Middle East and North Africa

Saudi Arabia

  • Palestinian Territories
    Ramallah and Riyadh
    Two recent headlines produce a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. The first is "Fayyad: PA is on the verge of bankruptcy" while the second reads "Saudi budget surplus hits $103 billion." In the first story, Prime Minister Fayyad notes that several factors contribute to the financial crisis. Israel is not passing Palestinian Authority tax revenues through to the PA, which he calls a "fatal blow." But he also notes that Arab countries--which in December promised a $100 million a month safety net should Israel do just that--are not helping. Why not? “I have no explanation. Frankly, I don’t know what is going on,” Fayyad said. In the second story we learn that Saudi Arabia had a $102.9 billion dollar budget surplus in 2012. Moreover, since expenditures for 2012 were $227 billion and planned expenditures for 2013 are $218.7 billion, unless oil prices collapse a huge surplus can be expected for 2013 as well. Of course the first claim on Saudi oil revenue is clearly domestic spending--and it is also true that the Kingdom donated $100 million to the PA in the summer of 2012 and $200 million in 2011. If that seems generous, consider this summary from the Library of Congress of U.S. aid: From FY2008 to the present, annual U.S. bilateral assistance to the West Bank and Gaza Strip has averaged nearly $600 million, including annual averages of approximately $200 million in direct budgetary assistance and approximately $100 million in non-lethal security assistance for the PA in the West Bank. The remainder—approximately $300 million on average per year—is dedicated to project assistance for the West Bank and Gaza through U.S. government grants to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The European Union is also extremely generous, and in September announced that it was doubling its 2012 aid package from roughly $150 million to $300 million. And this comes, as does the U.S. aid, in a year of enormous fiscal pressure on both sides of the Atlantic. In this context, the Saudi gift of $100 million isn’t generous and isn’t enough. Not in a year when the budget surplus will run one hundred billion dollars. In his speech on behalf of the Kingdom to the UN General Assembly in September, the Saudi king’s son Abdulaziz bin Abdullah said that "Saudi Arabia, for one, is sparing no effort to meet all its obligations towards the peace process and towards our Palestinian brothers by the provision of various types of support and assistance." Other oil producers should pitch in as well, of course, but the Saudis traditionally lead this effort and should do far more.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams January 9, 2013 Pressure Points
  • Middle East and North Africa
    "Plotting to Celebrate Christmas"
    Here’s a non-celebratory story for the new year, from the newspaper Al Akhbar on December 27: Saudi religious police stormed a house in the Saudi Arabian province of al-Jouf, detaining more than 41 guests for “plotting to celebrate Christmas,” a statement from the police branch released Wednesday night said. The raid is the latest in a string of religious crackdowns against residents perceived to threaten the country’s strict religious code. Only in Saudi Arabia could the phrase "plotting to celebrate Christmas" appear in official statement. Religious freedom does not exist in the kingdom. There are literally millions of Christians living there, and according to the government they are permitted to practice their religion in private--though not one single church is permitted. But as this news story shows, in fact the religious police do not permit such dangerous practices as a Christmas party. So the foreigners living there who are Christians will continue to be without churches, priests and ministers, sacraments--or Christmas parties. King Abdullah has chaired several international conferences on religion in the last ten years and has just established the "King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue," a world center for inter-religious dialogue in Vienna. What does this all amount to? In 2008 the King opened the first conference with these reported remarks: "We all believe in one God... We are meeting here today to say that religions should be a means to iron out differences and not to lead to disputes," he said in an inaugural speech at the three-day World Conference on Dialogue. He called for a "constructive dialogue to open a new page to reconciliation after so many disputes." "Most of the dialogue (between religions) has ended in failure...," King Abdullah said in the speech, delivered in Arabic. "To succeed we must emphasize the common link between us which a belief in God." Fine sentiments--but until the Saudi government stops arresting people for "plotting to celebrate Christmas" they cannot be taken seriously.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams December 31, 2012 Pressure Points
  • Fossil Fuels
    The Future of Energy Insecurity
    A massive cyberattack this summer on Saudi Aramco, Riyadh’s energy giant, left some 30,000-plus of the company’s computers lifeless, making a rather futuristic threat to the oil and gas industry front page news. U.S. Secretary of Defenese Leon Panetta called the attack “probably the most destructive…that the business sector has seen to date.” The Saudis weren’t the only targets. RasGas, a Qatari natural gas company, was also hit. Months later, investigators are still trying to get to the bottom of what happened, and more importantly, why it did, and what can stop it from happening again. In a piece for The National Interest, I argue that cyberattacks on oil assets around the world pose a real risk to energy prices, and hence the U.S. economy. They also jeopardize the competitiveness of American firms abroad. It’s an issue where national security and economic well-being meet. And it’s a challenge that’s not going away. The risks of hackers penetrating the country’s electrical grid have been widely discussed for years. Less so what cyber means for oil and gas companies and markets. U.S. officials and the global energy industry have their hands full in coming to terms with this new virtual landscape. Check out the piece here.
