Juan Cole: Saudi King Channels John McCain, Demands Obama Take Hard Line on Iran, Syria, Muslim Brotherhood - Juan Cole - Truthdig

Juan Cole: Saudi King Channels John McCain, Demands Obama Take Hard Line on Iran, Syria, Muslim Brotherhood - Juan Cole - Truthdig

President Barack Obama met late Friday with King Abdullah b. Abd
al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia at the latter’s desert camp, flying out from
Riyadh by helicopter.

The tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States have come
about in part because Riyadh, after being skittish about George W.
Bush’s muscular Neoconservatism in the region, has now swung around and
adopted a set of foreign policy stances far closer to those of the
Republican Party in the US than to the Obama administration.  Given that
Saudi Arabia is a deeply conservative, religious state based almost
entirely on the petroleum industry, it is no accident that it is a Red
State in American political terms.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia a decade ago worked against Bush’s
refusal to talk to the Iranians, calling that country’s president and
foreign minister to Riyadh.  But despite an Iranian overture to the
Saudis since the election of current President Hassan Rouhani, the king
and his closest advisers are against Obama’s attempt to get a deal with
Iran that would let Tehran enrich uranium to low levels for nuclear
fuel.  Like the Israelis, the Saudis want the US to push Iran into
closing down its nuclear enrichment program (which Iran maintains is for
peaceful civilian energy purposes) altogether.  This goal is of course
impossible to achieve without an invasion and occupation of Iran by the
US, which is not going to happen while Obama is in office.

 

 

    A caricature of King Abdullah by Donkey Hotey. DonkeyHotey (CC BY 2.0)