King Salman, the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, has been busy making appearances. Over three days last week in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, Salman organized and led three separate conferences with the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The theme of these meetings was similar: condemn Tehran for its hostile behavior and call on “the international community to take a firm stand to confront Iran and its [destabilizing] acts in the region.”
The subtext of the communiques — Iran is a terrorist state that must be confronted at the earliest opportunity lest it become more aggressive — is not lost on anyone who monitors the Middle East. What the Saudis and many of their partners in the Persian Gulf want is not only unconditional U.S. support for their anti-Iran policy, but also for Washington to fight their battles for them.
Anti-Iran interventionists in the Trump administration, like national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will eagerly use the king’s message to more closely tie the United States closer to Saudi Arabia. President Trump’s policy was supposed to end the U.S.’s “endless wars,” not fight endless wars for Saudi Arabia. To offer Saudi Arabia even more unconditional American support would mean providing Riyadh with even more leverage in a bilateral U.S.-Saudi relationship that is overdue for a correction.
For decades, Washington has viewed the Middle East through an unsophisticated and downright elementary lens. The formula goes something like this: Iran is a malign actor bent on expansionism (the fact that Iran has neither the economic influence or military power to accomplish this feat is lost in the conversation), so any country in the region on the opposite side must be an inherently good partner for the United States to coddle. Tehran is the evil monster, whereas Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Manama, and Baghdad are either noble players in an existential regional drama or victims of Iranian perfidy.
Needless to say, this is a grossly inaccurate picture of the Middle East security environment. More important, it leads U.S. foreign policy officials to make strategic mistakes that can thrust Washington in external conflicts in which it has no direct national security interest at stake.
While Iran is unquestionably a troublesome actor with a large and effective network of militant proxies from Baghdad to Beirut, it is not remotely unique — the Saudis and Emiratis are not angels. Riyadh under the management of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been a wrecking ball to whatever order the Arab world had prior to his ascension. The young and brash king-in-waiting has ordered one blunder after another, from kidnapping Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and forcing him to resign (Hariri rescinded as soon as he flew out of Riyadh) to orchestrating a blockade against Qatar that has split the GCC and presented Tehran with a golden opportunity to poach a wealthy and industrious Arab country from Riyadh’s side. The war in Yemen, Salman’s pet project, has been an unmitigated strategic disaster for the Saudi kingdom and has created the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis.
The Emiratis have been better, but not by much. Abu Dhabi is a co-pilot in Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni quagmire, responsible for arming and organizing militias that have arbitrarily disappeared, incarcerated, and tortured Yemenis suspected of subversive activities. U.S.-delivered arms have reportedly been redirected into the hands of extremist Sunni fighters operating alongside the Saudi-led coalition. CNN found a shipment of Oshkosh armored vehicles in the custody of a militia, the leader of which was designated by the U.S. as a terrorist.
Thousands of miles away in Libya, the UAE remains the primary foreign backer of Gen. Khalifa Hiftar, whose forces are currently trying to capture Tripoli from the U.N.-recognized government in contravention of a Security Council arms embargo. The Saudis have also struck up a relationship with Hiftar, promising the field marshal financing for his offensive on Libya’s capital city.
The point is not to excuse the Iranians of their own behavior, but rather to state that good guys in the Middle East are few and far between. The truth is that the good vs. evil paradigm in Washington is simply not supported by reality.
If Trump took all of this under consideration, he would find it difficult to justify selling offensive weapons to the Gulf. In fact, by doing so, Trump is placing the United States in the precarious position of picking sides in a Saudi-Iran rivalry that only distracts Washington from geopolitical challenges of far greater significance, particularly at home.
Core U.S. national security interests in the Middle East are narrow. They include preventing a major, long-term disruption to the global oil supply and protecting the American public from transnational terrorist groups. Continuing to give Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab partners unconditional support, as Saudi King Salman is recommending, will do nothing to achieve those two limited U.S. objectives.
It is time for the foreign policy establishment in Washington to put the United States first. When countries in the Middle East share a mutual interest with the United States, Washington should find a way to work with them. But they aren’t worthy of blanket U.S. military assistance or diplomatic support.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