    Blog Post by Blake Clayton November 9, 2012 Energy, Security, and Climate
  • Saudi Arabia
    Security Checks and the Veil
    What happens when 21st century security requirements clash with the strictest versions of Islam which require that women keep their faces covered? In most countries, the face covering must go. In Australia last summer, for example, a news story reported that despite objections Burqa clad Muslim women in the Australian state of New South Wales would have to remove their veils and show their faces if asked by the police or risk a jail term. The new step is being introduced in the country’s most populous state next week under which the police would be given sweeping powers to demand removal of any face covering, including helmets, masks and religious veils, for making identification. Now it seems that the entire subject should be considered closed--for in Saudi Arabia itself the Shura Council has ruled the same way as the Aussies. Saudi Arabian authorities have rejected a conservative proposal to allow women to keep their faces covered during security checks, local media reported on Tuesday. A draft law would have allowed women to continue wearing veils during the checks, and would have required their identity cards to be based on fingerprints instead of photographs, the Saudi Gazette said. The Shura Council, a consultative body appointed by the king, rejected the plan on Sunday, although it agreed that female security staff should carry out checks on women, the newspaper reported. No doubt there will be further complaints and lawsuits. But now that even the Saudis have come down on the side of security the argument that Islam, even Wahhabi Islam, prevents a woman for showing her face is fatally weakened - and our common security further strengthened.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams November 8, 2012 Pressure Points
  • Saudi Arabia
    Generational Change in Saudi Arabia
    Since the death of modern Saudi Arabia’s founder in 1953, the kingdom has been led by his sons--serving as kings, crown princes, and cabinet ministers. The crown has been passed from brother to brother, not from father to son. Obviously this system has an inherent and incurable flaw: men grow old. The current king is about 90 and his surviving brothers are mostly in their 80s or 70s--and not all are viewed as eligible for the throne. Some have personal "issues" such as poor health, a pattern of unreliability, or a mother who did not come from a favored Saudi tribe. Yet even as the brothers aged no member of the next generation, grandsons of the founder, has ever been elevated to membership in the cabinet and leadership of a ministry. Until now. As Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute on Near East Policy reports, Minister of the Interior Prince Ahmed has been relieved of his duties and his deputy Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (son of the late crown prince) has been moved up to minister. This appears, as Henderson’s insightful analysis notes, to take Ahmed out of the line of succession and to put Mohammed bin Nayef--known as MbN to American officials--at the front of the line in his generation. There are plenty of others to contest that conclusion--Mohammed bin Nayef’s dozens and dozens of cousins, all grandsons of a king and many who are also sons of a more recent king. But time moves on even in Saudi Arabia, and for the first time a ministry will pass from a son to a grandson of the founder. MbN certainly has a leg up now. Update: An alert reader has caught an error in this post. MbN is not the first in his generation to receive a cabinet post and head a ministry. That was Saud al Faisal, Minister of Foreign Affairs since 1975 and the world’s longest-serving foreign minister. Saud was born in 1940; his father, King Faisal, served from 1964 to 1975 and was a son of the founder, Abd al-Aziz. MbN is the first since 1975, and as such jumps to the head of his class. Saud, now 72  and ill, is not in contention to be king.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams November 6, 2012 Pressure Points
  • China
    Five Reasons to Talk Energy and Climate at the Foreign Policy Debate
