King Salman praised Trump in a phone call for his “firm strategy” against Iran.
Saudi Arabia’s reaction to US President Donald Trump’s more confrontational posture toward Tehran was strikingly similar to Israel’s, highlighting the two countries’ common desire for a more determined American effort to counter Iranian influence in the region.
On Saturday, King Salman praised Trump in a phone call for his “firm strategy” against “Iranian aggression and its support for terrorism in the region,” the Saudi Press Agency reported.
“The king praised the Trump administration, which recognizes the magnitude of these challenges and threats and the need for concerted efforts on terrorism and extremism and its primary sponsor, Iran,” the Agency added.
The report followed an announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Friday, also praising Trump for the same reasons, saying the US president “has created an opportunity to fix this bad deal, to roll back Iran’s aggression and to confront its criminal support of terrorism.”
Since Trump’s election, the Saudis had been hoping for a tougher American stand on Tehran, which they view as a great and growing threat to their interests.
In May, the Saudis gathered Islamic leaders for a summit with Trump in Riyadh that highlighted Iran as the epicenter of subversion and terrorism in the region. Trump’s decertification of the nuclear deal, his sanctioning of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and his vow to stand against Iran’s fueling of “conflict, terror and turmoil” are seen by the Saudis as initial crystallization of the more assertive — some would say, aggressive, approach they had hoped for.
The Trump speech was music to the ears of Abdul-Rahman Rashed, former editor-in-chief of the London-based, Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. He echoed Netanyahu’s choice of the word “courageous” to describe Trump’s approach.
“It’s a correct beginning for regional corrections or at least stopping the creeping of Iran,” he wrote of the speech in Asharq al-Awsat Saturday.
“The project of Iran is expansive and it wants to have hegemony over the region. It is not only building its nuclear capability for defensive purposes,” Rashed wrote.
“Iran is waging destructive military wars every day in the region. All of them are expansionist activities,” he added.
In the view of Gabriel Ben-Dor, a Middle East specialist at Haifa University, “what the Saudis want from the US is what we Israelis want: to lean hard on Iran, to make sure they don’t cheat and find ways to bypass the nuclear agreement to develop nuclear weapons — to not allow them to develop long range ballistic missiles unhindered and to confront them on their support of terror and subversion.”
“The Saudis feel that Trump’s assertive speech is a signal that the US is prepared to do something on these three things critical to the Saudi perception of national security. Their view is quite identical to what we Israelis feel about things on the agenda,” Ben-Dor said.
The Saudis are worried about Iranian subversion across the region: in Yemen, where Riyadh has gotten bogged down in its war with Iranian-backed Houthi forces; in Syria, where growing Iranian influence threatens Saudi allies; and in Bahrain, where there are outbreaks of unrest among the Shiite majority.
“These are immediate threats. The nuclear project and long range missiles are not immediate but they are very paramount in the Saudis’ thinking about their future,” Ben-Dor said.
In Ben-Dor’s view, the Saudis do not want to see the US pull out of the nuclear deal entirely. “They don’t see an alternative. If the agreement collapses now without an alternative agreement and without an international coalition subscribing to an agreed upon policy than Iran gets a free hand to continue and develop its own nuclear ambitions more forcefully and without international inspection.”
Rather than it collapsing, the Saudis want the agreement “to have more teeth, a tougher inspection regime and to expand it to include Iran’s missile program.”
While the Saudis are pleased with Trump’s speech as an endorsement of their stress on Iran as the main source of trouble in the region, they must be wondering what comes next, noted Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, a specialist on Arab politics at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.
“On the gut level they’ll say ‘yes, this is a good thing, we’re happy he’s not Obama,’ but when they think it through, they’ll say ‘what does this mean, where is it going to lead to.’ And if it leads to a more aggressive Iranian posture, that’s not something they’d like to see,” he said.
“Trump is dumping this to congress, meanwhile the international community is not supportive. it’s not like Trump can lead a coalition,” Maddy-Weitzman added. “No one knows what American policy will be in the next stage. Given his relations with congress you can’t assume he can dictate to congress a new round of sanctions. Trump’s unpredictability has to leave every leader asking questions, shaking their heads and trying to figure out what’s next.”
@ Michael S:
Yes, you are right, I am, I know that my comment is not about the article, but I posted here because there had been no comments as yet, and wanted to be the first so as to be read. I suppose I have unrealistic expectations about the follow-throughs on the \conference, since 99% of Israel’s often bombastic proposals begin with a huge bang, and then dribble off to un-embarrassed limbo. All talk. Like the one-time “Shadow-Government, supposed to be well on the way in YESHA. Women in Green gave it their support, but it just vanished a lot quicker than it began. Their present Sovereignty push, much more successful, began a few years later.
Hi, Edgar
You seem to be responding to the other OP, about the Jordanian-Opposition-related conference. Meanwhile, concerning the present OP,
“On Saturday, King Salman praised Trump in a phone call for his “firm strategy” against “Iranian aggression and its support for terrorism in the region,” the Saudi Press Agency reported.”
Trump talked with Salman; but also with Hariri, Abdullah II, Erdogan, Sisi and the whole gamut of ME leaders, complimenting all of them. When one leader praises another, therefore, as Salman has done to Trump, I take it with a mountain of salt.
First of all, Salman’s position: It is weak, very weak. Last Spring, he counted Egypt and UAE among his closest allies; but when Iranian ally Iraq called for countries to boycott Kurdistan, Egypt and the UAE were quick to comply, along with Jordan. Moreover, Egypt and the UAE have both followed Iran’s lead, in procuring S-400 missile systems from Russia. Both countries have also shown interest in the French-built MIstral amphibious assault ships that were tailor-made for Russia; and which will naturally require Russian help to get operational.
Egypt and the UAE are sidling over toward the Russians, and by translation, also to Iran. Libya’s Gen. Haftar, another Saudi client, has done the same. In the Saudi vs. Iran proxy war, Iran is winning.
Now, concerning the US, and Trump’s “tough” new policy toward Iran. That policy is so “tough” (not!), that a day after he declared it, Iranian surrogates in Iraq began moving against US interests there — as they have also been doing in Syria, along the Euphrates, with Russian help.
Everything about this Saudi-US conversation speaks of weakness. One thing which MIGHT shock the Egyptians, UAE et al, and Iran itself, into taking the US seriously, would be BIG BOLD action against North Korea. That would probably be President Trump’s best place to start, to reverse this worldwide diplomatic malaise we are in. We just have to wait and see, whether that will happen.
There hasn’t been a single report in Arutz 7 about the Conference, not anywhere else…???
The so-important Conference is well under way right now,and I wholeheartedly wish for the Very Best Results, and subsequent activity along the lines detailed by the organisers of this ground-breaking Convocation.