We all know what is wrong with Iran. It is a repressive theocracy and a rogue state. It bans opposition parties, harasses religious minorities, hangs gay people, sponsors religious extremists overseas, and ignores the diplomatic norms that other countries take for granted.
So, let’s ask a question. What makes Saudi Arabia any different? It has committed all the violations I just listed. Why does the United States sanction Tehran while indulging Riyadh?
Because it is reforming? Pull the other one. Even if we look only at the short time since Mohammed bin Salman took over, we see a pattern of repression at home and adventurism abroad. Among those in Saudi prisons are Salman al-Ouda, a religious scholar who faces the death penalty after refusing to tweet in support of the Qatar blockade; Essam al-Zamil, an economist charged with treason after criticizing the crown prince’s economic policies; and blogger Raif Badawi, currently 50 lashes into his thousand-lash sentence.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia has, like Iran, backed some extremely unsavory groups overseas. It has prosecuted a monstrous war in Yemen. It has maintained a siege against the neighboring kingdom of Qatar, largely because it cannot stand the fact that Qatar hosts an independent TV station. It has detained a foreign head of government, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri, against his will. And, almost exactly a year ago, it carried out an especially brazen violation of the assumption on which all international relations rest, namely the sanctity of diplomatic legations.
The premeditated murder and dismemberment of the dissident author Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was, like the siege of the American Embassy in Tehran 40 years earlier, a brutal message to the rest of the world: “Your rules mean nothing to us. We don’t care about territorial jurisdiction. We answer only to ourselves.”
Yet whereas the Tehran siege led to a complete breakdown in relations with the U.S. — Iran has been treated ever since as a hostile regime — the Khashoggi murder led to only some admonitory throat-clearing.
The tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia is now the most important dynamic in the Middle East. The previous dispensation, in which everything was really about relations with Israel, has been transcended. We are seeing a series of proxy conflicts between two big and nasty regional powers: conflicts which could escalate into a more general Sunni-Shia conflagration.
What are the West’s interests? We should seek to avoid an escalation. We should protect our allies in the region, Arab and Israeli. We should keep the sea lanes open and oil exports flowing. And we should gently encourage reformists in both states who favor a more liberal order: the surest way of meeting the first three objectives.
I cannot for the life of me understand how those goals should lead us to take sides. Yet, we do. Following the recent drone attack on Saudi oil installations, the Trump administration threatened retaliation against Iran. Yet no one has explained why this clash is a case of bad guys attacking good guys rather than being an Iran-Iraq-pity-they-can’t-both-lose sort of situation.
There are three main explanations for the U.S.’ proximity to Riyadh, none of which reflects much credit on Washington. First, ever since the days of Ibn Saud and Franklin D. Roosevelt, American diplomacy was guided by the interests of Standard Oil — Aramco, as it became. Of all the leftist conspiracy theories about Big Oil and Big Corporates more widely, this strikes me as the only one that has some truth to it. Again and again, the federal government has stood behind the interests of politically connected businesses. Why? Partly because of the second explanation: Saudis are good at finding cushy sinecures for Western policymakers. When those policymakers talk about the importance of “American jobs,” they sometimes have their own jobs — or promised jobs — in mind.
The third explanation, though less sordid, is still discreditable. If you are determined to see U.S. foreign policy as being wholly about the interests of Israel, you might be tempted to back any anti-Iranian regime. But even on its own terms, this is a risky policy. The Saudi monarchy is unpopular at home and despised by many Muslims abroad, who resent its promotion of Wahhabism, dislike the way it defaces their holy places, and blame it for giving them a bad image. Israel’s long-term security depends on having relations with its neighbors that are, if not always warm, at least correct and cordial, as with Jordan and Egypt.
Associating yourself with a spoiled, peevish, and, as we now know, lethal princeling, simply because he says rude things about Iran, is a poor long-term strategy, both for Israel and for the U.S.
