* Upset Saudis hint at building ties with other powers
* But U.S. is only ally that can protect Saudi oil fields
* Pursuing nuclear weapons would bring isolation – analyst
* Riyadh working closely with Paris on Iran, Syria
By Angus McDowall
RIYADH, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia seems to have few
viable options for pursuing a more independent and forthright
foreign policy, despite its deep unease about the West’s
tentative rapprochement with Iran.
Upset with the United States, senior Saudis have hinted at a
range of possibilities, from building strategic relations with
other world powers to pushing a tougher line against Iranian
allies in the Arab world and, if world powers fail to foil
Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, even seeking its own atomic bomb.
But alternative powers are hard even to contemplate for a
nation that has been a staunch U.S. ally for decades. Russia is
on the opposite side to Riyadh over the Syrian war and China’s
military clout remains modest compared with the United States’.
Robert Jordan, U.S. ambassador to Riyadh from 2001-03, said
there would be limits to any Saudi alliances with other powers.
“There is no country in the world more capable of providing
the protection of their oil fields, and their economy, than the
U.S., and the Saudis are aware of that. We’re not going to see
them jump out of that orbit,” he told Reuters.
While Jordan was a senior diplomat in the administration of
President George W. Bush, some Saudi analysts also say the
kingdom is well aware of what major foreign policy shifts would
involve – particularly any pursuit of nuclear weapons.
This could end up casting Saudi Arabia as the international
villain, rather than its regional arch-rival Iran, and Riyadh
has no appetite for the kind of isolation that has forced Tehran
to the negotiating table.
“Saudi Arabia doesn’t need to become a second Iran,” said a
Saudi analyst close to official thinking. “It would be a total
reversal of our traditional behaviour, of being a reliable
member of the international community that promotes strategic
stability and stabilises oil markets.”
Diplomatic sources and analysts in the Gulf say the kingdom,
while unsettled, will not risk a breach in relations with its
main non-Arab ally and will explore, however warily, a purely
diplomatic response to the Iranian opening.
Top Saudis are nevertheless furious with Washington. Senior
U.S. officials held secret bilateral talks with Iranian
counterparts for months to prepare for last month’s interim
nuclear agreement between six world powers and Tehran, raising
Gulf Arab rulers’ fears that Washington is willing to go behind
their backs to do a deal with Iran.
Saudi leaders were taken unawares by the content of the deal
that was struck in the early hours of Nov. 24, despite an
earlier promise by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to keep
them informed of developments, diplomatic sources in the Gulf
said.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said Kerry
had been in close contact with his counterparts throughout the
two rounds of negotiations in Geneva, and had talked to Foreign
Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Nov. 25.
“The agreement was reached in the middle of the night and
Secretary Kerry spoke with the Saudi Foreign Minister soon
afterward,” said the official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
The agreement offers Tehran relief from sanctions that are
strangling its economy, in return for more oversight of its
nuclear programme. Riyadh, along with its Western allies, fears
this is aimed at producing weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif suggested on
Sunday the deal should not be seen as a threat. “This agreement
cannot be at the expense of any country in the region,” he told
reporters in Kuwait. “We look at Saudi Arabia as an important
and influential regional country and we are working to
strengthen cooperation with it for the benefit of the region.”
Diplomatic sources in the Gulf say Riyadh is nervous that
the deal will ease pressure on Tehran, allowing it more room to
damage Saudi interests elsewhere in the Middle East.
The conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom is at odds with Iran’s
revolutionary Shi’ite leaders in struggles across the Arab
world, including in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen.
Most of all, Riyadh sees Iran’s open support for Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad in fighting a rebellion backed by Gulf
states as a foreign occupation of Arab lands.
Two Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders have been killed
in Syria this year, and rebels have also said Iranian fighters
are on the ground, although it is unclear whether they are there
in any great numbers. The Lebanese Shi’ite movement Hezbollah,
which is allied to Tehran, has also sent fighters to help
Assad’s forces, although these are Arabs.
BOLD DECLARATIONS
Riyadh has expressed lukewarm support for the nuclear deal,
couched alongside caveats that it was a “first step” and that a
more comprehensive solution required “good will”.
