Can counseling save 80 year marriage?
Riyadh and Washington
It turns out 2025 commemorates the anniversaries many pathbreaking events in history. Most obvious of course is the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II. But other comparably important events also occurred that year and in many other years ending in a “5”.
This coming Friday, 14 February, marks the beginning of nine decades’ of standing through thick and thin between the Washington and Riyadh since Franklin Roosevelt sailed with King Ibn Saud aboard USS Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake of Egypt. FDR, in what turned out to be the final foreign voyage after his meetings with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, committed to supporting the Saud kingdom in exchange for guaranteed access to that black sludge under the Arabian peninsula, a substance over which so many words and wars have unfolded since.
Like so many moves he made during that final year of his life, FDR envisioned a post-war world decidedly different from the one in place in 1939 when war broke out in Europe. The endstate FDR tried to arrange hinged on a new, U.S.-conceptualized and created multinational system (the United Nations and its associated agencies, headquartered in New York where we could watch it closely) under five co-equal great powers (each holding the U.N. Security Council veto), espousing free trade, and establishing coveted bilateral relationships to assure access to necessary commodities (Saudi Arabia and Iran under the Pahlavi Shahs as prime examples). Between the U.N. system and rebuilding both Germany and Japan under U.S. occupation, the United States would establish its logic for the global system to prevent the recurrence of another massive conflict.
Saudi Arabia was a young government, crafted largely by the father of the al-Saud dynasty who cobbled together the disparate parts of a relatively empty land containing the two holiest cities in Islam. Well into this patriarch’s life, geologists finally discovered petroleum under the Saudi sands in 1938, assuring this inhospitable peninsula would be relevant to the modern world. With the second greatest concentration of proven reserves behind Venezuela, Saudi Arabia offered an important partnership for FDR to establish.
U.S. and Saudi interests attempt to focus on the former’s need for oil while the latter covets protection in a somewhat rough neighborhood. FDR saw this as a reasonable deal as has each U.S. president since, to one degree or another.
The founding of Israel at the end of the British Mandate created a fly in the ointment, however, as the third holiest place in Islam, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, is believed the site from which the Prophet Mohammed departed this earth for heaven. Once Israel became a state in May 1948, the location of the mosque on the top of the same ground as the holiest place in Judaism, the Western Wall of the Second Jewish Temple constructed by King David, became completely irrevocably disputed. The challenge of who would govern access to this holy site only further complicated the anger created over the establishment of a Jewish state on what Palestinians claimed as their territory. In the first of several Arab-Israeli wars ensuing from Israel’s creation, millions of Palestinians went into exile from the Jewish- governed lands. The tenuous Palestinian positions ever since, whether in Gaza, the West Bank of the Jordan River, or in other Arab states are an uncomfortable reality for all.
Saudi Arabia, with Mecca and Medina so central to Islam, is a major state in the region, though historically not as prominent as Egypt which achieved nation-state status earlier. But the peculiar Saudi role as a voice for Palestinians is more by default than by actions (or preferences) since the Kingdom stopped accepting Palestinian refugees seventy years ago, a fact conveniently ignored by many. Yet Riyadh feels it has no option but to proclaim itself a “protector” of the Palestinian cause.
The U.S.-Saudi ties FDR and his successors cultivated prefer to focus on stability to assure the flow of petroleum to the international market, though this is only a portion of the equation. The reality is that both regimes prefer to avoid the Palestinian issue yet it creates divergent interests for Washington and Riyadh. The question I wonder about is how long we can continue managing this?
As Americans, we detest of having to make choices, believing we can instead find a way to have everything we want. That is much harder than it used to be in an interconnected world.
Whether we no longer embrace globalization, the truth is it undergirds all of us in uncomfortable ways. So what happens in one place, probably affects something else.
The reconciliation of U.S. interests in the Middle East today is getting harder to envision with the introduction of a post-Palestinian Gaza in mind.
President Trump spent copious amounts of time during his first term cultivating and reinforcing ever more important ties with Riyadh. There were indisputably a multitude of personal and national reasons for such actions. The petroleum powerhouse of the Middle East, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is indeed perhaps the major Arab player in this region and one with whom we must work. But for many Americans, the compelling reasons are diminishing. The Saudis indeed have the petroleum, we have the resources to protect them, and the result has been ties through many ups and downs. But but but but but….
We have looked aside as Saudi Arabia (as true of other Arab states) rejected Palestinians taking Saudi citizenship in the 1950s, preferring the establishment of a Palestinian state in the area called Palestine. We have looked away as Saudi regimes historically treated women as second class citizens and espoused a harsh religious orthodoxy, tolerated as by the Royal family as a quid pro quo for the Saudi elite (seemingly intermarried with ibn Saudi’s dozens of children) cavorting in non-Islamic lifestyles when overseas. Americans witnessed Wahhabi mataween (religious police) hounding people who veered from their ultra-orthodoxy, resulting in beheadings for violating Wahhabi Islam. We ignored the role that the Saudis played in OPEC embargo during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, allowing prices to skyrocket which set into motion economic dislocation from which we arguably never recovered. Many Americans cannot get past the reality that 15 of the 19 of terrorists who launched attacks on this country in 2001 were Saudi by birth, with the primary funding source a Saudi Wahhabi zealot. Even more recently, questions regarding involvement de facto ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a gruesome assassination of a Saudi journalist remain unanswered yet no longer discussed. Reasons for tensions definitely exist from our side of the globe.
