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“If you notice a small deficiency in my attention, I am sorry,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to London, said in an interview with BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner last week after the US elections.
The influential prince of the Saudi royal family in his forties repeatedly looked at his mobile phone. “I look forward to the results in Wisconsin,” he said.
That was eight days ago, when no one knew who was in power in the White House in January. Then, when Joe Biden was declared the winner, Saudi leaders in Riyadh were slow to respond. But when Donald Trump won four years ago, they did not hesitate to salute him.
But the BBC’s Frank Gardner says it is not surprising that “the Saudi leadership lost one of the most powerful friends in the world last week.”
With Joe Biden elected president, some long-term consequences await Saudi Arabia and its loyal allies in the Gulf.
The United States has been cooperating with this strategically important region since 1945. The relationship will continue to fluctuate, but change is imminent and much of that change will not be to the liking of Gulf leaders.
The departure of a great friend
Donald Trump was a great ally and supporter of the Saudi royal family.
He began his first official overseas tour since taking power in 2016 with Saudi Arabia. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has developed a close friendship with powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
When Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, suspected that Yuvraj had murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khasogi, who was deported, in 2016, President Trump declined to discuss it.
Well-known American journalist Bob Woodward wrote in a recently published book, in an interview with him, that President Trump raised his voice and said that he had saved the Saudi prince.
After the assassination of Jamal Khasogi, Donald Trump bypassed the United States Congress and approved the sale of arms worth ৮ 600 million to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He vetoed a proposal in Congress to end the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Frank Gardner says it’s understandable why Yuvraj’s men later said, “No more worries (about Khasogi’s murder). We’ve made arrangements.”
It goes without saying that Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have lost one of their biggest allies in the White House.
However, this may not change everything, but there is a strong possibility that the current situation will change somewhere.
The war in Yemen
Former President Barack Obama’s growing frustration with the Saudi-led coalition’s war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe. Then-Vice President Joe Biden held a similar view.
When President Obama left the White House, two years had passed since the war in Yemen. But the military was unsuccessful and there was a massive loss of life and infrastructure in Yemen. Dissatisfaction with the war in Yemen began to grow within the United States Congress, prompting President Obama to reduce military and intelligence cooperation in Saudi Arabia.
But as soon as Trump came to power, he did not repay the aid, but increased it.
That image may change again. In a recent speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, a research organization, Joe Biden made it clear that if he came to power, he would cut off US aid to the Saudi-led “catastrophic war” in Yemen. Not only that, but Joe Biden said he would lead a “review of US relations with Saudi Arabia.”
So there is no doubt that the Biden administration will increase pressure on Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen to end the war in Yemen.
However, Frank Gardner says that the Saudis and the Emirates have also begun to realize in recent times that it is not possible to win the war in Yemen. “They are looking for a way out of the conflict.” They just want to show that the Houthi rebels did not have the strength they had when they started fighting in 2015. “
Barbara Platt of the BBC in Washington says Biden will almost certainly withdraw US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. “The death of civilians, the humanitarian catastrophe and the war in Yemen have created great discontent within the Democratic Party.”
Mary Daniel Platka of the American Enterprise Institute, a research institute in Washington, told the BBC: “There may not be a big shift in Middle East policy, but the possibility of moving away from Saudi Arabia and increasing talks with Iran is almost certain”.
Iran
The greatest legacy of President Obama’s Middle East policy was the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JPCOA). The main objective of the agreement was to build economic ties with Iran and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
However, Saudi Arabia and Israel had strong objections to the deal. They argued that the deal would not deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but would increase its power if sanctions were lifted.
President Trump also fully accepts this argument and, in his words, unilaterally pulls the United States out of the “worst deal in history.”
Now his successor, Joe Biden, is giving clear indications that he will be a partner in the deal again. And Saudi Arabia is deeply concerned about this possibility.
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Zubayr, expressed his outrage at the Iran nuclear deal at a press conference in Riyadh after a mysterious missile attack on a Saudi oil plant last year.
The Saudi minister said the nuclear deal with Iran was doomed to failure. Because, according to him, “the deal does not take into account Iran’s extensive missile program, nor the way Iran continues to strengthen its loyalist militias throughout the Middle East.”
Adel al-Zubayr called the international deal with Iran “the wrong policy” of the Obama administration because the government did not understand to what extent the Islamic Republic posed a threat to the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies rejoiced when Qasem Solaimani, the most powerful commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January.
Frank Gardner thinks that now these countries are really worried that the new US administration will start negotiating with Iran again without considering their interests.
Qatar
Qatar is America’s largest and most strategically important military airbase in the Middle East. The Pentagon conducts air operations from Al Uday Air Base to the entire region, from Syria to Afghanistan.
But even then, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain have continued to impose harsh sanctions on Qatar. The main accusation from these countries is that Qatar supports Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East.
The four countries announced their decision to boycott Qatar shortly after President Trump’s visit to Riyadh in 2016, and they are clear that they will have the support of the US administration in their decision.
In fact, Frank Gardner said that while President Trump initially supported the boycott, he was later told that Qatar was also an ally of the United States and that Qatar’s Al-Udayd Air Base was very important to the Defense Department of United States.
Joe Biden can now push for a settlement of the Gulf dispute. Because this dispute is uncomfortable for the United States and against its interests.
Human rights
Western countries have always been more or less concerned about the human rights situation in the Gulf. But President Trump never cared about that.
She said the strategic interests of the United States and business in the Gulf were more important than the issue of women’s rights activists imprisoned in Saudi Arabia or the alleged torture of foreign workers in Qatar or the murder of journalist Jamal Khasogi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
It is true that President-elect Joe Biden and his administration will not be silent on these issues of human rights violations.
But what the Biden administration will do with Saudi Arabia or Iran will be much clearer when it begins to appoint him to key positions in its government. Who will be your foreign minister, who will be in charge of the Pentagon, who will be your top national security adviser? It will be possible to have a very clear idea of Biden’s policy in the Middle East.
Source: BBC
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