I believe the realignment is good for Israel because Iran is a threat to the Saudis and us. We are an insurance policy for them. Also the US often had to placate the Saudis with Israeli coinage. No more. Ted Belman
DEBKA WEEKLY
Saudis to US: No More Oil Trade for US Security Shield
Saudi King Abdullah landed a surprise on the Gulf Cooperation Council summit convened in Riyadh Tuesday, May 10: He proposed inviting two Arab monarchs, Morocco’s King Mohammed V and Jordan’s King Abdullah II to join the GCC with full membership privileges. Neither kingdom is situated in the Persian Gulf geographic region which is represented by the GCC; nor do they have oil or gas and their economies are weak and dependent on American aid. Morocco and Jordan are furthermore not in Iran’s cross-hairs, the threat of which is uppermost in the minds of Gulf rulers (along with the crisis in Yemen: See our last issue No. 492 of May 13: Saudi Prince Butts Heads with Iranian General in Syria).
Nonetheless both sides stand to gain from the partnership.
Although they have not yet officially answered the invitation, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources do not doubt it will be taken up willingly by the monarchs of Rabat and Amman. Their entry into the Gulf alliance would bring their armies into the mutual defense system known as Gulf Shield. It would qualify them for a military role in the ongoing Saudi-led GCC operation for propping up the Bahraini throne but, as full members, they would also enjoy the benefits of the Gulf’s common market and be able to trim down their dependence on American economic and military aid.
GCC seeks extra leverage to fight Obama’s Muslim vision
The affluent and powerful Arab Gulf grouping, for its part, would gain extra leverage for pursuing its main goals. Attaching Jordan and Morocco would downgrade the Egyptian-dominated Arab League and bypass its decisions which must be unanimous to be binding.
The expanded GCC would also be divorced from post-Mubarak Egyptian influence.
(See separate item in this issue on the US and Egypt)
Saudi Arabia, one of the Arab League’s seven founding members in 1945, is now bent on expanding the Sunni Arab royalist alignment to replace the League as the most powerful inter-Arab vehicle for challenging the two emergent Muslim forces seeking Middle East domination.
One is the mixed Shiite-Sunni grouping of radicals – Iran, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Damascus-based extremists.
The second is the Sunni bloc President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan are in the process of creating.
The US president conceives this alignment as America’s Muslim bridge to the moderate Sunni Muslims at large as well as reaching out to Shiite Iran for the sake of tempering its radical polices at the end of the road.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 490 of April 29: A US-Turkey Axis Overrides the Arab Revolt)
The special US-Saudi relations are history
Because of this plan, King Abdullah embarked on the phased separation of the kingdom’s foreign and security policies from the US, starting with his acrimonious telephone conversation with Obama which took place on Feb. 9 when he was recuperating from back surgery in Morocco.
Since then, the Saudi king has made no bones about letting the US president know that, for him, the oil-for-security formula which governed relations between the world’s leading superpower and its biggest oil superpower for 60 years is history.
This means in practice that Saudi Arabia no longer depends on an American defense umbrella for its security and America can no longer rely on Riyadh to regulate its oil supply policy – and therefore its financial activities on world markets – for meeting US political, military and economic interests.
Obama initially sent two senior officials to Riyadh – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 and by US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on April 12 – to try and bring the Saudis back into the fold. Abdullah was not to be talked around.
Riyadh’s policy reorientation is now anchored in six major changes, outlined here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly:
Under Saudi consensus, intelligence functions redistributed
1. The king has created the Saudi version of a unity government by pulling together the three main royal factions on the basis of a consensus. Abdullah’s own faction and the two headed by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal, and Saudi Interior Minister and designated crown prince, the Sudairi Prince Nayef, all agree that the kingdom has come to a parting of the ways in its historic alliance with the United States. Saudi Arabia is strong enough and rich enough to look after its security and interests without America and is at liberty to turn to other world powers for help, such as China and Russia.
2. The functions of Saudi intelligence have been rearranged to reflect the new coalition: Up until now, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz ruled supreme over Saudi intelligence agencies. In recent weeks, some of his functions were transferred to the National Security Council Director, the Sudairi Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources describe the division of labor as follows:
Muqrin deals with the intelligence matters relating to Iran, Iraq, Persian Gulf states and outside the Middle East in such areas as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Bandar is in charge of intelligence and undercover operations in the Arab countries which are in the throes of popular uprisings. Formerly a long-serving Saudi ambassador to Washington, he has also been taxed with dealing with issues arising from the dismantling of the working alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The decision by Riyadh to shop for ballistic missiles in China instead of America fell within his remit along with the negotiations for concluding the transaction.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 489 from April 15: Saudis Buy Advanced Nuclear-Capable Missiles in China)
Bandar leads Saudi operations against Assad and US Muslim policies
Bandar is running Saudi intervention against Assad in the Syrian popular uprising. When he needed the help of Saudi clandestine networks in Iraq for his Syrian project, he turned to Muqrin and they worked it out together.