    The moderator of tonight’s foreign policy debate has released a list of the topics he will focus on, and neither energy nor climate are there. This has, not surprisingly, not gone unnoticed. Indeed one need look no further than Hilary Clinton’s sweeping speech last Thursday on “Energy Diplomacy in the 21st Century” to confirm that energy and foreign policy are deeply intertwined. Here are five reasons that energy and climate should be part of tonight’s debate: Energy has been central to the biggest foreign policy issue of the campaign: Iran. A big part of the “crippling sanctions” that both candidates talk about have focused on Iranian oil exports. These have been made possible through a mix of concerted diplomacy and surprising gains in oil output in the United States and elsewhere. Are these sorts sanctions a model for the future? Can they be tightened further without risking the U.S. economy? Since Iran is certain to be a focus of debate, this may be the one energy subject that actually comes up tonight. Climate change is a really big global problem. You don’t need to be convinced of impending doom to believe this – you just need to accept that we’re running some pretty large risks. When the moderator of the last debate half-apologized to “the climate people” for not touching on the subject,  she revealed something important: too many people think about climate change as a special interest issue. It isn’t, and the candidates’ approaches deserve to be debated. This one is simple to tee off: just ask each candidate what he’d do. It’s easy to forget, but when the Arab Spring swept the Middle East a year and a half ago, alarm bells were ringing over the possibility that the spreading turmoil would wreak havoc on oil markets and send the economy back into recession. In the end, the U.S. and others released emergency oil, but the disruptions remained limited. How would the two candidates respond to a major Middle East disruption – perhaps originating in Saudi Arabia – down the road? What would they do today to prevent such an eventuality, and to prepare to weather one that nonetheless occured? Those who aren’t seized with the importance of dealing with climate change on its merits should still be concerned: U.S. allies around the world care about what the United States does. Europe remains fixated on the issue, and might reconsider carbon tariffs on the United States down the road. Scores of countries in Asia and Africa care deeply about what climate change will do to their safety and prosperity – and the United States is battling with China for their allegiance. Do the candidates think that these concerns matter? How would they deal with them?  Both candidates talk regularly about energy independence. The first two debates gave them ample opportunity to contrast their approaches to domestic energy and to reducing oil imports. But “energy independence” is inherently a foreign policy issue – that’s what “independence” is all about. What dividends do the two candidates believe their domestic energy policies would deliver internationally? Do they think that the United States could reduce its presence in the Middle East? Stop defending sea lanes around the world? Scale back its diplomacy with oil and gas producing powers? Would the candidates’ policies give the United States a strategic advantage over China? Or is “energy independence” just a simple way of describing higher U.S. oil and gas production? Inquiring minds want to know.
    Blog Post by Michael Levi October 22, 2012 Energy, Security, and Climate
  • United States
    Meet the New Boss
    This article was originally published here on ForeignPolicy.com on Friday, September 14, 2012 The attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, this Sept. 11 echoed the worst moments of American impotence in the Middle East. They not only evoked memories of Iranian revolutionaries storming the U.S. Embassy in Tehran almost 33 years ago, but their occurrence on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington further reminded Americans of the deep roots of anti-American rage in the Arab world. As a result of that terrible Tuesday morning 11 years ago, Americans have spent a decade deeply intertwined in the affairs of the Arab and Muslim worlds. After watching Egyptians tear the Star and Stripes to shreds and Libyans carry Ambassador Christopher Stevens’s dead body, they can be forgiven for believing it is now time to come home. How much has the United States invested in Egypt over the last three decades? Was not Benghazi saved in large part because of the bravery and skills of U.S. Air Force pilots? These are the questions Americans are now asking themselves. The U.S. public can be naive about the world, but they are not fools. They understand when they may no longer be welcome. Still, it was Vice President Joe Biden who thundered, "Don’t bet against the American people" on the third night of the Democratic National Convention, a sentiment with which virtually all Republicans would reflexively agree. Continue reading here...
