The Saudi-Iranian Alliance United by oil.
By Martin Sieff
Saudi Arabia and Iran are regional rivals whose traditional approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been diametrically opposite. But now they are moving closer together on that and other issues, with probable immense consequences for the United States and the entire world.
Over the past 20 years, Saudi Arabia has been moderate on both global oil prices and in its approach to the Israel-Arab conflict. The Saudis strongly support the Palestinians. But until recently, that support has been low-key. And the Saudis, quietly, strongly supported the Oslo Peace Process over the past decade from its initiation in August-September 1993 to its breakdown after the July 2000 Camp David II summit.
However, these relatively moderate policies have become increasingly hard-line over the past three years because of the replacement of the pro-American King Fahd by the tougher Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and because of the collapse of the Oslo Process and start of the second Palestinian intifada. Now Saudi and Iranian policies on the Israel-Arab conflict are converging — although the domestic reasons for this are very different in each country.
In Saudi Arabia, supporting the Palestinians is seen as a lightning rod to distract a population feared to be far more radical than its rulers. In Iran, supporting the Palestinians serves the same purpose. But there the aim is distract a population that is believed to be far less radical and hard-line than its leaders.
The Bush administration has consistently wooed Saudi Arabia and turned a blind eye to the two-faced nature of many of its policies. At the same time, it has repeatedly ignored and failed to woo more moderate elements in Iran.
President Bush's now famous — and notorious — inclusion of Iran in an international "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech this year is widely regarded in Tehran and, indeed, throughout the region, as a crucial turning point. Since then, pro-American sentiments in Tehran have been less enthusiastically expressed and popular feeling has coalesced anew behind a government that, for all its faults, is seen as a representative of the national interest against a potential direct threat from the dominant superpower.
Iran in contrast to Saudi Arabia has always been a hard-line hawk on the Israel-Arab conflict. All through the years of the Oslo Peace Process, its support for the Islamic Shiite fundamentalist Hezbollah, or Party of God, guerrilla group in southern Lebanon never wavered.
Iran has also always been a hawk on setting global oil prices. That is because the Iranians know they do not have the luxury of time to take the long-term view. Their oil reserves are running out and they have to maximize revenues from them as fast as they can. To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, in the long term, they may not be dead but they will be paupers.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the Saudis could afford to take a long-term view of the oil market and allow prices remain relatively low. They did not want to kill the Reagan and Clinton-era economic booms in the United States as these were the driving forces in global economic growth and soaring demand for their product. Therefore during those two decades, Saudi energy and Israel-Palestinian conflict policies were both generally supportive of U.S. interests and initiatives
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