President Barack Obama, on his visit this week to Riyadh, will seek to advance a foreign-policy agenda that has positioned Washington as a broker between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are locked in an increasingly dangerous series of standoffs across the Middle East.
But within the region, the U.S. is widely seen as a contributor to the accelerating friction between Riyadh and Tehran, which is fueling a new period of regional instability.
The completion of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 drastically reduced the American footprint and its perceived influence in the region. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, pushed by Mr. Obama over Riyadh’s wishes, lifted international sanctions against Iran but hasn’t met hopes of more-responsible behavior by Tehran’s clerical rulers.
Conflicts in Syria and Yemen have raged on with little U.S. involvement, encouraging the use of proxy forces by Iran and its Gulf rivals. And a sharp reduction in U.S. foreign-oil consumption has added to disarray in energy markets.
The White House is pinning its hopes for a more stable Middle East in years to come on the uncertain prospect that it can encourage a working relationship—what Mr. Obama has called a “cold peace”—between Saudi Arabia and Iran. He meets beginning Wednesday with leaders of Arab nations that make up the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.
“Ultimately there is this conflict between the GCC and Iran, in particular between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and it has been a driver of some of the chaos and instability and the sectarianism that we have seen in the region,” a senior administration official said.
“You need a different kind of relationship between the Gulf countries and Iran—one that’s less prone to proxy conflicts—and that’s something that would be good for the region as a whole,” the official said. “Promoting that kind of dialogue is something the president will want to speak to the leaders about.”
U.S. officials see political talks to resolve the conflicts in Syria and Yemen as possible vehicles for such a shift, which they said also could help moderate disagreements over energy policy and other issues.
But the strategy requires at least some buy-in from highly skeptical Saudi leaders and other Persian Gulf states that will be meeting at a summit in Riyadh, even assuming Iran is willing to do its part. Thus, a key risk is that matters could get worse on both fronts if Iran remains intransigent and Saudi Arabia drifts away from the U.S. in disagreement over the approach.
“It’s not that the intent of the president is necessarily an intent that doesn’t have some logic to it,” said Dennis Ross, a longtime diplomat who’s served in Republican and Democratic administrations, including Mr. Obama’s. “The problem is at this point it’s going to be very difficult for [the Saudis] to be responsive because they see the Iranians as a predator and they don’t believe that he sees the threat as he needs to see it.”
Saudi Arabia, suspicious of Iran’s ambitions and burgeoning relations with the U.S., has already made moves in an attempt to isolate Tehran. The Kingdom severed diplomatic ties with Iran in January after a mob ransacked its Tehran embassy and its consulate in the city of Mashhad in protest against Riyadh’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric, Nemer al-Nemer.
Riyadh also has moved to blunt the economic gains Iran stood to realize from the lifting of international sanctions—required in last year’s nuclear deal in return for dismantling its program—by ramping up its oil production.
In Iran, distrust of Saudi Arabia extends from the top of the country’s political pyramid down to average Iranians. The discord was exacerbated last year after a stampede during the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca killed some 2,000 people, including more than 400 Iranians.
Iran has repeatedly said it wants harmony in the region and blamed Saudi Arabia for stoking tensions. “We are not a threat against any country,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said earlier this month, according to the official IRNA news agency. “We consider the security of other neighboring states and the region as our own security.”
An Iranian official at the country’s United Nations mission didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Mr. Obama’s objectives in Saudi Arabia and the mending of Saudi-Iranian ties. Saudi officials couldn’t be reached for comment.
A key problem for Mr. Obama as he tries to nudge the two countries toward a dialogue is the long-standing and deep mistrust between the U.S. and Iran, and growing doubts in Riyadh that Washington is a reliable ally.
“If the administration hoped that the U.S. stepping back would lead our allies and adversaries to resolve their problems, that hope has been dashed,” said Michael Singh, a managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “If anything, the region has only grown more chaotic, and President Obama will leave his successor a proliferation of Middle East crises and no clear policy for navigating them.”
White House officials have said Mr. Obama’s Mideast policy has been designed to strengthen security and counterterrorism cooperation with the Gulf states while broadly advancing American interests, including by negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran and avoiding large-scale military invasions.
“The region has seen quite a bit of instability in recent years, so they’ve had to adjust to account for a lot of turmoil around them and to address what they see as very challenging regional environment,” the senior Obama administration official said. “I think we’re very clear-eyed about the state of the relationships across the region, about some of the concerns that we have with Iran’s behavior. But we’ve also seen what’s possible with dialogue and some effort to de-escalate, and we’re going to continue to push that forward.”
The crux of the current friction between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is their disagreement on an approach to Iran, which both see as a destabilizing force. Mr. Obama entered office in 2009 after campaigning on the idea of U.S. outreach to Iran, a shift from the George W. Bush administration policy and at odds with Riyadh’s push for isolation.
