Beirut Before its unification, Saudi Arabia faced British threats chiefly from Iraqi territories under their control, even if suzerainty was then enjoyed by the Ottoman Empire. At a time when Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud consolidated his control over the Arabian Peninsula, and partly to settle other territorial disputes, the founder monarch accepted unilaterally established boundaries for Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait in 1922. Still, and although the Hashemites were empowered to rule in Iraq—and Jordan—the Saudis shared, or so they reasoned, identical monarchical aspirations with their adversaries. Over time, working relations were forged though fresh realignments like the Baghdad Pact added volatility to their ties.
Saudi leaders were “shocked” when they learned that a fellow monarch, King Faysal II, was murdered in Iraq in 1958. To make matters worse, the coup orchestrated by Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qasim, reversed the country’s pro-Western orientation, who withdrew from the Baghdad Pact and threatened to remove from power all Arab Gulf monarchies. Qasim even proposed to carve up the Kingdom into smaller entities, declared Kuwait to be an integral part of its territory in 1961, which led to a British military expedition that was followed by a League of Arab States peacekeeping force under the leadership of a Saudi commander.
What followed were carefully calibrated policies even if Saudis were irritated by Kuwait after the Al Sabah signed an important security agreement with Qasim’s successor, Colonel Abdul Salaam Arif on October 4, 1963, which essentially meant that Kuwait acquiesced to an anti-monarchical regime. Earlier, Riyadh perceived the February 1963 Qasim assassination at the hands of a group of Iraqi “Free Officers” as a further sign of instability, which proved correct when new regime collapsed in November 1963 following another coup. Iraqi calls to support Saudi Ba‘athists rose, as regular broadcasts lambasted Saudi leaders, which further poisoned the atmosphere.
Still, the two countries maintained cordial ties, but disagreed in 1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OAPEC) decided to impose an embargo on the United States and the Netherlands. After Washington authorized a military air-bridge to Israel at the height of the Arab-Israeli war, Iraq refused to impose the OAPEC directive, as most of the Arab World watched a massive internal blood-letting inside Iraq that brought Saddam Hussain to power in 1979.
In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, Riyadh feared the mullah’s ideological zeal, especially after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini targeted the Al Saud ruling family as usurpers of power. When Baghdad launched its blitzkrieg against Iran on August 22, 1980, Saudi Arabia was hesitant at first, apprehensive that an Iraqi victory would lead to the emergence of a true rival. As the Iran–Iraq War dragged over several years, Saudi leaders joined other Gulf supporters and granted Baghdad significant financial assistance, estimated by some sources to have reached $20 billion between September 1980 and May 1982 alone. The logic then was to weaken both regional hegemons.
Saddam Hussain’s military failures seldom quenched his needs for additional aid, with the Iraqi strongman boasting that he was fighting a Sunni “Qadissiyah” [holy war] against Shiites. Ties between Riyadh and Baghdad deteriorated significantly after the August 1, 1990 Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, as Iraqi forces quickly deployed along Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia and even threatened to invade the oil-rich Eastern Province. A massive international military force assembled in the Kingdom and, in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, which liberated the Shaykhdom on February 15, 1991, Riyadh expressed a sigh of relief. The war cost Saudi Arabia over $50 billion though Saddam Hussain was still in power.
It was not long before Saudi-Iraqi political differences re-emerged as Hussain reiterated unfounded claims that the conservative Arab Gulf monarchies “stabbed Baghdad in the back,” allegedly by over producing oil that flooded markets and reduced prices, which further crippled Iraq economically.
Everything changed after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and while Saddam Hussain was not involved in these terrorist acts, it was not long before the Bush/Cheney Administration targeted him as a foe. Saudi Arabia did not back the US-led Western invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, preferring to take a position of neutrality. In fact, it refused US military use of its territory as a launching pad for the invasion of Iraq, though US search and rescue forces were stationed at the strategically located Hafr Al Batin air base near the Iraqi border.
Officially, Saudi Arabia wished to see Saddam Hussain and the Ba‘ath regime defeated, even if it was equally concerned with a putative pro-Iranian Shiite government coming to power in Baghdad. Beyond such apprehensions, Riyadh backed the political institutions that emerged in the post-Saddam Hussain era, with King Abdallah bin Abdul Aziz anxious to see a semblance of order restored in Baghdad. He welcome Prime Minister Eyad Allawi and even his successor Nouri Al Maliki, though he lost confidence in the latter after the Iraqi adopted what amounted to sectarian policies that discriminated against Sunnis. Indeed, the Saudi monarch expressed his complete lack of trust in Al Maliki and apparently told John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism adviser who visited him in 2010, that he saw little hope for improved Saudi-Iraqi relations as long as Al Maliki remained in office. The Saudi monarch apparently confided to an Iraqi official: “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man [Al Maliki] is not,” a sentiment that was reciprocated as the Iraqi premier repeatedly attacked Saudi leaders in public.
On Tuesday, an official statement issued in the Prime Minister’s name in Baghdad alleged that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were “responsible for supporting these groups [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and others] financially and morally and for its outcome—which included crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the destruction of Iraqi state institutions and historic and religious sites.” This was not the first time that the Iraqi Prime Minister blamed Saudi Arabia for supporting militants, although the language used—genocide—was unprecedented. In early March 2014, he accused Riyadh and Doha from openly funding Sunni insurgents in Anbar Province, which was one of many similar charges that stretched over the years. As Al Maliki’s army lost ground to Isil, Baghdad called on Washington to launch air strikes against extremist targets, even if US military options were very limited. For his part, President Barack Obama authorized several hundred US troops to be deployed into Baghdad to defend the 5,500-strong American embassy, and may well be considering demands for air attacks to halt sweeping advances on the ground, although he remained reluctant to recommit his country in what appeared to be the first chapter of a civil war in Iraq. Even potential Hezbollah and/or Iranian military deployments in Iraq may not secure such interventions simply because Washington lacked the appetite to be involved in a new regional conflict in the Middle East. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia hosted an emergency League of Arab States foreign ministers meeting to assess what options existed to stop Isil gains, encourage reconciliation, and usher in a new power-sharing formula in Iraq. This was the second meeting in less than a week. Interestingly, League Vice Chairman Ahmed Ben Helli declared last Sunday: “What is happening in Iraq now is not only a threat to Arab security but to regional security as a whole. The regional safety is threatened. Our minds are set but there has to be agreement and careful studying of all aspects to the problem when it comes to standing by Iraq at this current phase.” It was unclear whether Thursday’s meeting would issue a similarly vague statement.
