Saudi Arabia Is No Longer a Reliable U.S. Ally

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/04/saudi-arabia-a-dangerous-ally/saudi-arabia-is-no-longer-a-reliable-us-ally

Haleh Esfandiari is director emerita and public policy fellow of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

JANUARY 4, 2016

Despite many, obvious shared interests, Saudi Arabia is no longer a reliable ally for the United States. True, Saudi Arabia has recently helped keep oil prices down, and this helps weaken the economies of both Russia and Iran. The kingdom and the U.S. agree that Bashar al-Assad should not continue as president of Syria; and they both support President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt — the U.S. despite Sisi's autocratic tendencies, Saudi Arabia because of them. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are status quo powers in the Persian Gulf, and the Saudis support and facilitate the American military presence in that region.

While they have much in common, the Saudi encouragement and financing of a fundamentalist form of Islam is a threat not only to the U.S. but to stability everywhere.

But the Saudi execution last week of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent opposition Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia who was not a threat to the kingdom and whose killing offended the Iranians, was an act that served only to undermine international efforts to resolve conflicts in Syria and Yemen. Yes, executions of political or religious dissenters take place in Saudi Arabia, but this, along with the Saudi encouragement and financing of radical, even violent, Islamic extremism is a threat not only to the U.S. but to stability everywhere.

It is understandable that a more self-confident Saudi Arabia has been increasingly assertive in the region. But it has not proved itself capable of exercising power wisely, as shown by its costly entanglement and heedless bombing of civilian targets in the Yemen civil war. While other countries, notably Iran, probably bear more responsibility than Saudi Arabia, the kingdom has added fuel to the disastrous Sunni-Shiite sectarianism among Muslims in the Middle East.

Yet it remains the case that Saudi Arabia's security depends on the United States. This gives Washington leverage in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia may yet be persuaded to end encouragement of a fundamentalist form of Islam that, in the end, poses a threat to the kingdom itself; to allow for greater political and religious freedom inside the kingdom; to heal the growing Sunni-Shiite breach; and to exercise its regional power more wisely. This is leverage the U.S. should not hesitate to use.