But Saudi Arabia was dismayed by a series of other U.S. moves that followed, including the White House’s decision to encourage Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak to step down during 2011 Arab Spring protests, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal and Mr. Obama’s 11th-hour reversal on launching military strikes in Syria after the Assad regime crossed his “red line” by using chemical weapons.
Saudi Arabia’s anxieties deepened further as the oil glut created by U.S. production grew and sent prices plummeting in 2014.
The nuclear deal, achieved in July 2015 by the U.S. and other world powers over Saudi Arabia’s objections, freed Iran to expand oil production, often in direct competition with Saudi Arabia. Iran now aims to increase production by as much as 1 million barrels a day by year’s end.
That has made competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia a dominant theme of oil markets as petroleum states increasingly look for ways to restrain production.
Saudi Arabia has so far refused to go along with any plan by producers to rein in production without Iran’s agreeing to participate. Iran has flatly ruled that out. Riyadh’s position prompted the collapse of talks among oil states last weekend.
“Iran has made clear all along that it wasn’t going to restrain production,” said Jim Krane, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Saudi Arabia has used its position as the largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to keep Iran from profiting. Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Gulf allies have kept the oil taps wide open over the past year and a half, flooding the global market and keeping prices low.
“Saudi Arabia has supplied so much oil that oil is now cheaper than water,” said Hassan Fadai, an electrical engineer in Tehran. “It thinks it can harm the Islamic Republic in this way.”
While officials in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia say the two still cooperate closely on security, particularly on counterterrorism, Riyadh has become more self-reliant.
On one hand that is a success for Mr. Obama, who has sought to create an environment in which America’s Middle East allies rely less on the U.S. White House officials have described this week’s summit with Gulf states in Riyadh, which follows one last year in the U.S., as intended for the U.S. to help them enhance and integrate their military and security capabilities so they can be more self-reliant.
“Ultimately, it’s not the job of the president of the United States to solve every problem in the Middle East,” Mr. Obama said last year after securing the Iran nuclear deal.
But fostering more independence among allies risks reduced U.S. leverage in the region.
Saudi Arabia has adopted a more aggressive foreign policy and military posture that increasingly defies Washington. “Although we do not like Obama’s withdrawal policy, he did us a favor: He made us realize our own strengths,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi columnist and political analyst. “Now, Saudi Arabia takes initiative. We take matters in our own hands.”
Since Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran, it has pursued a with-us-or-against-us strategy in efforts to assemble a broad anti-Tehran bloc among its allies. A meeting last week of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, for instance, ended with a strongly-worded statement accusing Iran of supporting terrorism and interfering in Arab affairs.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has blamed Saudi Arabia for the censure. “Conflicts between countries should be solved via bilateral diplomatic efforts and should not be on the agenda of a multilateral meeting,” Mr. Zarif said, according to IRNA.
Those who haven’t joined Saudi Arabia in efforts to isolate Iran have found themselves isolated. Riyadh recently suspended $3 billion in pledged military aid to Lebanon, citing the rising influence of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political and militant group.
U.S. officials have warned Saudi Arabia that its hard-line stance risked driving Lebanon further into the hands of Iran.
The challenges in the U.S.-Iran-Saudi dynamics have played out most prominently in Syria and Yemen. In Syria, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states wanted the U.S. to intervene early into the five-year conflict. They saw the conflict as an opportunity to topple Iran-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and pushed the U.S. to back opposition fighters.
Mr. Obama resisted but drew his “red line” on Mr. Assad’s using chemical weapons. When the Syrian regime did so in 2013, Mr. Obama prepared to take military action, then pulled back after Russia offered to negotiate a deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria.
Mr. Obama has since launched a military campaign to fight Islamic State in Syria and Iraq but has left the future of Mr. Assad up to negotiations over a political transition in Syria. Disappointed, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have questioned whether they can rely on the U.S. after Mr. Obama softened his position that Mr. Assad must step down as part of any political agreement. Now the White House says he could stay in power as part of a transition.
In March last year, Saudi Arabia began the military campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels with the aim of restoring Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to the presidency. The Houthis practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and Riyadh and its Arab coalition allies see the group as a proxy of Iran.
Saudi Arabia sees the fight as part of its broader confrontation with Iran for power and influence in the Middle East. Iran supports the Houthis politically but has denied supplying them weapons, despite several seizures of weapons caches by Western navies in recent months near the Yemeni coast.
While the U.S. isn’t part of the Saudi-led coalition, it supported the intervention and over time stepped-up its logistical and intelligence assistance to campaign.
Saudi Arabia also has become more of a target within the U.S. Last week, two U.S. senators introduced legislation that would restrict the sales of air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia until it can demonstrate its commitment to combating terrorism and preventing civilian casualties.
Riyadh also has come under renewed scrutiny for long-reputed ties between prominent Saudis and the Sept. 11 attack plotters, and U.S. lawmakers are pushing legislation to permit lawsuits against Saudi Arabia and other countries. The White House has threatened to veto that bill, if passed.http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-mideast-mission-get-saudis-iran-to-make-nice-1461111595
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