Over the past two years, Saudi Arabia has been trying to play a very active role in Arab politics. In recent weeks, this role has become even more visible and more aggressive. Last week, on two different occasions, Saudi Arabia went as far as to challenge its international ally — the US — over the crisis in Egypt. In a rare public foreign-policy statement read out last Friday on Saudi television, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz declared that what was happening in Egypt was an Arab affair. “Let it be known to those who interfered in Egypt’s internal affairs that they themselves are fanning the fire of sedition and are promoting the terrorism which they call for fighting,” he declared, without mentioning any country by name.
Clearly, the King, who became the most prominent supporter of Egypt’s military generals in their clash with Egypt’s Islamic movement, was referring to the US. The Barack Obama administration last week cancelled a planned joint military exercise with Egypt to protest the Egyptian government’s crackdown on sit-ins by the Muslim Brotherhood. The US has urged curbing the violence between Islamists and Egypt’s government, while stopping short of threatening to cut off military aid to the country. Criticising the army crackdown, as Obama has done, only helps the “terrorists,” the king argued.
In Paris, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal said that his country was ready to step in to help Egypt if western countries cut foreign aid over the government’s crackdown on supporters of ousted president Mohammad Mursi. “To those who have announced they are cutting their aid to Egypt, or threatening to do that, (we say that) Arab and Muslim nations are rich ... and will not hesitate to help Egypt,” Al Faisal said, according to the Saudi state news agency, SPA. The Saudis were early supporters of the military in Cairo and have rallied their Gulf allies, Kuwait and the UAE, to promise $12 billion (Dh44.13 billion) in aid to the military government that has ousted Muslim Brotherhood.
Indeed, the Saudis do not want an open break with Washington, so their critique was indirect, but they do not seem either willing to tolerate any action by the Obama administration that may undercut their position in their confrontation with both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, which described the Army’s August 14 assault on Islamist protesters in Cairo a “massacre”.
In Syria too, Saudi Arabia is leading the efforts to undermine the Bashar Al Assad regime, both militarily and diplomatically. Riyadh has financed a large purchase of infantry weapons and quietly funnelled them to anti-regime fighters in Syria in a drive to break the bloody stalemate that has allowed Al Assad to cling to power. During a rare visit to Moscow last month, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Secretary General of the National Security Council and head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, attempted to buy off Russian support for the Syrian regime. According to Reuters, Bandar proposed that Saudi Arabia buy $15 billion of weapons from Russia and invest “considerably in the country”. The Saudi prince also reassured Russian President Vladimir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Al Assad, it will not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports. There was no deal with the Russians, but the offer showed that Saudi Arabia has become the key actor in the Syrian crisis.
In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is seeking to inherit Syria’s role, which began in the 1970s and lasted until Syrian troops withdrew from the country following accusations that Syria was behind prime minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005. During the last few years, Lebanon has become akin to a mirror of the sometimes intimate and other times strained relationship between Riyadh and Damascus. The last harmonious period Syria and Saudi Arabia had in Lebanon occurred following King Abdullah’s initiative aimed at reconciling with Al Assad at the 2008 Arab Economic Summit in Kuwait. This led to the Lebanese adopting the term S-S to describe the Syrian-Saudi accord which led to Lebanon enjoying a period of political calm and the formation of a national unity government. That accord is now history and the calm which accompanied it no longer exists. Saudi Arabia is intent now on not allowing Hezbollah to control the country and continue to provide support to the Al Assad regime in Damascus.
In Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia is doing what it did in Bahrain and Yemen earlier — preventing its regional competitors from taking advantage of its traditionally passive and low-profile foreign policy. During the course of the Arab revolutions, Riyadh’s quiet diplomacy had to change. This new trend in Saudi foreign policy will most probably shift the flow of events in the entire region.
Dr Marwan Kabalan is the Dean of the Faculty of International Relations and Diplomacy at the University of Kalamoon, Damascus.
