The Guardian: Saudi Arabia’s Friendship with Putin Is A wake-up Call to The West

As the saying goes, every photo tells a story, and the image of smiling Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the opening match of the Men’s Soccer World Cup in Moscow in June 2018 bore an early and clear warning to the West.

The message, according to the British newspaper “The Guardian”, was “for those who cared to respond to it. Saudi Arabia, nurtured by the British in imperial times, defended by the United States against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Iran, and its close links to the 9/11 attacks were forgiven” is no longer an ally of Washington and London. approved in the past.

Bin Salman made new friends. He himself arrogantly rejects Western human rights concerns. At the same time, according to the newspaper, he is pursuing a contentious regional foreign policy in Yemen and Lebanon, and is building close relations with Russia and China.

The de facto ruler of Riyadh and the 37-year-old is expected to rule the country for the next 50 years.

Just four months after he was photographed with Putin on the soccer field, came the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Two years later, Joe Biden was elected President of the United States. During his election campaign, he described Saudi Arabia, and implicitly its crown prince, as a “pariah” after Khashoggi’s murder. As president, he froze arms sales and disseminated intelligence about bin Salman’s involvement in the affair.

“Nothing has been held accountable or changed,” according to the Guardian. Moreover, Biden’s “embarrassing” visit to Riyadh in the last July of this year, and his famous grip with the crown prince, was impossible to accept. Why did Biden do that? It was a question with several possible answers and equally unsatisfactory, a question that has now come to haunt him again, according to the newspaper.

Biden wanted the Saudis and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost or at least maintain oil production. All this is in the face of Russia’s use of gas and oil as weapons in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. At a minimum, Biden wanted to lower the price of gasoline for American drivers and consumers, thereby boosting Democrats’ chances in next month’s congressional elections.

But his visit did not come to fruition. On top of that, most, if not all, of Biden’s goals were blown up last week when OPEC+, a group that includes Russia, decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day.

It seems that this step really shocked the White House, and was considered a personal slap in the face of the president. “It was humiliating,” according to the newspaper. “And just as bad” for Washington, it was a stunning victory for Putin.

Although the oil cut might not make much of a difference to the global price, it pits the Saudis and their colleagues against the energy-hungry United States and Europe, along with the Russians, a claim the Saudis now deny.

Anger has been mounting since then, as Democrats threaten to impose sanctions on OPEC, suspend defense and security cooperation with Riyadh, freeze arms transfers, withdraw U.S. forces, and launch a sweeping reassessment of the US.-Saudi relationship that Biden promised but never implemented.

According to the newspaper, Washington has a right to be angry. Although some of these measures are unlikely to be implemented, the Saudi-US relationship has long been, and still is, toxic.

Saudi Arabia’s intermittent war in Yemen, and the US and British arms sales that it facilitated, could be a good trigger for any reassessment by Washington and London.

The newspaper believes that Riyadh should not be tolerated implicitly anymore, especially in what it considered just cases such as the Saudi regime’s mistreatment of women, for example Salma Al-Shehab, a university student in Leeds who was imprisoned for 34 years because of her tweets. In addition, Riyadh’s use of terrorism courts against its critics, its mass executions, its chronic denial of democratic rights, and its censorship of freedom of expression and personal liberties.

It is also unacceptable, according to the newspaper, the way in which the regime is trying to wash its reputation by buying its way into international sport. For example, seeking to take over Newcastle United in the English Premier League, funding prestigious golf and boxing tournaments, using his petrodollars.

If bin Salman “really prefers Putin’s company, he and his regime must pay a heavy price”, after the support of Western leaders and countries. He should think carefully about what that means, “particularly for his kingdom’s future defense against Iran’s missiles and drones,” the newspaper reported.

Most importantly, the Guardian article concluded, “the United States and Western democracies must demonstrate by their actions that the global battle in the 21st century for freedom and democracy… is too important, decisive and epic to be traded for a barrel of cheap oil.”