Royal House of Cards

By Ron Dermer
Jerusalem Post
August 8, 2002 

Since September 11, when 15 Saudi kamikazes killed thousands 
of civilians, not only has the United States government refused 
to look Saudi evil in the eye, it has actually tried to solicit 
Saudi support for the war on terror. 

Of course, making Saudi Arabia an ally in the struggle against 
global terrorism is tantamount to making the Soviet Union an 
ally in the struggle against global communism. But the Saudi jig 
is almost up. According to The Washington Post, a briefing at 
the Pentagon described Saudi Arabia "as an enemy of the United 
States, and recommended that US officials give it an ultimatum 
to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and 
its financial assets invested in the United States." 

To be sure, one briefing to an advisory board of a government 
agency does not a US policy make. But this briefing was given to 
the Defense Policy Board, the powerful advisory council to the 
Pentagon that is comprised of some of the most serious thinkers 
on US foreign policy and chaired by Richard Perle, a man whose 
uncompromising stance against tyranny has marked his entire career. 

Now that the wall of support for the Saudis within the American 
government has begun to crack, Riyadh knows that it is in serious 
trouble. The Bush administration will not long be able to ignore 
the actions of a Saudi regime that is "active at every level of 
the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot 
soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." 

The decision by successive American administrations to court one 
of the most repressive regimes on the planet could be summed up in 
two words: oil and stability. Saudi Arabia sits on an estimated 
25% of the world's oil supply, and a steady flow of cheap oil 
has not only advanced the personal interest of the numerous 
multinational merchants that trade in black gold, but has also 
served the vital national interest of the US's industrial juggernaut. 

Indeed, for decades, the home of the free had only one thing to 
say to a country where freedom of religion is denied, where only 
Muslims are entitled to citizenship, where public demonstrations - 
let alone political parties - are banned, and where a woman is 
prevented from leaving the country without a man's permission: 
"Pump the gas." 

The Saudi-American relationship was further underwritten by a 
belief that the regime in Riyadh was a bulwark of stability. 
In fact, many in the White House and almost all of the State 
Department are still convinced of this today. 

Sure, they admit, the Saudis are tyrants, but at least they're our 
tyrants. For decades, the House of Saud held the fort against an 
expansionist Soviet Union. Now, they argue, the Saudi royals are 
keeping the likes of Osama bin Laden from manning the pump. 

Even before September 11, the Saudi's diminishing oil leverage 
had already begun to undermine this argument. The collapse of the 
Soviet Union opened up vast swathes of potentially oil-rich 
territory to commercial exploration, and mounting Saudi debt has 
made oil brinkmanship an increasingly dangerous game for Riyadh 
to play. 

But today, the stability argument has become downright obscene. 
It is widely understood that in hundreds of madrassas and thousands 
of mosques, from Karachi to Los Angeles, the Saudis have spent 
billions of dollars promoting a Wahabi fanaticism that preaches 
nothing less than the destruction of Western civilization. If this 
fanaticism, which reared its head on September 11, is allowed to 
obtain weapons of mass destruction, it will no doubt practice what 
it preaches. Thus, destroying Wahabism, while not sufficient, is 
certainly a necessary condition for the successful prosecution of 
the war on terror. And as America is now beginning to realize, 
destroying Wahabism cannot be done without shaking the House of 
Saud to its foundations. 

At the beginning of the century, Prince Abdel Aziz, who fathered 
each of the four subsequent Saudi kings, used the religious fervor 
stirred by Wahabism to conquer his kingdom. Today, Wahabism is 
still used by Abdel Aziz's progeny to rule Saudi Arabia. Instead 
of using their geographic fortune to ensure a better future for 
their subjects after the wells run dry, the Saudi royals have kept 
their country's vast petro-wealth largely to themselves. To mask 
their grotesque profligacy and prop up their repressive regime at 
home, the Saudis practice Wahabism within their borders and export 
its destructive ideology abroad. 

The first Saudi king eventually understood the dangers that Wahabism 
posed to his rule. When his intoxicated followers wanted to continue 
their conquest beyond Saudi Arabia, Abdel Aziz, warned by imperial 
Britain that it would not tolerate such a move, turned on his own 
"holy warriors." But the holy warriors that his sons have paid off 
for generations in order to remain in power are well beyond the 
control of the current tyrants in Riyadh. Incapable of destroying 
the demons it has unleashed, the Saudi regime will surely appease 
them further. That is why the Saudi regime is an enemy of the US and 
the entire free world. Far from serving as a "stable" bulwark 
checking Islamic fanaticism, the very survival of the regime depends 
on the expansion of that fanaticism. For a century, the embrace of 
Wahabism helped keep the royals in Riyadh in power. But in the wake 
of September 11, the House of Saud has effectively become a house of 
cards. 

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The writer is a Jerusalem-based political consultant.