Saudi Arabia - Afshin Molavi Interview

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INTERVIEW
August 13, 2007

SUSRIS EXCLUSIVE

A Regional Force for Stability
A Conversation with Afshin Molavi
Part 2

Editor's Note

Following a round of diplomatic activity marked by the joint visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Egypt and Saudi Arabia SUSRIS launched a series of interviews with several experts on Saudi-US relations. Middle East Institute scholar and veteran journalist Thomas Lippman, in a SUSRIS Exclusive, provided analysis of the Rice/Gates visit in the context of regional developments. In an NPR interview, reprinted in SUSRIS, Dr. John Duke Anthony's discussed the arms sale package announced by Secretary Rice on the eve of the Middle East trip. New America Foundation Fellow Afshin Molavi, in part one of his SUSRIS Exclusive interview, described the "rocky road" that Saudi-US relations faced over issues like the arms sales, the situation in Iraq and developments with Iran, but noted that "both sides understand the importance and resilience of the relationship"

Today we are pleased to present part two of our conversation with Mr. Molavi which focuses on how Saudi Arabia's relationship with Iran differs from the approach of the United States in the region and concludes with reflections on how regional developments are shaping the Saudi-US relationship, "Washington has slowly come to realize is the value of Saudi Arabia in the region as a force for stability, as a moderate force in the region, and I also think they have come to realize the value of King Abdullah himself."

[A comprehensive directory of articles, interviews, photos, links and more reports related to the Rice/Gates visit is posted in a special SUSRIS section. Click here for more.]

A Regional Force for Stability
A Conversation with Afshin Molavi - Part 2

SUSRIS: Secretary Rice has sought to rally America�s moderate Arab allies in an alliance against Iran. How does Riyadh view this effort?

Afshin Molavi: The Saudi Arabian-Iranian relationship is more complex than we sometimes think it is. There is a caricature view of Iran as the Shia bulwark and Saudi Arabia as the Sunni bulwark and that there is a Shia-Sunni Cold War taking place across the region, or Iran as the radical and Saudi as the moderate and a radical-moderate proxy war taking place.. The view holds that Saudi Arabia and Iran will be engaged in proxy wars across the region.

This view, however, doesn�t account for the very robust relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There are regular diplomatic contacts between the two countries and in fact King Abdullah had very good relationships with Khatami and Rafsanjani when he was Crown Prince and they were Presidents of Iran. Of course, Saudi Arabia and Iran had a rough time of it in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia poured money into Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. King Fahd once famously told Saddam: �You provide the rijal (the men) and I�ll provide the rials.� Ayatollah Khomeini poured scorn on the al-Sauds, once famously saying that he would contemplate restoring relations with America, but never with Saudi Arabia.

Obviously, Iran�s political elites have conveniently ignored Khomeini�s sentiments and have reached out to Saudi Arabia in significant ways. One Iranian diplomat famously said recently: �Saudi Arabia and Iran are like two wings of the same bird. We cannot fly in the Persian Gulf without each other.� This is obviously very un-Khomeini-esque language. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has certainly frustrated the Saudis. But there have been enough back channel discussions, particularly between the King and envoys of the Supreme Leader, telling him not to worry; they can handle Ahmadinejad, he is not running Iranian foreign policy.

The important point to remember is that Saudi Arabia and Iran are always going to be, to some degree, in a strategic competition in the region. They are natural rivals for influence in the region and no matter who is in charge -- whether there is an Islamic Republic leader or a king or a secular nationalist democrat -- there is going to be a certain amount of rivalry.

Let�s remember that the Shah of Iran and King Faisal despised each other, but even if you can fight a lot of things, you can�t fight your geography. Iran and Saudi Arabia are neighbors across the Persian Gulf. They understand that and they have come to an accommodation. There is a sense in Iran that Saudi Arabia is an important player in the region and they are recognizing them as such.

Ahmadinejad�s visit to Saudi Arabia in early March was set up by a flurry of diplomatic activity in the background, particularly on the part of Iranian officials who were concerned that Saudi Arabia was in many ways frustrated by Ahmadinejad. They wanted to show Saudi Arabia that the relationship still mattered to them. The fact that Ahmadinejad went to Saudi Arabia and that he was so eager to go to Saudi Arabia really shows the maturing of the Saudi-Iranian relationship. Ahmadinejad, the man who has sought to �purify� the state back to Khomeinist principles, did not seem to mind that Ayatollah Khomeini often referred to the Al Saud rulers in very vitriolic terms as servants to America. If you read Khomeini�s last will and testament he referred to Wahhabism as American Islam.

So as I mentioned the Saudi-Iranian relationship is actually more complex than we sometimes understand. They certainly are not close, strategic allies by any stretch of the imagination. However, it�s a relationship, a working relationship that is working fairly well right now. It is a robust diplomatic relationship, and there are fears in Saudi Arabia of a spillover if there is an American military strike on Iran.

SUSRIS: What would you hope to see each side -- Riyadh and Washington -- bring to the table in their ongoing discussions on regional issues.

Molavi: Washington and Riyadh broadly share similar foreign policy goals in the region, it�s just the way they go about achieving them differ.

Saudi Arabia, just like Washington, does not want organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah to have significant power in the region. However, Saudi Arabia understands that in order to get to where you want to be in the Middle East you�re going to have to talk with some people that you may disagree with. It seems as if American policy is to go out and have these visits with our �moderate allies,� sitting across the table from them and essentially nodding our heads because we generally agree with each other on the long-term strategy. But in order to get to where you want to be you may have to sit down with people you disagree with and you have to engage them in some way. Saudi Arabia has done it with Hezbollah, with Hamas, with Iran by engaging them at a diplomatic level trying to bring them into the process. A senior American official, a former Secretary of State in fact, told me recently that the Saudis were constantly urging them to talk to Iran.