But some prominent Saudis have made bold declarations that
Riyadh will develop a tough new foreign policy, defending its
interests in keeping with its status as the richest Arab state
and birthplace of Islam.
Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi ambassador to London,
told The Times newspaper that “all options are available” to
Riyadh, including seeking its own atomic weapon, if Iran managed
to build the bomb.
But diplomatic sources in the Gulf and analysts close to
Saudi thinking say the main problem in turning such rhetoric
into action is the lack on an obvious replacement for the U.S.
security umbrella in the Gulf, or for the American military’s
role in advising, arming and assisting the Saudi armed forces.
“There’ll be more contact with the Russians and Chinese than
in the past. They’ve gone elsewhere for weapons before and we’ll
see some more of that, but the overall environment will be
America-centric,” said Jordan.
A Western adviser to Gulf countries on geopolitical issues
said senior Saudis have looked at ways of reducing the kingdom’s
long-term reliance on the United States.
France is one option, albeit one that remains firmly in the
Western camp notwithstanding past differences with NATO allies.
Riyadh has worked closely with Paris in recent months on
both Syrian and Iranian issues, and has awarded it big naval
contracts. That said, the Saudi armed forces and economy are so
closely tied to the United States that any serious attempt to
disengage over the longer term would be prohibitively costly and
difficult, diplomatic sources in the Gulf say.
Washington remains much closer to Riyadh on every Middle
Eastern issue than any other world power at present except
France, which has taken a hard line on Iran.
In Syria – the issue over which there is the greatest
disagreement between Riyadh and Washington, the kingdom is
already arming and training some rebel groups which the United
States, wary about arming jihadists, views with caution.
Diplomatic sources in the Gulf say these efforts will
continue and may expand, but logistical challenges will hinder
any rapid attempt to increase training much beyond the thousand
or so rebels now working in Jordan with Saudi special forces.
Riyadh’s own fears of an Islamist backlash, reinforced by a
bombing campaign inside the country in the last decade, prevent
it from arming more militant groups with ties to al Qaeda.
The sources say Saudi Arabia still relies on a lot of
support from Western allies for command and control expertise,
and would find it very difficult to build its own coalition of
Arab allies to join forces in a military campaign.
The kingdom and its five closest regional friends, the other
members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, have been unable to
agree on a shared missile defence shield after years of
discussions, they note.
THE SAUDI BOMB
Prince Mohammed’s warnings on the possibility of seeking a
nuclear bomb have previously been voiced by other top Saudis,
including former intelligence minister Prince Turki al-Faisal.
But on closer inspection this looks less like a serious
statement of intent and more like an attempt to nudge world
powers into being tougher on Iran by raising the spectre of an
atomic arms race in the Middle East, where Israel is already
widely presumed to have nuclear weapons.
The analyst close to official thinking suggested that
actively seeking nuclear arms would backfire, making Riyadh the
proliferator of mass destruction weapons instead of Iran.
Media commentators have speculated the kingdom could obtain
an atomic bomb from its nuclear-armed friend Pakistan, or on the
arms market. But the analyst said it would never place itself in
the position of being an international outcast like Iraq under
Saddam Hussein and more recently Tehran.
“Iraq did it. Iran did it. Saudi Arabia would never do this
type of behaviour,” he said.
Saudi Arabia is in the very early stages of planning an
atomic power programme, and has signed up to the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty and a more rigorous safeguarding
protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Any attempt to build a bomb in secret would probably take
decades due to the kingdom’s current lack of any nuclear
technology, expertise or materials, analysts believe.
Even if it were to attempt to short cut that process by, for
example, buying an off-the-peg atomic weapons system from
Pakistan – a transaction itself fraught with difficulties – the
obstacles would be formidable.
“There’s a lot of infrastructure to put in place, to make
the threat credible and deliverable. It’s not clear to me that
Saudi Arabia would be able to do that in short order at all,”
said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and nuclear proliferation expert.
Such an effort would also incur a massive price in
diplomatic and economic relations with other countries, notably
the United States. The Saudi economy, reliant on oil exports and
the import of many goods and services from overseas, appears ill
suited to withstand such pressures.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean in Dubai, Arshad
Mohammed in Washington, Mahmoud Harby in Kuwait and Dominic
Evans in Beirut; editing by David Stamp)
