Follow us on social

Mohammad_bin_salman_october_2019

Hedging Saudi bets: Iran looms, Israel beckons, and Taliban cause goosebumps

Some analysts have noted that Saudi Arabia was absent among the Gulf states that helped the United States with evacuations from Afghanistan.

Analysis | Middle East

Prince Khalid bin Salman may not have planned it that way but the timing of his visit to Moscow last week and message to Washington resounded loud and clear.

The Saudi deputy defence minister was signalling by not postponing the visit that he was trying to hedge the kingdom’s bets by signing a defence cooperation agreement with Russia as the United States fumbled to evacuate thousands from Afghanistan after Kabul was captured by the Taliban.

Saudi Arabia would have wanted to be seen to be hedging its bets with and without the US debacle. The kingdom, moreover, realizes that Russia will exploit opportunities created by the fiasco but is neither willing nor capable to replace the United States as the Gulf’s security guarantor.

Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia likely wants to capitalize on jitters in the United States as Washington tries to get a grip on what went wrong and come to terms with the fact that the Central Asian country will again be governed by the very religious militants it ousted from power 20 years ago because they allowed Al Qaeda to plan its 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda, alongside various other militant groups, still has a presence in Afghanistan. The Taliban insist that no one will be allowed to operate cross-border or plan and/or launch attacks on other countries from Afghan soil.

Yet, the willingness to exploit US discomfort may also signal jitters in Riyadh. The US withdrawal raises questions about US reliability when it comes to the defence of the kingdom and the Gulf, undermines confidence in US negotiation of a revival of the Iranian nuclear accord if and when talks start again, and raises the spectre of Afghanistan becoming a battlefield in the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran despite both sides seeking to dial down tension.

Middle East scholar Neill Quilliam argues that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has increased its influence among the Taliban at the expense of the Saudis who backed away from the group in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The kingdom and the Taliban’s paths further diverged with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman liberalizing once shared ultra-conservative social mores while Afghanistan appears set to reintroduce them.

“The Taliban leadership will likely begin a campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the Al Saud and appeal directly to the Saudi population to challenge the ruling family’s authority. At the same time, the Saudi leadership will be keen to align policy with the US and its Western partners and will follow their lead in establishing diplomatic relations with the new Afghan government and providing aid to the country’s population,” Mr. Quilliam predicted.

Mr. Quilliam’s analysis assumes that reduced Saudi interaction and closer Iranian ties with the Taliban means that the group’s inclinations would lean more towards Tehran than Riyadh.

In a similar vein, some analysts have noted that Saudi Arabia was absent among the Gulf states that helped the United States and European countries with evacuations from Afghanistan. Instead, it sent its deputy defence minister to Moscow.

Others suggested that Saudi Arabia chose to remain on the sidelines and hedge its bets given its past history with the Taliban. Saudi Arabia was until 2001 a major influence among Afghan jihadists that it funded during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s and one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban government when it first gained power in 1996.

Fifteen of the 19 perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were Saudi nationals. By then, Saudi influence had already waned as was evident in the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden before 9/11. 

If proven correct, Mr. Quilliam’s prediction would amount to a break with the Taliban record of not operating beyond Afghanistan’s borders except Pakistan, even though it tolerates Al Qaeda and others on territory it controls. Moreover, despite being strange bedfellows, the need to accommodate one another is unlikely to persuade the Taliban to do Iran’s bidding.

“Iran has tried to increase its influence within the group by getting closer to certain factions, but it is still suspicious of the Taliban as a whole,” said Iran and Afghanistan scholar Fatemeh Aman.

Moreover, the Taliban may want to steer clear of the Iranian-Saudi rivalry, particularly if those that believe that US unreliability as demonstrated in Afghanistan leaves the kingdom no choice but to escalate the war in Yemen and confront the Islamic republic more forcefully get their way.

"We should take a lesson from the events in Afghanistan, and especially from the mistakes [that were made there], regarding Yemen. This is the time to crush the Houthis without considering the international forces… Giving Israel a free hand regarding the Iranian nuclear issue has become a reasonable (option)… It seems like (Israel's) extremist (former prime minister) Netanyahu, was right to avoid coordinating with the (Biden) administration, which he considered weak and failing,” said Saudi columnist Safouq Al-Shammari, echoing voices of multiple commentators in the Saudi media.

Mr. Al-Shammari’s notions fit into Crown Prince Mohammed’s effort to replace the religious core of Saudi identity with hyper-nationalism. They also stroke with thinking among more conservative Israeli analysts and retired military officers.

