An interview with expert Paul Salem on the history of US-Saudi relations — and why it won’t end over journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
President Donald Trump will stand by Saudi Arabia despite mounting evidence that its leadership was behind dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi’ s murder last month.
In a statement on Tuesday, the president said that “the United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.”
Last week, the CIA reportedly concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of the journalist, who was a US resident, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
But Trump and members of his administration continue to back Riyadh because they don’t want to jeopardize billions of Saudi dollars flowing into the US economy through weapons purchases and investments.
This isn’t that surprising — for decades, the US has quietly looked away from Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses for material gain. Trump, however, is making this subtext explicit in a way that no administration has before.
To learn more, I reached out to Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC. During our conversation in October, just weeks after Khashoggi disappeared, we discussed the history of US-Saudi relations and why the relationship has remained strong for so long.
It’s also worth noting that the Middle East Institute has received Saudi money in the past, but its board has suspended this funding until an investigation into the journalist’s death is complete.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
The US and Saudi Arabia are strong allies. When did this relationship start, and what’s the reason or reasons behind it?
It dates back to World War II, when oil became a very strategic resource and Saudi Arabia had a lot of it. Both countries cemented their relationship, which was centered around energy, in a famous meeting on board a US naval ship in the Suez Canal between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi king in 1945.
So energy was a pillar of the early relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia continues to be an essential producer and exporter of oil globally, and has a huge impact on global oil prices. For a long time, the US got many of its energy resources from Saudi Arabia.
Their partnership also centered around global finance and economics. Much of Riyadh’s great wealth flowed into the US economy in terms of investments, arms purchases, or other businesses setting up shop in Saudi Arabia.
As the Cold War took off, Saudi Arabia also became a strong ally of the US in the fight against communism. The Saudis were religious and conservative, and very much opposed the atheist wave led by the Soviet Union.
So to recap: The US-Saudi relationship bloomed early on because of oil, mutual economic growth, and anti-communist sentiment.
Yes, that’s right.
Now let’s jump to the post-1979 period — the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The US and Saudi Arabia cooperated by arming the Islamic and jihadist opposition to the Soviets, which eventually beat back the invasion. That, of course, also created the problems of jihadism, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and all the rest of it.
And 1979 is also the year America lost Iran as an ally, after the Islamic Revolution. Riyadh has sided with Washington as it’s confronted Tehran ever since. That partnership continues.
But then both countries faced a big test with 9/11, right?
Yes, and it greatly shook the Saudi-US relationship: 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudi. Of course, one of their principal goals was to bring down the Saudi government. But nevertheless, they were Saudis, and that created a huge backlash against Riyadh in the US.
When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS) came to power, he made counterterrorism one of the main pillars of the relationship with the United States. He admitted that moves by Saudi Arabia since 1979 to use radical Islam as a weapon against the Soviets or against the Iranians backfired, and says he wants to change that policy.
The Khashoggi affair may be the second major crisis in their relationship since 9/11.
Does energy still matter as much as it did in the relationship?
It’s still a very important pillar, though the US no longer imports as much as it did from Saudi Arabia or the Gulf.
Most of those exports go to China, India, Japan, Korea, and so on. But as President Trump has said repeatedly, global oil prices still have a big impact in the US, and Saudi Arabia has a big role in raising or lowering oil prices.
It seems like the US-Saudi alliance is based more on strategic interests and convenience, not values.
Yes, that’s fair. But for Saudi Arabia, the relationship is also about security: defending its airspace, boundaries, and waters.
But yes, the values have profoundly differed for many stretches of the relationship. Saudi Arabia is a different society and it has lived in a different way. So when you have a case like this — a US resident who wrote for the Washington Post [disappearing] — you see that occasionally, these values lead to a clash.
In the past, the US has criticized Saudi Arabia, at least marginally, over its human rights abuses. But America seems to be doing that less now.
It’s a feature of the Trump administration. He says again and again that he believes it’s none of his business or none of America’s business. He applies this to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern, Asian countries, or European countries that have gone rather right-wing and fascist.
President Obama certainly spoke about these issues. But I would say he was a president who, while speaking about it, did not do much to change the issue.
I think the US is moving away from actually protecting human rights around the world. It’s partly because the US is no longer the dominant global power that can just order people around.
Has the relationship been more beneficial throughout the years to Saudi Arabia or the United States?
It’s beneficial to both, is the simple answer. The US certainly gets a lot out of it, and Saudi Arabia certainly gets a lot out of it.
The US gets some leverage over oil prices and supplies, gets a lot of petrodollar investments and huge contracts, and has a stable ally in a very unstable Middle East. For Saudi Arabia, the US was key in its development of building a modern state and providing for its security.
In terms of interests, they certainly both have benefited.
How much has Saudi Arabia’s money in Washington influenced American politics and US views of Saudi Arabia?
Not in any major way. The White House has its own agenda. It’s not terribly influenced by what others in Washington say. And Congress has taken strong stances on the war in Yemen and now certainly on the Khashoggi affair.
In terms of Saudi Arabia’s general image in the United States, it was really impacted negatively by 9/11 and did not quickly recover from that.
Interestingly, it was MBS’s rise a couple of years ago that seemed to be creating a new narrative: a young prince who was letting women drive, bringing in music and culture, liberalizing the economy, and moving against a hard line. That initial narrative was positive for MBS.
But now with the Khashoggi affair and links to other things he’s done — the incident with the prime minister of Lebanon, the clash with Canada, the war in Yemen, the isolation of Qatar — we see that there’s a dark side to MBS.
The Middle East Institute, the think tank that you’re president of, said recently that it would no longer accept Saudi money, ”pending the outcome of the investigation” into Khashoggi’s disappearance.