From Riyadh’s perspective, our behavior is hardly better. The United States continues to see itself as an impartial arbitrator of the differences between various parties across the region while the Saudi “street” sees Washington as entirely devoted to allowing Israel to expand its control over lands the Palestinians claim. The suggestion of cleansing Palestinians lands of Palestinians is anathema to many in the region, giving Riyadh no space to backtrack. Merely putting Saudi leaders into this position with their own population must have created major heartburn in the Kingdom, regardless of the duration of our strong ties. As we drill for more U.S. petroleum, then Saudi Arabia’s leaders must be worried about the durability of our interests in them.
Riyadh came close to normalizing relations with Israel but the events during the past sixteen months, particularly over the past week, have made this ever less likely. While on the surface the bilateral ties seem in lock step in between Washington and Riyadh, but it’s seductive to remember the fundamentals of the Saudi nation. The al-Saud’s legitimacy is based on the “Conservators of the Two Holy Sites” of Islamic sites because the pervasive power of Islam is their focus. I don’t see how the regime can abandon the Palestinian cause. Palestinians demands are ethnic rather than Islamic in nature (there are many Christian Palestinians, for example) but Saudis must ignore those distinctions, standing instead with the demands for a Palestinian state in the territory known as Palestine.
The suggestion, purportedly by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, that Saudi Arabia could house this population as a nation-state is preposterous on its face to the Arabs who argue the Palestinians need a state in their erstwhile lands. Perhaps Palestinians could accept a “two state” solution co-existing in a recognized country along side Israel (though it certainly has never been happened yet) but that is a non-starter for many Israelis, particularly following the October 2023 attacks. I doubt after the last sixteen months that many Palestinians would find that tolerable, either.
The Washington-Riyadh relationship may have little oxygen if we move towards a Gaza entirely under Israel’s control. The Saudis seem to believe they have no option but continue supporting the Palestinians so to defend an Israeli formal takeover would be suicide politically within the Kingdom. While the regime is in strong control, fears of a restless population are real as other seemingly stable but authoritarian regimes (Syria under the Assads, Libya of Qaddafi, Egypt under Mubarak, and Tunisia under Ben Ali) all collapsed.
Saudi Arabia itself stopped receiving Palestinian refugees in the mid-1950s, ostensibly because they should have their own state but, at least partially, out of fear of a disenchanted minority. The sentiment that Palestinians are a dispossessed people is strong in the Kingdom, a constant reminder to the Royal Family of its responsibility to protect not only Islam in the region but the greater sense of Arab nationalism (particularly if they want to wrest regional leadership from al-Sisi in Cairo). While bin Salman projects a pro-western view to his non-Middle Eastern interlocutors, he remains the man behind the throne in a country held together in part by its role as a unifying force against those westerners. He walks a tightrope.
President Trump sees himself as the man able to bring about a new, modern, clarified Middle East, one able to solve the Palestinian question. By promoting U.S. control over a depopulated Gaza, he is putting the Saudi-U.S. relationship to the test among other consequences. It seems unlikely that if the President proceeds as he vows, the eighty year special ties cemented on the USS Quincy can survive in their current state. While we are less reliant on that Saudi black gold than we were as FDR saw World War II concluding, we are interwoven in other challenges in the Middle East such as Iran where Riyadh and Washington have been on the same page for decades. What would be the effect if that came to an end?
Actions create consequences, whether intended or not.
I welcome your thoughts on this or any question. The purpose of this column is to expand measured, civil conversation so please chime in. I was delighted to hear my column yesterday made many of you laugh as I intended as we live in a world with many perils and pitfalls so respites from the somber are invaluable.
I welcome any of you circulating this column if you find it of valuable. I would love to hear other topics that interest you. I appreciate each of you taking time to read and ponder the ideas, and especially those of you who contribute financially to this work.
Be well and be safe. FIN
National Archives, “President Roosevelt Meets Middle East Leaders 1945”, YouTube.com, 5 April 2010, retrieved at
Reuters, “Saudi Arabia rejects Israeli’s PM remarks on displacing Palestinians”, reuters.com, 9 February 2025, retrieved at https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-rejects-remarks-by-israels-netanyahu-about-displacing-palestinians-2025-02-09/
“Saudi Arabia, UAE slam Netanyahu comment on Establishing Palestinian State on Saudi Soil”, Haaretz.com, 9 February 2025, retrieved at https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-02-09/ty-article/.premium/saudi-arabia-uae-slam-netanyahu-comment-on-establishing-palestinian-state-on-saudi-soil/00000194-e9e7-d0d3-a1d6-edffcc9c0000
Tinshui Yeung, “Trump Says Israel Will Hand Over Gaza to US after Fighting Ends”, bbcnews.com 6 February 2025, retrieved at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9xgj2429o