Saudi Arabia: international priorities

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Saudi Arabia: international priorities

Summary: Saudi hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood may be fading, easing some problems (with Turkey, Qatar, potentially the UK) but perhaps creating others (Egypt, UAE).

The Saudi military intervention, probably more correctly aggression, in Yemen today 26 March (which we expect to consider more closely very shortly) comes at a time when Saudi Arabia, like all Arab states which have maintained any kind of stability, faces multiple external problems resulting from the devastating wars and civil wars of the last decade.

A new and apparently thorough examination of the "war on terrorism" in the last twelve years in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan concludes that it "has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further zones such as Yemen." A senior UN official is reported to have told a conference in Doha yesterday 25 March that twenty million people originating in the Middle East were displaced (internal or external refugees) at the end of 2014, the largest number since the Second World War.

The only problem that appears to amount to a direct threat to the Kingdom is IS. However Saudi Arabia has increasingly, some would say obsessively, assessed Iran not merely as a rival but as an aggressive threat. Yemen, which Saudi Arabia traditionally views as within its sphere of influence, has slipped towards failed state status, and the military and political success of the Houthis is seen as a direct challenge because they are Shia (albeit of a quite different kind from the Shia of Iran and Iraq) and have therefore been linked with Iran. Finally Saudi Arabia has opted to stay close to President Sisi’s Egypt, and has lined up with him to demonise the Muslim Brotherhood, at some cost in its relations with Turkey and Qatar.

The article below was published (before the attack on Yemen) on the Al Monitor website. The author, Dr. H. A. Hellyer, of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, argues that the last priority, opposition to the Muslim brotherhood, is likely to be watered down.http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=2820afb1fbae0c99e88fb6f52&id=47c03bec2f&e=672f0b89c4