oil, Religion, and an Enduring Rivalry
Joseph McMillan

Complete Section:
Iraq and Its Neighbors - USIP

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policy positions.