On the other side of the table I would hope that Saudi Arabia begins to understand that like it or not they will need to deal with Nouri al-Maliki. He is the Prime Minister of Iraq. He has the support of the two key players there, the United States and, ironically, Iran as well. If Saudi Arabia were to reach out to Maliki I think it would be a positive move and it would show that Saudi Arabia is looking to promote a better future for Iraq.

SUSRIS: From Riyadh�s perspective what have they achieved by their open dialogue with Iran.

Molavi: Riyadh is more familiar, more comfortable now with Iran because it is a place they know better now. To some extent that matters. I think working level diplomatic meetings are very important in building dialogue with Iran. The absence of dialogue offers far too many opportunities for miscalculations. It may sound like some old-fashioned Foggy Bottom pinstripe concept, but sometimes just continuing to talk can prevent unnecessary conflict.

As far as the benefits to Saudi Arabia from dialogue with Iran, there was an example I observed up close. In 1997 I was in Tehran during the Organization of Islamic Conference Summit. It was the first time senior Saudi official had visited Iran since the Revolution in 1979. One of the things I found striking was a conversation with a member of the Saudi delegation. It was snowing during the Summit and he said, �My God, we didn�t know it snowed in Tehran.� And things like, we didn�t know there were mountains in Tehran. There were so many things about this place across the Persian Gulf from them that they just didn�t know.

If you were a Saudi official after the Revolution you had to deal with the headaches of Ayatollah Khomeini and the statements that he was making about the Al Sauds. You had to deal with Iranian pilgrims carrying out political protests in Mecca, and you had to deal with Iranians potentially supporting a Shia group or anti Al Saud group, not only in Saudi Arabia but across the region. Those headaches are far less now. You don�t have an Iranian Supreme Leader constantly bashing Saudi Arabia playing in the court of Muslim public opinion. When you go back and read the statements of Ayatollah Khomeini and compare them with the statements of Ayatollah Khamenei today and the way he talks about Saudi Arabia, it�s a sea change.

So to some extent it�s a working relationship now. It�s not a strategic one. It�s not one of significant allies but what you have is a working relationship. Saudi Arabia and Iran are arguably among the most important and powerful countries in the Middle East today, along with Israel, and its important for these two countries to have a working relationship.

SUSRIS: What are your thoughts about the state of the US-Saudi relationship given everything going on in the region.

Molavi: Washington has come to greatly value the Saudi relationship as a result of the failures in Iraq and to some of the other regional crises. There was a moment shortly after 9-11 and through 2003 or so, when you got the sense that there were people in Washington who felt we could downgrade the relationship somewhat, not give in to the Saudis as much as we had in the past. There was a great deal of frustration with Saudi Arabia�s lack of cooperation in war on terror issues.

What Washington has slowly come to realize is the value of Saudi Arabia in the region as a force for stability, as a moderate force in the region, and I also think they have come to realize the value of King Abdullah himself. This last point matters greatly. Saudi Arabia is, after all, a monarchy and while I understand that there are multiple power centers and a system of informal consensus among senior princes, the king � and his outlook � matter profoundly. And we have a king now in Saudi Arabia that is moderate, energetic diplomatically, and, most important of all, popular at home -- which could not be said for King Fahd.

This popularity gives him some wiggle room to make tough decisions, challenge the extremists in Saudi Arabia -- which he has been doing, sometimes quietly, sometimes overtly -- and push for peace in an environment poisoned by years of deep anti-Israel and anti-semitic attitudes.

We ought to understand that this King won�t be around forever. He is, by some accounts, 83 years old. We certainly need to take some chances and strike on key opportunities while this king is in power.

SUSRIS: Thank you for taking time today to share your insights on Saudi Arabia with SUSRIS readers.

[Mr. Molavi was interviewed by phone from his Washington, DC office on July 31, 2007 with follow-up questions provided via email.]

[A comprehensive directory of articles, interviews, photos, links and more reports related to the Rice/Gates visit is posted in a special SUSRIS section. Click here for more.]

Related Reporting

BY AFSHIN MOLAVI ON SUSRIS.ORG

ABOUT

Afshin Molavi is the author of " Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran" (Norton, 2002), which was nominated for the Thomas Cook literary travel book of the year and described by Foreign Affairs as �a brilliant tableau of today�s Iran.� A former Dubai-based correspondent for the Reuters news agency and a regular contributor to The Washington Post from Iran, Mr. Molavi has covered the Middle East and Washington for a wide range of international publications. His articles and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, Smithsonian, National Geographic, BusinessWeek, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, the Journal of Commerce, and The Wilson Quarterly, among other publications. He comments regularly on Iran and the Middle East on CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, and other broadcast outlets. Born in Iran, but raised and educated in the West, Mr. Molavi holds a master�s degree in Middle East history and international economics from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He has also worked at the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector development arm of the World Bank.

As a Fellow at the New America Foundation, Mr. Molavi studies the links between economic development and democratization, with a special emphasis on the Middle East. He argues that the region�s widespread economic failure represents the largest obstacle to regional democratization because it creates societies that have weak middle classes that are overly dependent on the state or susceptible to the utopian promises of undemocratic opposition forces. At New America, he will also examine the �New Silk Road� -- the growing trade, cultural, diplomatic, and business ties between the Middle East and Asia. Mr. Molavi is also interested in issues related to global economic development, globalization and culture, and the economics of immigration.

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