Saudi Arabia (The Kingdom) – An American Stigma (#250)

Lately, Saudi Arabia has been in the news a lot, for all the wrong reasons. It is a totalitarian Kingdom, ruled by the founding family of Saud (the House of Saud) some 7,000 strong ‘princes - heirs’, that do not tolerate any (and we mean ANY) criticism, protests, opposition, or any form of dissension, of any kind, to their absolute ownership and rule of the Arabian Peninsula, which is the sixth largest country by geographical size, with the second largest oil reserves in the world.

It is also the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, and home to two of the holiest Islamic sites in the world, and the leader of the largest sect of Islam, the ‘Sunnis’, and generally for Islam (the world’s 2nd largest religion) the ‘Keeper of the Flame’.

Prior to the discovery of oil, Saudi Arabia depended mainly on agriculture and religious pilgrims visiting its Islamic holy sites for revenue. In 1933, King Ibn Saud (the founder of modern-day Saudi Arabia) gave concessions to American companies to explore for oil, after neighbouring Bahrain was found to have oil. In 1938, oil was found in Saudi Arabia, and the rest as they say is history.

Saudi Arabia was found to have one of the largest reserves of oil in the world, and since then, it has been a close commercial, political and defence ally of America through successive Presidents. The American leaders have been more than willing to strategically overlook Saudi’s established record of gross violations of human rights, and its puritanical versions of ‘Sunni’ sect of Islam, ‘Salafism’, and its even more extreme version ‘Wahhabism’ that has spawned some of the most famous and virulent terrorist organizations in the world, Al Qaeda and ISIS (both are Sunni) being the two most famous among the hundreds all over the world, which have consistently received financial support from wealthy Saudis.

The most violent, global movements of Islamic terrorism, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, and others, trace their emergence from the fanatical elements of ‘Sunni’ Salafism and Wahhabism, and the financial support from Saudi has helped this more puritanical aspects of Sunni Islam spread all over the world, from Bosnia, to the U.K. to Afghanistan (Taliban), Indonesia, etc. Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi National and a Sunni, as were the majority of the participants in the 9/11 attack on the U.S.A.

In contrast Iran is predominantly ‘Shia’ sect of Islam, which are less than 20% minority in the Islamic World, and consequently have far fewer Shia terrorist organizations than the overwhelming majority, which are ‘Sunni’, including the most famous and active ones Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the Taliban.

In spite of such common knowledge, successive U.S. governments have refused to condemn Saudi Arabia in the kind of aggressive language or actions they constantly aim at Iran, Saudi’s main political and religious rival in the region.

Donald Trump in his pre-election 2015 book, called ‘Time to Get Tough’ is quoted as saying: “Then look at Saudi Arabia. It is the world’s biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petrodollars – our very own money – to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people, while the Saudis rely on us to protect them.”

Ironically, these were probably some of the truest words Trump has spoken. 

But, since becoming President, not only did he ignore his own ‘truth’, as most American Presidents before and their administrations have ignored Saudi Arabia’s role in sponsoring the most dominant and active Islamic terrorist groups the world has known, Trump is now actively participating in the lie that Iran is the greatest sponsor of terror in the world.

[Note to readers: GETAnalysis has no ties to Iran but simply writes to correct the wrong and the unfair perceptions and to inform those that may be interested in a fairer assessment of reality, rather than any one-sided propaganda].

The question therefore springs to the fore as to why America consistently ignores Saudi Arabia’s far greater ‘sins’, including its greater role in the world’s most famous and aggressive terrorist organizations Al Qaeda (which conducted the most horrific attacks against it, on American soil, in 9/11), and ISIS, which has a running war against America that targets it specifically; and the Taliban, with which it is being forced to negotiate a peace treaty, after an unsuccessful 15 plus year war, and yet picks exclusively on Iran?

Iran also has an Islamic authoritarian government that sponsors listed terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah (which are more of political bodies arrayed against Israel’s occupation of Palestine; holding elections, governing Gaza etc.), than the general global extremist Islamic terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda and ISIS, amongst hundreds others. The opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, its support of those that oppose Israel, and the fact it is the last ‘Shia’ majority-led country left, and is an major oil producer, a rival of Saudi Arabia, and independent of U.S. control puts it perpetually in harm’s way.

In terror sponsorship, Iran is the far tamer version of Saudi Arabia with more specific political aims than general Islamic terror, as noted by American organizations and various leaders, including Trump, but still, it is singled out as the most heinous of all countries. The facts are so against that labelling that it mystifies those of us that are generally more informed and cognizant of both countries, and their relative histories, and their current actions, as to why.

The answer probably is a combination of financial/commercial and political/religious considerations.

At the outset, America has a long history of Saudi partnership in its vast oil reserves. Saudi national oil company, ARAMCO, started as an American company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL) and Texas Oil Company (Texaco) that first drilled exploration wells under concessions from King Saud, and subsequently discovered Saudi’s vast oil and gas reserves. The subsequent growing torrent of cash coming into the Royal family’s coffers allowed the Saudi government (in effect the Royal family), to buy-out the American company in its entirety.

This early founding stake in Saudi Arabia’s world dominant oil and gas reserves coupled with America’s lasting unquenchable thirst for oil, made Saudi the largest exporter of oil to America for decades (now it is Canada), and made the Saudi’s an irreplaceable partner to America. But there is obviously more to it than that.

The greatest threat to the Saudi Royal family is not external, it is internal, from its strictly controlled, highly suppressed, at times fed-up population, and from the always demanding ultra-orthodox clergy that supports the Royal family, but resists all mention of reform, moderation, or change of any kind in the life of the people.