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook September 17, 2012 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Middle East and North Africa
    Shia Unrest in Saudi Arabia
    Though there is not much Western reporting yet on this phenomenon, Shia unrest in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province appears to be growing. Two recent reports, including interesting amateur films of demonstrations and some violence, can be found in this Arab web site and buried in the New York Times here. The key question is whether the unrest is over or will spread among Saudi Shia. The proximate cause of the unrest is clear: Saudi security forces shot and wounded, while arresting, Shia leader Nimr al-Nimr last week after he called the death of the late Minister of the Interior and Crown Prince, Nayef, a cause for celebration. The deeper cause is Shia unhappiness with what they view as discrimination and indeed repression by the Saudi authorities. This violence will have repercussions in Bahrain. Whether or not it leads to more protests by Bahraini Shia, it will likely lead the Saudis to press the Bahraini government for more repressive measures rather than more compromise. The Saudi royal family’s harsh reaction to Nimr’s comments was predictable, and his comments were foolish and dangerous. Still, in the long run Shia complaints about second-class citizenship in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cannot be successfully dealt with by arrests and repression. Compromise will have to come or more violence will. But moderates in both countries face not only the inherent difficulties of negotiating such compromises; they also face extremists, Sunni and Shia, who think they benefit from confrontations and who reject compromise. It will be 115 degrees today in Qatif. Hot summer indeed.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams July 13, 2012 Pressure Points
  • Egypt
    Weekend Reading: Saudi Revolutionaries, Tunisia’s Constitution, and the SCAF Speaks
    On Jadaliyya, an interview with Saudi revolutionaries. Tunisia Live gives an English translation of the final draft of the preamble to Tunisia’s 2012 constitution. An English translation of today’s statement by Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook June 22, 2012 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Climate Change
    Think Again: The American Energy Boom
    I have a new essay in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy, out today, that takes aim at some of the emerging conventional wisdom surrounding the American oil and gas boom. Some of the themes will be familiar to readers of this blog. Others will be new. Collectively, I hope, they’ll spur some new thinking about what’s happening in the United States. The essay drills down on six claims: “The United States is the Next Saudi Arabia of Energy “The United States Could be Energy Independent” “We Can Drill Our Way Out of High Prices” “The U.S. Energy Boom Will Create Millions of New Jobs” “Strong Regulations Would Kill the Boom” “The Energy Boom is Bad for Climate Change” “Barack Obama is Bad for the Oil and Gas Industry” Want to know my answers to each of these? Take a look at the article. I’ll have more to say about some of the details in the piece (for example, on how U.S. oil output could affect OPEC dynamics and world prices) in future posts.
    Blog Post by Michael Levi June 18, 2012 Energy, Security, and Climate
  • Saudi Arabia
    Succession in Saudi Arabia
    The death of Saudi crown prince Nayef came as no surprise, for he had been seriously ill for several years. He spent much of the past year outside the Kingdom, for medical treatment in the United States and then recuperation. Since the death in 2011 of the then third in line for the throne, long-time Minister of Defense Prince Sultan, and his replacement at Defense by Riyadh’s long-serving governor Prince Salman, it has been thought that Prince Salman would become crown prince next. That change should come in the next few days, after Nayef’s burial. But after Salman there is no obvious next in line. The candidates in the current generation, who are sons of the modern Kingdom’s founder King Abd al-Aziz, have various strikes against them, from age to lack of distinction to inappropriate (in the Saudi system) mothers. This raises the prospect of moving to the next generation, which obviously has to happen in the next decade or so. The problem in the next generation is not that there are too few candidates but that there are too many. And balancing the interests of the various wings of the family, the children of former kings and of princes such as Sultan and Nayef, will be extremely difficult. In addition to deciding who is the next crown prince, the family must decide whether ministries will be kept as fiefdoms by branches of the family. Nayef was Interior Minister and his capable son Mohammed bin Nayef has long been deputy minister there; will he be promoted? If a son of founder is given the ministerial post, will Mohammed bin Nayef stay on, to inherit the top job later? This test will also come for Khalid bin Sultan, long his father’s deputy at Defense. He did not get the top job when his father died; a son of the founder had first priority over a grandson. When foreign minister Prince Saud retires, will the clan seek to keep the ministry in its grip? Especially when ministerial posts start going to grandsons, the fight will be on between those seeking to keep ministries as clan property and those seeking either a new distribution of wealth and power--or even appointment by merit. The rise of Prince Salman to crown prince can postpone these questions for a while, but he is 76. After him, they will be front and center; indeed, if he becomes king one of his main duties will be to move the family toward confronting and resolving them.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams June 16, 2012 Pressure Points
  • Egypt
    Weekend Reading: Action, but No Reaction in Syria, Morocco’s “Miracle,” and Cairo-Riyadh Blues
    Itamar Rabinovich says the United States is substituting symbolic action for real action in Syria--at the detriment of the Syrian people. Aboubakr Jamai explains the Moroccan "miracle" of mild authoritarianism. Sultan al-Qassami breaks down the Saudi-Egyptian relationship.  