In Mr. Al-Shammari’s vein, former Israeli Corps and Israel Defense Force (IDF) Military Colleges commander Maj. General (res.) Gershon Hacohen walked away from the US debacle in Afghanistan warning that “for all its overwhelming material and technological superiority, the IDF stands no chance of defeating Israel’s Islamist enemies unless its soldiers are driven by a relentless belief in the national cause.”

By the same token, Maj. General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a former national security advisor and head of military intelligence research, argued that the US withdrawal would drive home to the Gulf states the proposition that an “open relationship with Israel is vitally important for their ability to defend themselves.”

Mr. Amidror went on to say that Israel could not replace the US as the region’s security guarantor “but together with Israel these countries will be able to build a regional scheme that will make it easier for them to contend with various threats.”

By implication, Mr. Amidror was urging the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain which last year established diplomatic relations with Israel to forge closer security cooperation with the Jewish state and suggesting that Saudi Arabia may be in the wake of Afghanistan more inclined to build formal ties with Israel.

While there is little doubt that Prince Mohammed would like to have an open relationship with Israel, it is equally possible that the victory of religious militants in Afghanistan will reinforce Saudi hesitancy to cross the Rubicon at the risk of sparking widespread criticism in the Muslim world.

This article has been republished with permission from The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.


Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Russia, October 9, 2019. (www.kremlin.ru)
Analysis | Middle East
Recep Tayyip Erdogan Benjamin Netanyahu
Top photo credit: President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Shutterstock/ Mustafa Kirazli) and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Salty View/Shutterstock)
Is Turkey's big break with Israel for real?

Why Israel is now turning its sights on Turkey

Middle East

As the distribution of power shifts in the region, with Iran losing relative power and Israel and Turkey emerging on top, an intensified rivalry between Tel Aviv and Ankara is not a question of if, but how. It is not a question of whether they choose the rivalry, but how they choose to react to it: through confrontation or peaceful management.

As I describe in Treacherous Alliance, a similar situation emerged after the end of the Cold War: The collapse of the Soviet Union dramatically changed the global distribution of power, and the defeat of Saddam's Iraq in the Persian Gulf War reshuffled the regional geopolitical deck. A nascent bipolar regional structure took shape with Iran and Israel emerging as the two main powers with no effective buffer between them (since Iraq had been defeated). The Israelis acted on this first, inverting the strategy that had guided them for the previous decades: The Doctrine of the Periphery. According to this doctrine, Israel would build alliances with the non-Arab states in its periphery (Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia) to balance the Arab powers in its vicinity (Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, respectively).

keep readingShow less
Havana, Cuba
Top Image Credit: Havana, Cuba, 2019. (CLWphoto/Shutterstock)

Trump lifted sanctions on Syria. Now do Cuba.

North America

President Trump’s new National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) on Cuba, announced on June 30, reaffirms the policy of sanctions and hostility he articulated at the start of his first term in office. In fact, the new NSPM is almost identical to the old one.

The policy’s stated purpose is to “improve human rights, encourage the rule of law, foster free markets and free enterprise, and promote democracy” by restricting financial flows to the Cuban government. It reaffirms Trump’s support for the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which explicitly requires regime change — that Cuba become a multiparty democracy with a free market economy (among other conditions) before the U.S. embargo will be lifted.

keep readingShow less
SPD Germany Ukraine
Top Photo: Lars Klingbeil (l-r, SPD), Federal Minister of Finance, Vice-Chancellor and SPD Federal Chairman, and Bärbel Bas (SPD), Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs and SPD Party Chairwoman, bid farewell to the members of the previous Federal Cabinet Olaf Scholz (SPD), former Federal Chancellor, Nancy Faeser, Saskia Esken, SPD Federal Chairwoman, Karl Lauterbach, Svenja Schulze and Hubertus Heil at the SPD Federal Party Conference. At the party conference, the SPD intends to elect a new executive committee and initiate a program process. Kay Nietfeld/dpa via Reuters Connect

Does Germany’s ruling coalition have a peace problem?

Europe

Surfacing a long-dormant intra-party conflict, the Friedenskreise (peace circles) within the Social Democratic Party of Germany has published a “Manifesto on Securing Peace in Europe” in a stark challenge to the rearmament line taken by the SPD leaders governing in coalition with the conservative CDU-CSU under Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Although the Manifesto clearly does not have broad support in the SPD, the party’s leader, Deputy Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, won only 64% support from the June 28-29 party conference for his performance so far, a much weaker endorsement than anticipated. The views of the party’s peace camp may be part of the explanation.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.