Joshua Teitelbaum *
Since the end of the Cold War, a new strategic landscape has appeared in the Middle East. No longer dominated by a U.S.-Soviet rivalry, this new landscape is dominated by U.S.-Iranian confrontation. In this struggle, the United States' most important Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, plays a key role. As the Obama administration policies allow Iran to run out the clock on getting a nuclear weapon, it would appear from its recent policy moves that it believes Riyadh is primarily concerned with the Arab-Israeli conflict. While this is a concern in Saudi Arabia, it is far and away not the primary one. Indeed, there is no doubt that in its foreign policy Riyadh is much more worried about Iran's rise as a key regional actor. INTRODUCTION
Two decades after the end of the Cold War, a new strategic landscape has appeared in the Middle East. No longer dominated by a U.S.-Soviet rivalry, this new landscape is dominated by U.S.-Iranian confrontation. In this struggle, the United States’ most important Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, plays a key role. As the Obama administration policies allow Iran to run out the clock on getting a nuclear weapon, it would appear from its recent policy moves that it believes Riyadh is primarily concerned with the Arab-Israeli conflict. While this is a concern in Saudi Arabia, it is far and away not the primary one. Indeed, there is no doubt that in its foreign policy Riyadh is much more worried about Iran’s rise as a key regional actor.
As a regional challenger, Iran threatens Saudi interests in Lebanon, where it operates with Syria and its Shi’i proxy Hizballah to undermine the Saudi-supported government; in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where it supports the terrorist organization Hamas against the Palestinian Authority; in Yemen, where it is assisting rebels who are fighting the Saudi-supported regime of President Ali Abdallah Salih; and closer to home in the Persian Gulf, where it operates to curtail Saudi interests in Iraq and project its power into neighboring countries, particularly via their Shi’i populations.
But the depth of Saudi Arabian concern about Iran goes beyond the basic regional balance of power or balance of threat considerations, reaching deep into the regime’s calculus about its own security. This magnifies manyfold the importance to Saudi Arabia of confronting the Iranian-Shi’i threat. Much of the regime’s legitimacy comes from its role as the guardian of Sunni orthodoxy, the majority branch of Islam and the branch followed by most Saudi Arabians. This is a role felt keenly by the royal family, particularly the king, Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz.[1] As the regime takes halting steps toward liberalization,[2] a rate of progress designed to mollify conservative forces within and without the royal family, Saudi Arabia's own minority Shi'a, supported by Iran, push for greater rights within the kingdom. But the Sunni majority looks to the regime to uphold Sunni primacy at home and abroad. And important groups of Sunnis and Shi'a call the rule of Al Saud into question.
If Iran gets the upper hand, the royal family may face serious threats by Saudi Arabian Sunni radicals determined to stop the spread of Shi’ism, and by Saudi Arabian Shi’a encouraged by the rise of Iran and its Shi’i regional allies. Both sides would seek to exploit the situation, leading to instability in Saudi Arabia and reverberations of further regional instability.
BACKGROUND: THE GENESIS OF SAUDI ARABIAN SECURITY CONCERNS
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has its origins in the mid-eighteenth century, when an alliance was formed in the central Najd region between a local strongman, or emir, Muhammad bin Saud (d. 1765) of the Al Saud family, and a radical Islamist preacher, Shaykh Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1791). A bargain was struck between these two ambitious men: Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab would give religious approbation for the expansionist desires of Muhammad bin Saud, and the latter would give the former the military force to spread his ideas of a more puritanical form of Islam than that which was practiced in the Arabian Peninsula. This alliance was successful and, despite various ups and downs, by 1932 the Al Saud had conquered most of the peninsula, including the relatively liberal and Islamically cosmopolitan Red Sea coastal area of the Hijaz, ruled by the Hashemite family,[3] with the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and al-Hasa in the east, with its extensive Shi’i population.
The formation of modern Saudi Arabia involved the subjugation of a diverse population—religiously, tribally, and regionally—to the whims of one family, the Al Saud. The royal family sought to identify itself with the state to such an extent that it named the state after itself—Saudi Arabia—one of only two states in the world named after a family.[4]
This subjugation came at a price. Although distribution of massive oil revenue has helped the Saudis to buy off much of the opposition over the years, it has not always been successful. Differing visions of Islam, from the Shi’a of the eastern region of al-Hasa to more liberal Islamists and extremist Wahhabis, who believe that the current regime is not extreme enough, have all challenged the rule of the Al Saud over the years. Underscoring all of this is the fact that the centralizing establishment of the Saudi state came at the expense of significant tribal autonomy. While discrete tribal loyalties have lost much of their political significance over the years because of the efforts of the Al Saud, the tribal ethos of a decentralized government and considerable tribal autonomy still presents a challenge to the regime and finds its expression in opposition movements.
One of the keenest historians of Saudi Arabia, Madawi al-Rashid, has observed: ‘‘The 20th century witnessed the emergence of a [Saudi Arabian] state imposed on people without a historical memory of unity or national heritage which would justify their inclusion in a single entity.’’[5] The security calculus of the Al Saud is therefore highly dominated by internal security concerns.
The Saudis have dealt with these domestic challenges in several ways. Tribal challengers were coopted into the Saudi Arabian National Guard, which functioned essentially as a way to funnel oil rents to the tribes and buy their cooperation rather than as an effective fighting force. Sunni religious fanatics were given control of the religious establishment and the educational system, a move that would eventually backfire on the regime. The Shi’a were ruthlessly suppressed, to the delight of the Sunni Wahhabi extremists who viewed Shi’ism as pure heresy.
External defense concerns have also been a significant part of Saudi security considerations. In the first years of the state, the descendants of the Hashemite family, recently ensconced by the British in Jordan and Iraq after being thrown out of the Hijaz by the Al Saud, sought to regain control of their ancestral homeland.[6] This led to the initial suspicion of the British and contributed to a bias toward the U.S. in the immediate post-World War II period. Indeed, in 1950 King Abd al-Aziz confided to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee that the Hashemites were his greatest fear, and for that reason he wanted military aid and an urgent military alliance with America.[7]
American interest in Saudi Arabia dates from the 1930s with the development of oil. The desire to have access to oil outside the United States during World War II led the Roosevelt administration to declare in 1943 that ‘‘the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States,’’ in order to provide Riyadh with Lend-Lease aid....[8]
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*Dr. Joshua Teitelbaum is Principal Research Associate at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where he is a contributor to the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
* Reprinted from Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic Landscape by Joshua Teitelbaum, with the permission of the publisher, Hoover Institution Press. Copyright © 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
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