Saudi Brinkmanship in the Syrian War

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2016/02/saudi-brinkmanship-syrian-war

Brandon Friedman is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Program on the Middle East, and a Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on the political history of the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf States. Brandon is also the Managing Editor of Bustan: The Middle East Book Review, and teaches modern Middle Eastern history in Tel Aviv University’s International programs.

Brandon Friedman

February 2016

Prince Khaled bin Sultan Al Saud, the co-commander of coalition forces during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, argues in his 1995 biography Desert Warrior that Israel took its "bomb out of the basement" during the war to convince the U.S. that it had to do more to stop Saddam’s “Scud” missile attacks on Israel, which were launched from mobile launchers. Prince Khaled believed Israel was using its military capabilities as much to pressure its ally, the U.S., as it was to frighten its enemies.^[1] Whether this version of events tracks closely with the truth is perhaps less important than how the Saudis perceived it. Indeed it may be fair to say, based on recent events, that Saudi Arabia is now making this gambit, fact or fiction, part of its own tactical playbook.
On late Thursday night, February 11, Russia and the U.S., as leaders of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG), signed a temporary ceasefire in Munich that is to be implemented in Syria within one week, and which is to allow humanitarian relief and a resumption of diplomatic negotiations in Geneva. Yet within a day of its announcement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assessed the chances of its implementation at 49 percent.^[2] Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, claimed that the “The deal's dead, but it will live after two or three tries,” adding that perhaps it will be implemented after Aleppo is finished being retaken.^[3]http://www.fpri.org/articles/2016/02/saudi-brinkmanship-syrian-war