In another facet of the division of labor, Bandar handles Saudi day-to-day activities for spiking America’s Middle East policies, whereas Muqrin is in charge of the high-level policy interchanges between the Saudi and US intelligence services.
3. For Riyadh, there is no contradiction between the two functions: King Abdullah does not seek to sever all Saudi ties with the US. Indeed, however it may look, Riyadh attaches great importance to those ties, such as they are, provided only that they do not amount to a special relationship in the old format.
4. Neither is Saudi Arabia cutting its economy off from the US dollar although this is advocated by many in Riyadh and the Gulf emirates.
5. However, they part company on at least one fundamental issue: The Saudis and their GCC allies are single-minded about their determination to fight Iran’s Islamic regime tooth and nail wherever its footprint is encountered in any Persian Gulf, Middle East or Arab country – even if this drive brings them into collision with Washington and sabotages President Obama’s policy objectives.
6. The Saudi leadership does not trust Barack Obama’s approach to Iran, the Arab Revolt, or the Muslim world.
Obama denounces military intervention in Bahrain
To make this point clear to the American public ahead of President Obama’s speech Thursday, a prominent Saudi academic close to the royal circle published an article in the Washington Post laying out Riyadh’s current posture. The writer was Nawaf Obaid, senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research & Islamic Studies, an institute headed by Prince Turki Al-Faisal.
Turki is a former Saudi intelligence director and ambassador to the US and Britain. Today, he is a key member of the new Saudi governing coalition and has the king’s ear.
In Washington, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources report, the penny finally dropped: Riyadh wanted no part of the Obama administration’s strategies for Iran and the Arab Revolt and the special bonds between Washington and Riyadh were no more.
Obaid used plain language to make sure the American public got the message:
His article opened with the words, “A tectonic shift has occurred in the US-Saudi relationship. Despite significant pressure from the Obama administration…” and ended by saying: “Saudi Arabia has the will and the means to meet its expanded global responsibilities. In some issues, such as counterterrorism and efforts to fight money laundering, the Saudis will continue to be a strong US partner. In areas in which Saudi national security or strategic interests are at stake, the kingdom will pursue its own agenda.
“With Iran working tirelessly to dominate the region, the Muslim Brotherhood rising in Egypt and unrest on nearly every border, there is simply too much at stake for the kingdom to rely on a security policy written in Washington, which has backfired more often than not and spread instability. The special relationship may never be the same…”
And indeed, in his speech Thursday, May 19, Obama did not mention Saudi Arabia but condemned its “repressive military action” in Bahrain. This was the first time a US President has ever denounced a Saudi military operation.
Since the beginning of the year, DEBKA-Net-Weekly has exclusively followed the widening rift between Saudi Arabia and the United States. Word has now come virtually from the horse’s mouth.
What I am suggesting is that Israel has been developing ways to extract the oil safely for at least ten years and that in all probabilities we have completed that research. The oil is of very good quality in relation to other shale oils tested. I retired a year plus ago so I do not know what the Team has done in the interim but judging by excellent quality of the people involved and the degrees of freedom shown by Mr. Netanyahu I have to assume the the project has been proven. I visited Germany attending technolgy exchange meetings at the most important crude processing laboratoy test equipment manufacturers installed here, in Saudi Arabia, etc.
I am also convinced that Israel has found crude oil after its significant findings of natural gas.
Oil refineries oil testing systems made in the USA are also successfully integrated here.
The media carried information indicating that Israel has not developed a crude oil engineering cadre. I take that with a grain of salt. or maybe a large bag of salt… 🙂
Israel has significant, in fact very large crude oil production potential and again judging by the actions of the government I assume that the state may have decided to develop those resources independently.
Shmuel: Your final comment seems ambiguous. Are you suggesting that Israel doesn’t have economically extractible shale oil at scale, so a joint U.S./Israel crash program to speed up its development won’t produce the suggested result, or that it does have such large-scale reserves, but should crash-program extract them independently of the U.S. for geopolitical or economic reasons?
David
Months ago it was reported that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had concluded an agreement for the required delivery vehicles for two nuclear devices, also to be provided by Pakistan.
China of course is right behind that and other subjects.
Israel has been at the forefront of development of anti long range, high speed nuclear missile systems. much as that can be relied upon as “defense”.
As to relying on US “protection”… I am a former US DoD military avionics programs Senior-Fellow engineer.
I would not stretch too far any such reliance. Now less than ever.
