Josh Marshall asks why we continue to support the House of Saud. It's a really good question and somewhat borne of the tragic decision to invade Iraq.
A militant Iraq under Saddam Hussein made a natural alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia. We protected the kingdom, they provided us with an energy buffer against rising gas prices. With the defeat of Hussein, the competition moved to Saudi Arabia vs Iran, which took and continues to take the form of proxy wars, like the ones in Syria and Yemen. If you think Ukraine is bad, take a long look at Yemen and see what true ethnic cleansing looks like.
Mohammad bin Salman's leverage over us is that we hate Iran and now Saudi Arabia is a bulwark against Iran.
Frankly, I would love to take advantage of MBS's middle finger to the US and his generally egregious behavior and see if we could pivot towards Iran. Let's get the nuclear deal done, then open up large parts of the Iranian economy, especially oil exports.
Iran is a brutal regime.
So is Saudi Arabia, though, and we have locked ourselves into 1979 for decades. This gives real leverage to Saudi Arabia that they have decided to force upon us at this terrible moment. And for all the awfulness of the Iranian regime, it's really not that worse than Saudi Arabia, except for the pro forma "Death to America" chants at Khomeini's grave.
There are not great options here, but there's no reason to lock ourselves into a reciprocal relationship with Saudi Arabia when it's clearly no longer reciprocal.
No comments:
Post a Comment