9/11 links come back to haunt the Saudis

Years ago, at the height of the Arab Spring, I asked Zbigniew Brzezinski about prospects for democracy in Saudi Arabia. The grand old man of muscular American foreign policy — national security adviser to Jimmy Carter and a believer that the US had become “the first truly global power” — looked decidedly unimpressed.

“Democracy, in Saudi Arabia?” he rasped. “How do you know they wouldn’t elect Osama bin Laden?”

We moved on to other topics. America generally does move on to other topics when the subject of Saudi Arabia is raised. Those self-styled “grown-ups” who run US foreign policy regard any serious questioning of the relationship with the desert kingdom as a sign of weakness, pottiness, or childishness.

Of course the Saudis behave badly. Their human rights record is held to be atrocious and their influence around the world can be malign. Of course the relationship between Riyadh and Washington is complex. But, seriously folks: it is what it is. This was a strategically necessary relationship. And still is.

President Obama, Nobel peace prize winner and all-round international do-gooder, has allowed sales of $100 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, which is more than to any other administration. The axis continues. End of discussion.

Until this week. A decision taken by Congress to override a presidential veto on a bill giving the US courts the power to hear cases against foreign governments accused of terrorism in the US sounds like a piece of arcane procedural business, but is actually, potentially, one of the most far-reaching foreign policy reverses that America’s “grown-ups” have ever received.

And the implications, the ramifications, are only beginning to be grasped. Mr Obama, a “grown-up” himself of course, invested everything he had in stopping it but in a stunning reverse, the only one of his nearly eight-year presidency, he was defeated and his veto was overturned.

The Saudis may be facing the humiliation of a prosecution for terrorism. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act has been supported by many 9/11 families and Congress, in an election year and near the 15th anniversary of the attacks, did not have the stomach to say no.

There is also genuine and cross-party annoyance that the allegations about the role of Saudi government officials in 9/11 were never allowed to be properly and publicly aired.

This summer the Obama administration tried to put the whole thing to bed by publishing a much-discussed missing 28 pages of declassified material from the 9/11 commission. The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Abdullah al Saud, put a brave face on it: “We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States.”

Well, up to a point. The trouble with the 28 pages is that they fizz with titbits of information that could be soothingly explained away if you were of a soothing disposition but could be a jolt of energy if you are conspiracy-minded. They really settle nothing.

The Saudi military campaign in Yemen has added to the poison of recent months and — in another sign of a relationship that’s on the turn — has led to a highly unusual bipartisan congressional attempt to ban a sale of new tanks to replace those damaged in the campaign.

Good old John McCain might have sniffed on behalf of the “grown-ups” that the anti-Saudi agitators “had a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire Middle East”, but it’s tougher now to make the old case that the Saudis are just the Saudis and the relationship is the relationship.

So what now? John Brennan, the CIA director, is clear: he says the court action sanctioned by Congress “will have grave implications for the national security of the United States”. Mr Brennan’s fear is that the two nations could drift apart. It will begin with money: the risk is that the Saudis make a serious effort to unwind at least some of the commercial and investment relationship that sees so much Saudi cash held in dollar assets, including US treasury bonds.

A threat to divest is not just bluster. If a court case goes ahead against the Saudi government and individuals, there must be a real risk of asset freezes: wise Saudis might feel that their money is safer in London.

And then, inexorably, all the talk of divestment on the commercial front would begin to change the wider relationship, including intelligence co-operation. “Saudi Arabia will not stop sharing information with the US or anybody else,” Saad Alsubaie, a Saudi academic and fellow at the Washington-based National Council on US-Arab Relations told the Wall Street Journal recently. “But counterterrorism is not just about that. It’s an investment that needs mutual trust in order to grow.”

The problem for the Saudis, and the opportunity for their critics, is that all of this happens against a background of an unprecedented ability for the US — via fracking — to produce its own oil. And the emergence, via Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, of politicians keen to tear up all the old certainties at home and abroad. Trump’s view of the Saudi relationship is uncompromising: “We get nothing for it and they’re making a billion dollars a day.”

Oh dear. The “grown-ups” might roll their eyes, but however crude the Trump portrait is, for many Americans he is not wholly wrong. A special relationship — a proper one, not the silly British version — may be heading for the rocks.

Justin Webb, a British journalist.

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