OIL SHALE and crude OIL: For several years my small firm supplied technology support for the Israeli Refineries laboratories and the chemical industry in general. In limited ocassions also to the nuclear industry. I will go this far. I observed tests conducted on crude from other than import sources for years…
My suggestion is that pundits concentrate on the US and Israel as far more independent entities.
Finally, it should be noted that it has been several years since I worked for an oil company, and I have no economic or financial interest in oil, shale, or other energy sources; my only interest is as an analyst.
Sternlight
One more thing about shale oil. Much of the _recent_ environmentalist propaganda has been shown to be false. For example the famous “setting the water from the faucet on fire” film has been shown to be unrelated to shale extraction in the area. Current methods of in situ extraction are vastly safer than the old surface extraction, which did have major environmental challenges, including the need for large amounts of water to avoid blowing a fine dust over a wide area.
I do not suggest that such propagandists are in the pay of the Saudis, but to the extent they propagate negative inaccuracies about modern shale oil extraction, they might as well be.
Sternlight
If it is true that the Saudis will switch their ballistic missile procurement to China, Israel will come under increased threat since the U.S. will have neither influence nor overt or covert control of their use. On the other hand the Saudis may extract a price for staying with the U.S. at Israel’s expense; quite a dilemma for Israeli policy makers.
Obama’s release of some of the SPRO (in seeming contravention of both the intent of the program and any tacit agreements with the Saudis) for market calming purposes may be seen as a volley in this exchange. The Saudis are the marginal producer of the marginal producers; first nations get oil domestically (Alaska, the North Sea); next they import from nearest sources (lower transportation costs) and highest quality crude sources (lower refining costs). Only then do they import from OPEC, and the Saudis are the swing producer of OPEC, having the highest reserves. Obama’s release of SPRO oil may be seen as a threat to the Saudis–a small percentage drop in U.S. oil consumption is a big percentage drop in demand seen by the Saudis, Although there isn’t enough in the SPRO to fill all U.S. demand for a long time, there is enough to manipulate the world oil price and demand seen by the Saudis for long enough to be serious. And in one sense the Obama administration, may see current developments as a national security threat quite separate from the economics of higher oil prices, thus justifying this use of the SPRO. For this reason I support such use, though not for economic purposes. (This writer was the Chief Economist of a major international oil company for many years,)
In another sense, the long-term future of Saudi oil is dependent on the Israelis not having the vast shale resources they are claiming, nor an economic extraction method. If the Saudis accept the Israeli assertions, they have only two choices: make peace with Israel (and Jews world-wide) on terms acceptable to Israel, or destroy or conquer Israel. The chances of the former go against fundamental Saudi religious tenets and are unlikely. That may explain the Saudi shift away from the U.S., quite separately from Iranian issues, in preparation for the removal of what they see as this Israeli economic threat.
The natural counter to this would be for the U.S. and Israel to mount a joint emergency program to extract the israeli oil and bring it to market (if it really exists). Evidence appears strong from U.S. experts that it does. This would be the U.S. ace in the hole for relations with the Saudis, and the Israelis wouldn’t mind either.
This would require a major, overt shift in Obama’s policies and behavior toward Israel, which might just be enough to get him re-elected, as in “come home; all is forgiven”.
On the other hand (as Harry Truman once said: “Will no one send me a one-handed economist?”) China is said to be investing massively in arable African land to offset a predicted world food crisis and feed its people. This will, if successful, be a natural outlet for Saudi crude for agricultural production. The Saudi analysts, who are smart people, may be counting on this to offset any longer term US SPRO strategy. It won’t work; the SPRO is now, and there are long lead times to develop an African food export strategy by the Chinese. The Chinese have the patience, but the Saudis will need the money from oil sooner; their government isn’t stable under conditions of poverty.
So it could be a race; the U.S. and Israel should pursue a joint emergency Shale development strategy in both countries; market forces alone may not be able to do it in time.
I write this as an analyst, not as an advocacy for either U.S. political party.
David Sternlight, Ph.D.
Los Angeles
http://www.sternlight.com
Lorenzo,
No question that the US still leads the world as an exporter of military products.
Yet. The US military industry may well be following on the heels or the car and commercial aircraft industry.
Car exports from the US is a minor subject. The commercial aircraft industry was just whopped at the Paris Air show by AIRBUS Industries.
Military aircraft is widely changing in a fashion that would cut deeply into piloted aircraft. The “drone” is a type of aircraft that can be produced by several countries.
That may explain why the F-22 is limited to the US and the F-35 has a diminishing number of buyers.
The Saudis may have concluded to place their long term bets elsewhere.
Saudi Arabia is America’s number one customer for weapons so I think that the U.S. will do everything it can to retain this business. This will include adhering to the Saudi plan or coming very close for Israel and the Palestinians.