Saudis Say They Might Back Sunnis if U.S. Leaves Iraq
Helene Cooper

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.

The Saudi warning reflects fears among America’s Sunni Arab allies about Iran’s rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. King Abdullah II of Jordan has also expressed concern about rising Shiite influence, and about the prospect that the Shiite-dominated government would use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population.

A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that part of the administration’s review of Iraq policy involved the question of how to harness a coalition of moderate Iraqi Sunnis with centrist Shiites to back the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout from Iraq, citing fears that Iraq’s minority Sunni Arab population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.

The New York Times tries to put together several disparate items to make a coherent whole in this article. Vice President Cheney’s visit to Saudi Arabia—about which no hard information has surfaced—is put alongside Nawaf Obeid’s Op-Ed in The Washington Post, alongside Saudi Ambassador Pr Turki Al-Faisal’s reported resignation, alongside the reports of a group of hard line Salafists urging solidarity with and support of Sunnis in Iraq.

I think the effort tries too hard to connect a multiplicity of dots, with no clear lines linking them.

People like to have a ‘big picture’ of events that pulls together different elements to make a consistent vision. I think that’s liable to failure when dealing with a largely opaque country like Saudi Arabia. No one outside the US Administration and the highest levels of the Saudi government know exactly what VP Cheney discussed, though this piece mentions some leaks coming from the Saudi side. The fact is that Saudis don’t leak. Instead, you have parties with particular interests to promote who will make comments that further their interests and not be unduly tied down by facts. This isn’t uniquely a Saudi trait of course; we saw a lot of that during the buildup to the Iraq war. We continue to see it in discussion of Iran.

Obeid’s op-ed was repudiated by the Saudi government as not representing Saudi views and he lost his government contract as a result. The reasoning in that opinion piece is certainly a rational argument, but it’s not the only argument to be made.

The Saudi Ambassador’s resignation does not appear to be for political reasons. The poor health of his older brother, the Saudi Foreign Minister, is likely the correct explanation. In fact, there seems to be some question about whether the Ambassador has actually resigned. There’s no statement to that effect on the Saudi Embassy’s website, for instance. There are also hints in the press that the Ambassador has gone to London to attend his son’s university graduation. Speculating on the ‘meaning’ of his resignation becomes hazardous. Perhaps he has resigned; certain consequences could follow that. But perhaps he hasn’t resigned, or abruptly resigned. Or, as this article throws out as a possibility, perhaps this is a matter of a power struggle between Turki and the former ambassador to the US, Pr Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, now the head of the Saudi equivalent of the National Security Advisor. There just aren’t enough facts to reach conclusions from.

The imams and their call for support of Iraq Sunnis are nothing new. The imams are noted hardliners, with histories of arguing with the ‘official’ religious establishment in Saudi Arabia as too cozy with the government. Some of them surfaced in the early 1990s, unhappy with the government’s decision to rely on US and coalition forces to ensure the security of the Kingdom and the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. This time, the imams were careful to not call for jihad. That appears to be a tripwire which, when crossed, results in jailing. They are clearly testing the limits of government tolerance of non-approved political speech, something that is also happening in more liberal quarters.

There’s no question that a lot of things are happening in Saudi Arabia these days. Some may be related. I think it more likely, though, that they are a symptom of the radical changes that are going on both within Saudi Arabia and within the region as a whole.