Saudis offer to 'expand' arms deal in return for more of Washington's mumnesia

'Bahrain's brilliant FM'

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 19 (UPI) -- As Saudi Arabia's confrontation with Iran swells amid claims Tehran is exploiting political turmoil in the Arab world, Riyadh reportedly has offered to expand its $60 billion arms deal with Washington to keep it on the kingdom's side.... Middle Eastern sources said the Saudis offered to expand that deal when U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited Riyadh April 6....

Gates flew to Riyadh seeking to patch things up with King Abdallah, and concluded (in Riyadh mind you! that there was indeed "evidence" of Iranian interference in Bahrain. This fitted neatly into Riyadh's allegations of Iranian efforts to stir up Sunni-Shiite animosity in a centuries-old religious schism and to usurp the Sunni states of the region.

The Americans' abandonment of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, leading to his resignation as president, alarmed Riyadh. It feared that signaled Washington might ditch the Saudis too one day. "This growing sense of isolation prompted the Saudi leadership to invoke its ultimate reserves of influence in Washington -- the Pentagon," Indian analyst M. K. Bhadrakumar noted in Asia Times Online... Bhadrakumar, a former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Kuwait and others, maintained that a "long-standing objective of the Saudi national security strategy remains … to exercise its quasi-hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula."