With U.S. Help No Longer Assured, Saudis Try a New Strategy: Talks
The New York Times
Declan Walsh and Ben Hubbard
CAIRO — In the
months since a missile and drone attack widely seen as the work of Iran
left two Saudi oil facilities smoldering, the Saudi crown prince has
taken an uncharacteristic turn to diplomacy to cool tensions with his
regional enemies. The prince, Mohammed
bin Salman, has stepped up direct talks with the rebels he has been
fighting in Yemen for over four years, leading to a decline in attacks
by both sides. He has made gestures to ease, if not end, the stifling blockade he and his allies imposed on his tiny, wealthy neighbor, Qatar. He has even engaged in indirect talks with the kingdom's archnemesis, Iran, to try to dampen the shadow war raging across the region.
Fueling the shift from confrontation to
negotiation, analysts say, is the sobering realization that a
decades-old cornerstone of American policy in the Middle East —the understanding that the United States would defend the Saudi oil industry from foreign attacks — can no longer be taken for granted. Even though American and Saudi officials agreed that Iran was behind the Sept. 14 attacks
on the petroleum processing plants at Abqaiq and Khurais, temporarily
halving Saudi Arabia’s oil production, President Trump responded with heated rhetoric but little else.
For the Saudis, the tepid response
drove home the reality that despite the tens of billions of dollars
they have spent on American weapons — more than $170 billion since 1973 —
they could no longer count on the United States to come to their aid,
at least not with the force they expected. Worried
about having to fend for themselves in a tough and unpredictable
neighborhood, analysts say, the Saudis have quietly reached out to their
enemies to de-escalate conflicts.
“I think we will look at Sept. 14 as a seminal moment in gulf history,”
said David B. Roberts, a scholar of the region at King’s College London.
With the presumption shattered that the United States would protect the
Saudis, Dr. Roberts said, “they realize the need to be more
accommodating.” For the United
States, the shift toward diplomacy is an awkward paradox. The Trump
administration and Congress have been pressing the Saudis to end the war
in Yemen, and the administration has pushed them to reconcile with
Qatar, largely in vain.
Now, the presumed Iranian strikes may have done more to advance those goals than American pressure ever did.
Saudi
Arabia’s foreign policy turned more aggressive after Prince Mohammed,
then 29, emerged as its driving force in 2015. He plunged the kingdom
into a devastating war against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen; imposed a
punishing boycott on Qatar, which he accused of supporting terrorism
and cozying up to Iran; and vowed to confront Iran across the Middle
East. Critics said the young prince
was brash and headstrong, and a destabilizing force in the region.
Moreover, the Yemen and Qatar campaigns failed to achieve the desired
results.
The war in Yemen settled into a costly stalemate with the side effect of a devastating humanitarian crisis, while Qatar employed its vast wealth and other international relationships to weather the blockade. Then the
refinery attacks highlighted the vulnerability of the Saudi oil
industry, the country’s economic jewel. Those
events led to what Rob Malley, a top official for the Middle East in
the Obama administration, describes as a “semi-recalibration” of Saudi
policies. The sudden willingness to pursue diplomacy in Qatar and Yemen,
he said, “reflects a Saudi desire to solidify its regional posture at a
time of uncertainty and vulnerability.”
Analysts saw the lack of a significant American response to the attacks
as a blow to the policy known as the Carter doctrine, which dates to
1980, when President Jimmy Carter vowed to use force to ensure the free
flow of oil from the Persian Gulf after the Islamic Revolution in Iran
and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequent
presidents, Democrats and Republicans, upheld it, seeing Saudi oil
exports as essential to the global economy and America’s interests.
“For
as long as I have been working on the Middle East, that’s why we were
there: to protect the free flow of oil,” said Steven Cook, a scholar at
the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to a period dating to the
1980s. After the attacks, Mr. Trump sent more American troops to Saudi Arabia
to operate Patriot missile systems, support that fell far short of what
the Saudis had expected from a president whom they considered a close
friend and who shared their animosity toward Iran. Mr. Trump ordered, then abruptly called off, airstrikes on Iran.
“What
the Saudis didn’t understand,” Dr. Cook said, “was that Donald Trump is
a lot closer to Barack Obama’s worldview than they realized. It’s about
getting out of the Middle East.” The Saudis’ reputation in Washington had suffered gravely because of the war in Yemen, the Qatar blockade and the killing of the dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul last year.
While anger
spread in Congress and other parts of the government, Mr. Trump
continued to support the kingdom as an important Arab ally and a
reliable buyer of American arms. But as a presidential election looms,
the Saudis realize that Mr. Trump could find that position to be a
liability with voters, and a new president could take an entirely
different approach. “It is a hard ask,
even for Trump, to defend Saudi Arabia at every turn during a
campaign,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies. “So I think the Saudis
are smart enough to tone it down for a time.”
Daylight also broke between Saudi Arabia and its closest regional ally, the United Arab Emirates. In June, the Emirates began withdrawing its troops from Yemen,
leaving the Saudis with the burden of an ugly war that few believe they
can win. In July, the Emirates hosted rare talks with Iran about
maritime security, an effort to calm tensions in the Persian Gulf and
safeguard the country’s reputation as a safe business hub. Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment on the recent diplomacy. While those overtures have yet to yield official agreements, they have eased pressures in the region.
In
Yemen, both sides have released more than 100 prisoners to show good
will, and cross-border attacks by the Houthis have grown less frequent.
Last month the United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, reported
an 80 percent reduction in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition over the previous two weeks. Since
then, no Yemeni civilians have been killed in airstrikes, said Radhya
Almutawakel, the chairwoman of Mwatana, a Yemeni human rights group.
The current de-escalation, she noted, is the first that resulted from
direct talks with the Houthis. She suspected that the Saudis would not
have chosen that route if the war had been going their way at the time
of the Abqaiq attack. “They would not have chosen to speak with the Houthis,” she said. “They would have escalated the war.” In
the standoff between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Qatar,
demonstrable progress has been scarce but quiet talks between the
countries’ leaders have softened the conflict’s rougher edges.
Saudi
social media accounts that often insulted Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad
al-Thani, have toned it down. And while Qatar has not shut down its Al
Jazeera satellite network as the Saudis demanded, criticism of Qatar
from pro-government news outlets and social media accounts in Saudi
Arabia has noticeably quieted in recent months, Qatari officials say. Instead of punishing citizens who travel to Qatar, Saudi Arabia now looks the other way, and has even sent soccer teams to play in tournaments in Doha, the Qatari capital. And although
Qatar’s emir did not accept an invitation by the Saudi monarch, King
Salman, to attend a regional summit meeting in Saudi Arabia this month,
Qatar’s foreign minister did.
The Qataris have also gained ground in
Washington. While Mr. Trump initially cheered the blockade, endorsing
the Saudi allegation that Qatar supported terrorism, he later switched
tracks. Last year, he welcomed Qatar’s emir in Washington and this month
sent his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, to a major conference in Doha. But
the antagonism toward Qatar has not softened in the Emirates, which has
been a leader of the embargo and which still sees Qatar as dangerously
close to the region’s Islamists. The distrust is reciprocated by Qatar,
where officials have spoken of possibly reconciling with Saudi Arabia
but not the Emirates, effectively splitting their alliance.
Concrete
progress has been scarcest where the stakes are highest: between Saudi
Arabia and Iran. But after years of heated statements and competing
support for opposite sides in regional conflicts, officials from
Pakistan and Iraq have stepped in as intermediaries for back-channel talk aimed at averting a wider conflict. It
remains unclear how far such talks will go in reducing tensions,
especially since an official Saudi opening with Iran could infuriate Mr.
Trump, who has tried to isolate and punish Iran. “Washington
would not look kindly upon a Saudi-Iranian channel at a time when the
U.S. is trying to isolate Iran,” said Mr. Malley, the Obama
administration official. “Not to fully trust the Trump administration is
one thing. To openly defy it is another altogether, and Prince Mohammed
is unlikely to do that.”
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