Caught in-between a public yearning for change and a greater say in their own lives, and the ultra-orthodox Islamic clergy that has put the Royal family in a straight jacket as a price of their support, the Royals very simply keep the clergy onside by keeping the country puritanical, and by buying ‘protection’ from the U.S., through a mutual defence treaty, and by being the largest buyer of American defence equipment year after year; the ‘hundreds and hundreds of billions in arms sales’ that Trump is so reluctant to jeopardize by criticizing the Saudis.

To get and maintain total power in the Kingdom, its founder, Ibn Saud, made a pact with the powerful Islamic clergy, ensuring he and his family would have their full and undying support. For that support, all the Kings of Saudi Arabia have kept the Kingdom puritanically Islamic and predominantly ‘Sunni’. This meant that the Saudi clergy were promised no modern, moderating influence would ever be allowed to creep in, over time, and dilute the strictest version of the earliest form of Sunni Islam preferred by the mostly Salafist-Wahhabi clergy of Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, this strictest form of Sunni Islam was actively promoted with Saudi money in all the other major Sunni Muslim countries, which are most of the Muslim countries in the world, as ‘Sunni’ sect of Islam is the vast majority of the Islamic World, estimated to be over 85% of all Muslims.

This fact has been an important consideration to American administrations throughout, as it made sense to back the country (Saudi Arabia), which not only has one of the greatest oil and gas reserves, but is also the country that is looked upon as the leader of the majority ‘Sunni’ sect (over 85%) of the Islamic World, which includes some of the other richest Islamic energy exporters.

This great concentration of wealth in the oil producing countries of the Gulf - Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman are all under the ‘U.S. influence’ and invest great quantities of their money in hard assets in the U.S., Britain and Europe, at the same time, they all are very significant buyers of American and Western defence equipment, which can run into the hundreds of billions a year, Saudi being one of the largest buyers in the world, consistently.

That leaves only one other major oil producer in the region outside of U.S. control - and it is, Iran. 

[Note: Iraq, a very significant oil producer (4th largest in the world and larger than Iran) was recently acquired by the U.S. and its ‘coalition of the willing’, unwillingly, through the extremely cynically named ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, under the blatantly false accusation of it having ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’; something very similar to the constant accusation of Iran’s non-existent ‘Nuclear Bomb’.]

Iran is the 5th largest oil producer in the world (which mostly America disallows through its decades-long harsh sanctions). Iran has no preferential partnership with the U.S. in its oil assets. Which is why in 1953, when the West was used to having its way unconditionally, and Iran wanted to nationalize its energy assets (under the control of British companies) the American and British Secret Services destroyed Iran’s democracy, and installed the pro-West dictator Shah of Iran, which led to the current predicament that Iran finds itself in today, being ruled by its rigid ‘revolutionary’ Islamic (Shia) clergy, after the overthrow of the Shah.

So, not only is America and Britain, in a significant way, responsible for Iran’s political position today, at one time the most modern and secular ‘westernized’ Muslim country in the world, but they constantly punish it for the state it is in.  

Iran is the leader of the much smaller other sect of Islam, the ‘Shia’, to which the Saudi-led Sunnis are religiously, aggressively opposed, something like the historic enmity and division through the ages between the Protestants and the Catholics amongst the Christians, but perhaps even more so.

To the Americans, it’s been simple, back the Saudis and therefore the Sunnis, which are not only the overwhelming majority of all the Muslims, but control more energy reserves and therefore most of the wealth in the Muslim World. Plus they are the biggest buyers of defence arms and equipment, and everything else, amongst the Muslims, as most of the Islamic countries are ‘Sunni’ majority.  

As for the Shia controlled countries of Iran and Iraq (of which Iraq has already been destroyed and subdued), Iran is the only one left, and therefore it has been in the U.S. cross hairs for decades, as it still is today. 

Syria also has a significant population of Shia Muslims, although Sunnis are the majority, but Bashar Al-Assad was a Baathist, and therefore a secularist. Since the start of the Syrian war, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have backed the ‘Sunni’ factions fighting Assad, while Russia and Iran have backed Assad to keep their presence in Syria, and prevent a total U.S.-Saudi-Sunni hegemony in the Middle East.

So Iran has a number of major strikes against it, its oil is not under the influence of the U.S., yet, and it is the largest albeit last remaining Shia majority country that is able to defy both the U.S. and its rival Saudi Arabia, and actively oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, through the support of Hamas and Hezbollah - and to the Americans and Israel that just won’t do.

So a constant stream of negative propaganda is unleashed against Iran by the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

In the larger picture – America’s general control of Middle Eastern energy and the Islamic World through its vast Sunni majority, and Iran’s active opposition to Israel – makes Iran the unacceptable thorn in the side that one day simply must be subdued, neutralized, and removed as a thorn, with a ‘friendly’ government.

In this quest, the subjugation of Iran for ‘American Interests’ - Saudi Arabia is a pivotal player - and along with all its other beneficial attributes to America and the West (its oil, its wealth, its willingness to materially support the Western Defence Industry, its leadership of the majority of Muslims around the world, and its potential personal favours to the Western leadership, like Trump) - Saudi Arabia is not so easy to ostracize by the West, even for the heinous actions that it takes, regularly - like the support of the biggest, most active terror networks around the globe, the sponsored spread of extremist Islamic ideology, the brutal and medieval treatment of dissenters, critics, criminals and women, and more recently, the gruesome murder of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in Turkey, whose only ‘sin’ was to mildly criticize Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s heavy-handed rule.

In spite of being more brutal in the suppression of its people, particularly women, than Iran, and being the largest funder of extremist Islamic ideology and some of its terror networks, far greater than anything Iran sponsors, Saudi Arabia remains the darling of America and the West because it simply buys them, as it always has. 

"He who holds the purse strings, rules the house, the nation, the world" - J. Reuben Clark