Word: riyadh
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...Saudi Arabia. In the past month, Saudi King Abdullah has emerged as the most energetic dealmaker in the Middle East, brokering a tentative power-sharing agreement between rival Palestinian factions and mediating between the pro-Western government in Beirut and representatives of Hizballah, who want to topple it. Riyadh is also suppressing the price of oil, in what many observers see as a bid to undermine Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by starving his government of cash. And the Saudis have quietly backed the U.S.'s troop surge in Iraq. Every place in the Middle East that matters, it seems, Riyadh...
...wasn't supposed to be this way. For many Americans, one of the key lessons of Sept. 11 was that the U.S.-Saudi alliance had become an extremely dangerous affair. The 9/11 commission called Riyadh "a problematic ally." Congress tried to impose sanctions, and President George W. Bush demanded that the monarchy embrace political reform. "Saudi Arabia used to have a lot of apologists in this country," declared Eliot Cohen, a member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, in 2002. "Now there are very...
...Iraq war was designed, at least in part, to free America from Riyadh's grasp. A friendly government in Baghdad would make the U.S. less reliant on Saudi oil. And a democratic government in Baghdad would pressure the kingdom to open its political system. Either Saudi Arabia's regime would change, or its relationship with the U.S. would change, or both...
...Gulf, as the linchpin. The Saudis have been working hard to make sure Iran's ally Hizballah doesn't overthrow Fouad Siniora's government in Beirut. They've been trying to reconcile the Palestinians, partly to wean the militant Hamas from its funders in Tehran. Some even speculate that Riyadh is making overtures to Syria, trying to lure it too from the Iranian fold...
...internal Saudi turmoil couldn't come at a worse time for the Bush Administration. Vice President Cheney was in Riyadh just last weekend for talks with King Abdullah. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to use the Saudi-founded Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), conceived as an economic body, as a vehicle for marshalling Sunni Arab support on regional security issues, particularly U.S. efforts to blunt Iranian ambitions. Rice has prevailed upon the original GCC members (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman) to add Jordan and Egypt to their security loop. According to a Rice aide...