Kuwait City
Friday’s meeting in Riyadh between King Abdullah and President Obama is likely to be a tense one. First, there’s the fact that the Saudis and the White House differ on a host of regional issues, from Egypt and Bahrain to Syria and Iran. Moreover, there are also the secondary players likely to be in attendance, one of which from each side the other considers a nuisance.  The Saudis think that newly named National Security Council staffer Robert Malley is an irritant, and the White House doesn’t like Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi intelligence chief and formerly longtime ambassador to Washington.

For the Saudis’ taste, Malley, who worked on the Arab-Israeli peace process in the Clinton administration, got too close with Syrian regime officials when he was program director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. From Riyadh’s perspective, Malley’s appointment merely confirms their worst fears about Obama’s regional strategy—U.S. rapprochement with a host of figures it considers deadly adversaries, from Assad to Iran and Hezbollah, and at the expense of the Saudis and other longtime U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf.