CFR Daily News Brief 1/23 Saudi King Abdullah Dies, Launching Succession

Top of the Agenda

Saudi King Abdullah Dies, Launching Succession

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who had ruled Saudi Arabia since 2005, died on Friday at the age of ninety, passing the crown (NYT) to his half-brother Salman and sparking speculation over the succession’s impact on Saudi oil policy, relations with the United States, and internal reforms. King Salman, seventy-nine, takes power at a time when U.S.-Saudi relations have been strained (WSJ) by U.S. outreach to Iran, support for the Arab Spring, and criticism of Saudi Arabia’s stifling of internal dissent. In a televised address on Friday, King Salman pledged continuity and acknowledged (FT) the crises unfolding on the country’s borders in both Iraq and Yemen. He also immediately decreed (Bloomberg) that current oil minister Ali al-Naimi would continue in his post, signaling stability in Saudi oil policy amid the ongoing fall in world prices.

Analysis

"The king’s death comes at a delicate time for the oil-rich kingdom, which is struggling with the impact of plunging oil prices domestically, the rise of the Islamic State, and an Iran’s whose influence is growing across the Mideast as its proxies take on increasingly powerful roles in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria," argues Yochi Dreazen in Foreign Policy.

"The biggest risk associated with Riyadh’s oil strategy is domestic. An $89 billion revenue loss in 2015, assuming the price of oil hovers at $55 a barrel, will not lead to a social revolution. But sharp cuts in welfare spending and salaries for government workers, which account for 50 percent of budget spending, could have unpredictable consequences," write Bilal Y. Saab and Robert A. Manning in Foreign Affairs.

"The people of Saudi Arabia are probably better off for having had Abdullah as king than would have been their lot with most other rulers. He recognized the need for the country's society to modernize and moved in that direction about as much as he could within the severe limits posed by tradition, the religious establishment, and the necessity for consensus," argues Paul Pillar in the National Interest.