A New Approach to the Middle East

SINCE THE END of World War II, the United States has regarded the al-Saud regime as a friend, or an ally, or at least a partner for stability in the Middle East. After September 11, it is time to call this assumption into question. It is time for the United States to rethink its relationship with Riyadh. For we are now at war--at war with terror and its sponsor, radical Islam. And in this war, the Saudi regime is more part of the problem than part of the solution

The case for reevaluating our strategic partnership with the current Saudi regime is a strong one. Begin with the simple fact that 15 of the 19 participants in the September 11 attacks were Saudi nationals. That's something the Saudis themselves could not initially admit. A large proportion--perhaps as high as 80 percent, according to some reports--of the "detainees" taken from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay are Saudis. And although Osama bin Laden has made much of his antipathy to the Saudi regime, his true relationship with the royal family is certainly more complex and questionable. The Saudis refused, despite the urgings of the Clinton Administration, to take him into custody in 1996 when Sudan offered to deliver him.

The Saudis also have been deeply implicated in the wave of suicide bombers that have attacked Israeli citizens--and American citizens in Israel--in recent years. Again, initial Saudi official reaction has been to deny the link. Even as documents captured by Israel in its spring offensive against the Palestinian Authority revealed the Saudi role, the kingdom's ambassador to the United States denounced as "baseless" any suggestion that Saudi money "goes to evildoers." The Israelis, Prince Bandar complained, were engaged in a "shameful and counterproductive" attempt to discredit his family "which has been a leading voice for peace." The charge "that Saudi Arabia is paying suicide bombers" is "totally false," he said.

The prince's claim is proven false not simply by the documents discovered by Israel but by the Saudi government's own press releases. One from January 2001 boasts how the "Saudi Committee for Support of the Al-Quds Intifada," headed and administered by Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, the kingdom's interior minister, has distributed $33 million to "deserving Palestinians" including "the families of 2,281 prisoners and 358 martyrs." Other releases from subsequent months detailed further payments to Palestinian "martyrs" totaling tens of millions of dollars. Public announcements in Palestinian newspapers have given instructions on how to receive payments from the intifada committee. And the documents make clear the close connection between the Saudis and the terrorist Hamas organization in particular.

But even more important than funding terrorist acts has been the Saudi regime's general and aggressive export of Wahhabi fundamentalism. "Saudi Arabia," writes Michael Vlahos of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has "sought to make Islam a sort of wholly-owned subsidiary of the Saud family." Wahhabi teachings, religious schools and Saudi oil money have encouraged young Muslims in countries around the world to a jihad-like incitement against non-Muslims. The combination of Wahhabi ideology and Saudi money has contributed more to the radicalization and anti-Americanization of large parts of the Islamic world than any other single factor.

It has taken something like willful ignorance on the part of successive American administrations to ignore such developments or explain them away, and to maintain the fiction that the Saudis are our "strategic partners." Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger lamented--once safely out of office--that "the veil has been lifted [from over U.S.-Saudi relations] and the American people see a double game they're not terribly pleased with." Brent Scowcroft, always cautious, admitted, "We [Americans and Saudis] probably avoid talking about the things that are the real problems between us because it's a very polite relationship. We don't get all that much below the surface." Former Secretary of State George Shultz bluntly terms the traditional U.S.-Saudi relationship "a grotesque protection racket."

Clearly, the long tradition of quiet diplomacy with the Saudi monarchy no longer serves American purposes. The royal family has taken silence as consent in its strategy of directing Arab and Islamic discontent away from the House of Saud and toward the United States, Israel and the West. This is a strategy inimical to American security and a dangerously crippling problem in President Bush's war on terrorism.