What is even more interesting is the note al-Faisal takes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s acknowledgment of the Saudi king as the “leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds.”
According to al-Faisal, Israel’s bloody war on Gaza has put the “most ardent foes” in the region -- i.e., Saudi Arabia and Iran -- on the same front. The Saudi prince seems to imply that if the Americans do nothing to stop further Israeli aggression, this “unholy alliance” will grow and change the balance of power in the Middle East.
Is such a change in regional politics likely? Not really. The main reason is the heightened sense of suspicion the Arab states feel toward Iran. And there are two reasons for this. First of all, none of the Sunni Arab states would want to see an ascendancy of Shiite politics in their countries. None of them wants to see what happened in Iraq repeated in other countries. Secondly, Iran’s ambitions to become a regional power house do not sit well in the region.
Currently Iran is using a number of instruments to gain that position. Its nuclear program, its connections with Shiite populations in Sunni states, its confrontational foreign policy toward Israel and the US and, finally, its support of such non-state actors as Hamas and Hezbullah give Iran considerable leverage over the Arab Sunni states, which have been largely tamed by the US-Israeli alliance. While the Iranians seek to normalize their relations with the Arab states and particularly the Saudi kingdom, they won’t succeed until Iran stops using these political tools to open up more space for itself in the region.
None of this, however, is necessarily good news for the new Obama administration. As one can see from the tone of Prince Turki’s piece, the Saudis want the US to change its policy toward the Middle East and stop its unconditional support of Israel. After the recent war on Gaza, the so-called “moderate Arab states” (i.e., those who are always supposed to say yes to Washington and Tel Aviv) have lost all of their credibility. They realize that the failure of their diplomacy will only strengthen more radical movements, which will eventually threaten their own legitimacy and political future. That is why Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, considers the Gaza war a major political victory for Hamas (“A decisive loss for Israel,” The Guardian, Jan. 22, 2009).
While the Saudi outcry could herald a change in the traditional Saudi line toward the Palestinian issue, it is not clear what the Saudis will be able or willing to do to force this change.
Everybody, including Prince Turki, is listing what the US needs to do but nobody, including Mahmoud Abbas and Hosni Mubarak, is saying what they will do if the US fails them once again.
To quote Prince Turki again, the following list of steps is only logical: “Mr. Obama should strongly promote the Abdullah peace initiative, which calls on Israel to pursue the course laid out in various international resolutions and laws: to withdraw completely from the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, returning to the lines of June 4, 1967; to accept a mutually agreed just solution to the refugee problem according to UN resolution 194; and to recognize the independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, there would be an end to hostilities between Israel and all Arab countries, and Israel would get full diplomatic and normal relations.”
There is no ambiguity about any of these points; they have been voiced by practically everyone except the hard-line Israelis and the Zionists. The question is who is going to force the US to accept these conditions and realize them? If the Arabs think they can achieve all of the above without leaving their comfort zone, they will be deluding themselves. The Palestinians have suffered enough and there is no use in pressuring them to make more concessions in the name of a fake peace that would guarantee the political future of the Arab states rather than giving the Palestinians their rights. It is time that the Arabs develop the courage to force change.
