Saudi rapprochement with Iran is an exercise in buying time

Financial Times- March 15th 2023

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The writer is author of ‘Black Wave’ In a 2016 interview with The Atlantic Magazine, President Barack Obama, who had recently signed a historic nuclear deal with Tehran, urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to likewise overcome their differences and find “an effective way to share the neighbourhood and institute some sort of cold peace.” Saudi Arabia was incensed. Its arch enemy, Iran, was on the ascent, Sana’a had fallen into the hands of Houthi rebels in 2014 and a year later, Saudi Arabia was at war, its soldiers dying on the border with Yemen. Washington had previously suggested that to contain Tehran, Gulf countries should ramp up their own asymmetric challenge to its influence in the region. So, it was striking, following Beijing’s announcement of a return to normal ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, to read Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan’s tweet, stating that countries in the region “share one fate, the same attributes” which makes co-operation essential for prosperity and stability. Someone, somewhere in Washington is thinking, “I told you so”. Saudi Arabia has a few “I told you so’s” for Joe Biden, including on energy markets. Fearful of a rise in oil prices, the White House was furious when the kingdom led Opec’s decision to cut oil production in October — but prices remained stable. After a few years of bombast and adventurism, from the devastating war in Yemen to the futile embargo on Qatar, the kingdom appears to be returning to the more measured pragmatism that once defined Saudi foreign policy. At the same time, it is engaging in what Emile Hokayem at the International Institute for Strategic Studies describes as “extreme balancing”. Last month, Prince Faisal became the first Arab official to visit Ukraine since the war started, which went down well in Washington. Then he visited Russia. In December, Riyadh hosted the first ever China-Gulf Co-operation Council meeting. This week, Boeing announced a deal with Riyadh worth around $37bn of jets. The resumption of diplomatic ties between Tehran and Riyadh happened just as the kingdom was reportedly setting out its conditions for normalising relations with Israel, including security guarantees and US nuclear assistance. After two years of talks shepherded by Iraq and Oman, the Beijing deal was brought about by untenable levels of tension and Iranian threats that risked undermining the kingdom’s economic growth. Late last year, a senior Saudi official told me they were clear-eyed about the staying power of any agreement, but they had no choice but to engage. Saudi Arabia is thus buying time and carving out breathing space. Despite the hyperbolic reactions, we’ve been here before. After deadly riots in Mecca by Iranian pilgrims in 1987, Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Riyadh and Tehran bonded over a shared enemy and announced they were restoring diplomatic relations. This began more than a decade of detente. The Saudis were so eager to maintain the rapprochement that they dragged their feet in co-operating with the FBI to investigate the 1996 al-Khobar bombing, in which Iran had been implicated. Meanwhile, the US fretted that Riyadh was undermining their efforts to isolate Iran. This time, Tehran is as keen as ever to end its isolation and gain legitimacy at home. But everything else is different. The agreement with Saudi Arabia will not bring wider acceptance for Iran while its centrifuges are spinning, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made clear he will not be taken in by Tehran’s promises. It was during the rapprochement that Iran built its nuclear programme and the Revolutionary Guards expanded their influence across the region. While the choice of China as mediator might be seen as a poke in the eye for the US, Beijing was the only possible guarantor with sufficient leverage. Despite some initial anxiety about China’s role, Washington is taking a pragmatic view. A senior US official told me: “We’ll take it. It’s a positive.” He added that if the White House had managed relations better, “the Saudis would have come to us sooner to let us know this was under way, instead of giving us a 24-hour heads up.” Now is the time to focus on managing that relationship to make sure the US doesn’t cede further ground in the Middle East. National security adviser Jake Sullivan recently said that the cold war analogy of opposing blocs is no longer relevant: “Countries don’t want to choose, and we don’t want them to.” How Washington builds on Riyadh’s latest move will be a test of this approach. Meanwhile, the Saudi official told me the kingdom is evolving from a regional powerhouse to a global player. That may well be the ambition — but the kingdom’s balancing act will soon be put through the region’s wringer.

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