Neil Partrick, December 2010
"... The US head of counter-intelligence John Brennan expressed a 'debt of gratitude' to Saudi Arabia for alerting them to the threat.However a rather different note was struck by the Saudi owned newspaper Al-Hayat, published in London, which said on November 3 that, regardless of the prevention of the assaults, Al Qaida had been 'successful' as panic returned to the international travel industry. Al-Hayat is owned by the de facto head of the defence ministry, Prince Khalid bin Sultan, the son of Crown Prince Sultan, and is less likely to trumpet the success of the kingdom's intelligence services, which are run by rival princes, than some other segments of the national media. However the comments were an antidote to the assumption that this was in any sense a turning of the tide in battling international threats from Yemen. Saudi Arabia cannot put itself at the fulcrum of the west's efforts to deal with dangers from Yemeni radicals. Much less can it aid the stabilising of western allies across the broader Middle East, and in the process counter a shared regional adversary, Iran....... Ever since the Saudi ruler Abdullah bin Abdulaziz ascended the throne five years ago, there has been hope in western circles that the country would use its prospective weight to stabilise regional flashpoints.... Specifically, King Abdullah oversaw the intra-Palestinian Mecca Agreement in 2007. However that deal became toast as it lacked both US and Egyptian support, whose favouring of the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas helped trigger the Hamas takeover in Gaza and the entrenched Palestinian division of today. Saudi attempts to mediate on other fronts such as Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia floundered in part because of the strength of local disputes but also because its financial attractions could not overcome diplomatic shortcomings both practically and politically. Despite having been chastened by the Palestinian experience, in November Saudi Arabia threw itself into the diplomatic quagmire of Iraqi politics and launched an ill-conceived public offer to host all the Iraqi factions to iron out their differences..... With Saudi Arabia having long made plain its preference for its Iraqi ally, Ayad Allawi, ... it is hard to see what Riyadh thought it could achieve. Saudi Arabia continues to show an interest in engaging with Iran to aid what seems to be a mutual short term crisis avoidance strategy of calming the situation in Lebanon. .... Saudi Arabia would like to challenge Iran on a number of regional fronts but recognises that Tehran holds many of the cards in Iraq, and to a degree in Lebanon and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. It will therefore engage for tactical benefits, while lacking the capacity to rein back Iran in these and many other areas. Abdullah has also been seeking to befriend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of a pragmatic recognition that the peace accord in Lebanon, mediated by Qatar in 2008, reflects Syrian and Iranian weight in that country. There are Saudi voices that stress the limitations of this approach and of the trustworthiness, from their perspective, of the Syrian as well as the Iranian leadership. What these gentle critics lack, however, is a coherent alternative.
There are also reports that Mecca will be the venue for ameeting of the different Afghan political factions at the end of November. The importance of the kingdom, and of the financial reward for parties to agreements brokered under its watch, cannot be ignored. However Saudi Arabia has been making clear for two years, and has recently reiterated, that any significant contribution it makes to a putative Afghanistan peace accord will require the Taliban to cut links with militant jihadi groups outside Afghan borders. This stance seems partly to contradict Saudi Arabia's strong support for Pakistan which retains links to such groups in Kashmir, just as both countries used Afghan and Pakistani jihadis to fight the Soviet presence in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s.... Saudi Arabia is not on the verge of a bold new posture in the Islamic world that could make it pivotal to western-led efforts to promote their allies and counter Iran. Riyadh is usually cautious in drawing up foreign policy and lacks a clear institutional basis for its development. An ailing Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, provides counsel to the ageing King but lacks the energy and, in common with others providing input into policy decisions, a trusted devolved framework for analysis and policy follow up. A former adviser to a senior Saudi prince has confided that the kingdom is 'famous for its lack of follow-ups!'Out of this melee the King's Iraq initiative presumably sprung, while in Yemen the three Saudi princes who run defence, interior and intelligence manage seemingly uncoordinated interests..... Iran's nuclear programme will continue to concern Riyadh greatly as it does a number of Gulf Cooperation Council states. However Saudi Arabia largely views itself as a spectator in this affair, recognising it lacks the means to prevent either a regional military conflict, a small Iranian nuclear weapons capability, or a, probably undesired,US-Iranian deal. Saudi Arabia is neither diplomatically energised nor capable of helping reshape the region.It is always available to help with talks, but only if the disputant parties are ready to agree and if such a prospective agreement is not harmful to Saudi interests."
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