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook May 4, 2012 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Iran
    Don’t Fear a Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East
    This article was originally published here on ForeignPolicy.com on Monday, April 3, 2012.  On March 21, Haaretz correspondent Ari Shavit wrote a powerful op-ed in the New York Times that began with this stark and stunning claim: "An Iranian atom bomb will force Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt to acquire their own atom bombs." Indeed, it has become axiomatic among Middle East watchers, nonproliferation experts, Israel’s national security establishment, and a wide array of U.S. government officials that Iranian proliferation will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. President Barack Obama himself, in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last month, said that if Iran went nuclear, it was "almost certain that others in the region would feel compelled to get their own nuclear weapon." Multiple nuclear powers on a hair trigger in the Middle East -- the most volatile region on earth, and one that is undergoing massive political change -- is a nightmare scenario for U.S. and other security planners, who have never before confronted a challenge of such magnitude. But thankfully, all the dire warnings about uncontrolled proliferation are -- if not exactly science fiction -- further from reality than Shavit and Obama indicate. There are very good reasons for the international community to meet the challenge that Iran represents, but Middle Eastern nuclear dominoes are not one of them. Click here to read more.
    Blog Post by Steven A. Cook April 3, 2012 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
  • Democracy
    Saudi Arabia on the Edge
    Podcast
    This was a meeting of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Roundtable series.
    Event with Thomas W. Lippman and Isobel Coleman March 28, 2012
  • Saudi Arabia
    "Destroy all the Churches"
    The Middle East Forum reports that According to several Arabic news sources, last Monday, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." The Grand Mufti made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait: a Kuwaiti parliament member recently called for the "removal" of churches (he later "clarified" by saying he merely meant that no churches should be built in Kuwait), and the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia’s position on churches. Accordingly, the Grand Mufti "stressed that Kuwait was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore it is necessary to destroy all churches in it. This report brought back memories of a trip to Saudi Arabia that I took in January 2001, before joining the Bush Administration. I travelled there as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the delegation (which included Cardinal McCarrick) met with government officials and religious authorities.  To several, we made the argument that as Saudis claim to value religious faith and practice so deeply, surely they could understand the terrible hardship they were creating for the many Christians who lived in the Kingdom by forbidding them to worship. They can worship at home, came the reply (somewhat disingenuously, for we knew that the religious police often broke up such private religious services). That isn’t enough, we argued, especially for Roman Catholics whose religion includes the sacraments that only a priest can administer. And there are roughly a million and a half Catholics, mostly Filipinos, here in Saudi Arabia, we said. Too bad, came the reply; they knew our rules before they came, and the rule is no religion other than Islam in Arabia. No churches. Period. Well, we noted, there are churches in every other country on the Arabian Peninsula: Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE. You are the only exception. Are you suggesting that all those churches should be closed? Yes, came the reply. Every one of them. So the reported statement by the Grand Mufti came as no surprise to me. Nor is it a surprise, considering his interpretation of Islam, that the religious police make it so difficult for Christians even to worship privately, in their homes. In a better world, the UN Human Rights Council would be denouncing these violations of freedom of religion, as would the whole Organization of Islamic Cooperation—given that Saudi Arabia is the only one of its 57 member countries that absolutely bars churches. In the world in which we actually live, denunciations of the Saudis for this are almost non-existent. To give credit where it is due, the U.S. Government, in the latest International Religious Freedom report issued by the State Department, honestly states that “Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice….The government officially does not permit non-Muslim clergy to enter the country to conduct religious services, although some do so under other auspices and are able to hold services. These entry restrictions make it difficult for non-Muslims to maintain regular contact with clergy. This is particularly problematic for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, whose faiths require that they receive sacraments from a priest on a regular basis.” This is not as frank as some of the earlier Bush Administration human rights reports, which until 2005 stated flatly that “Freedom of religion did not exist” in Saudi Arabia. The Grand Mufti’s statement ought to be widely denounced around the world, and won’t be—a scandal and a shame.
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams March 15, 2012 Pressure Points