{"id":4789,"date":"2012-01-07T07:50:25","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T14:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4789"},"modified":"2012-01-07T07:50:25","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T14:50:25","slug":"should-the-u-s-still-ally-itself-with-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4789","title":{"rendered":"Should the U.S. Still Ally Itself with Saudi Arabia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Iran Rattles Its Saber, Should the U.S. Still Ally Itself with Saudi Arabia?<\/strong>
\nBy Ishaan Tharoor – 3 January 3, 2012 – Global Spin<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s Dec. 29 announcement of a $30 billion sale of 84 F-15SA fighter jets to Saudi Arabia came with a lot of subtext. The deal, part of an earlier $60 billion arms agreement between Washington and Riyadh, is slated to pan out over the course of a decade, bolstering the Kingdom\u2019s defense forces and creating some 50,000 American jobs at home. It followed a day after regional bogeyman \u2014 and longtime Saudi foe \u2014 Iran rattled a blunt saber, threatening to close off the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic passage that sees much of the world\u2019s oil exports flow past. On Jan 2., the Iranians raised temperatures further after successfully testing a naval cruise missile during a ten-day exercise in the Strait; the next day, officials in Tehran warned the U.S. to keep an aircraft carrier away from the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s enmity and rivalry with Iran is well documented and, in many respects, shapes much of the Middle East\u2019s geopolitical landscape. But the question begs: following a year of uprisings for democracy worldwide, should the U.S. still be so much in bed with the repressive Saudi monarchy?<\/p>\n

D.C. hawks answer \u201cof course!\u201d The oil-rich Saudis have long served as moneyed, America-friendly interlocutors in the Middle East, supposed fellow combatants in the war against terror and a bulwark against the Shi\u2019a theocracy in Iran. The cloistered Saudi monarchs are known entities in Washington and the tacit consensus forged between the two sides dictated much of the political status quo in the region until the seismic upheavals of the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s behavior, meanwhile, may prove increasingly erratic. Tehran\u2019s isolation has deepened following new rounds of sanctions aimed at curbing its nuclear program. A looming power struggle within the regime \u2014 most recently, authorities arrested the daughter of reform-friendly former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for \u201cmaking propaganda\u201d against the state \u2014 may lead to more public displays of chest-thumping bravado such as the recent missile tests. A stronger Saudi Arabia, then, hedges against whatever threat the Islamic Republic may pose. Andrew Shapiro, the U.S. State Department\u2019s assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said the arms deal \u201cwill send a strong message to countries in the region that the United States is committed to stability in the gulf and broader Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that commitment to \u201cstability\u201d comes, in effect, with a moral price. The Saudis played a conspicuous role during the democracy uprisings in the Arab world last year: they offered safe haven to ousted Tunisian autocrat Zine el Abidine Ben Ali; attempted to exert pressure on the U.S. and other actors to protect Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who eventually was forced out; and spearheaded a military intervention into restive Bahrain, helping quash widespread protests against the ruling Sunni monarchy there. The country\u2019s draconian religious laws are among the world\u2019s most stifling and its rulers have occasionally curious ideas about human rights. And, in some respects, Saudi Arabia is part of the strategic dilemma \u2014 not solution \u2014 facing policy planners in Washington. After all, private Saudi donations and funds from other pliant Gulf states are at the heart of the fundamentalist radicalization seen in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
\n…more<\/a><\/p>\n

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As Iran Rattles Its Saber, Should the U.S. Still Ally Itself with Saudi Arabia? By Ishaan Tharoor – 3 January 3, 2012 – Global Spin The White House\u2019s Dec. 29 announcement of a $30 billion sale of 84 F-15SA fighter jets to Saudi Arabia came with a lot of subtext. The deal, part of an more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[1431],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4790,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions\/4790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}