Loading ...In “Unprecedented Snub”, Saudi Arabia Demands “Recalibration Of Relationship” With U.S.
As Obama concludes his fourth and supposedly final meeting to Saudi Arabia as U.S. president, the White House was quick to explain where relations
with the Saudi Kingdom lay, and as CNN reported this morning, moved to tamp down suggestions that ties with Saudi Arabia are fraying, with administration officials saying that President Barack Obama “really cleared the air” with King Salman at a meeting Wednesday.
Which is strange because that is not how the other side saw it: even as White House officials stressed that the leaders made progress, a prominent member of the Saudi royal family told CNN “a recalibration” of the U.S.-Saudi relationship was needed amid regional upheaval, dropping oil prices and ongoing strains between the two longtime allies.
There is going to have to be “a recalibration of our relationship with America,” former Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “How far we can go with our dependence on America, how much can we rely on steadfastness from American leadership, what is it that makes for our joint benefits to come together,” Turki said in a significant departure from usual Saudi rhetoric. “These are things that we have to recalibrate.”
The prince made his “unprecedented” in the words of CNN, comments as Obama landed in Riyadh “to a reception that social media critics termed a snub, but U.S. officials strongly disputed.” The Saudi government dispatched the governor of Riyadh and Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubair to shake Obama’s hand, a departure from the scene at the airport earlier in the day when King Salman was shown on state television greeting the leaders of other Gulf nations on the tarmac.
A U.S. official said Salman’s absence upon arrival was not taken as a snub and noted that Obama rarely greets foreign leaders when they land in the U.S. for meetings. Obama went immediately to the Erga Palace to meet the King shortly after landing, but the perceived slight on his arrival was seen as one more sign that a relationship long lubricated by barrels of oil is encountering friction.
Fawaz Gerges, an expert on Islamic-Western relations at the London School of Economics, called their current dynamic “an estrangement” but not a break that would end U.S. involvement in the Middle East.