SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries
coming to you from Baltimore.
Saudi King Salman met with President Obama at the White House this Friday to discuss
a billion-dollar arms deal and foreign policy disagreements between the two countries. These
of course include the nuclear deal with Iran, and ongoing civil war in Syria and the Saudi-led
war in Yemen. Joining me now to discuss all of this is Robert Naiman. Robert is policy
director at Just Foreign Policy.
Robert, thank you so much for joining us today.
ROBERT NAIMAN, JUST FOREIGN POLICY: Good to be with you.
PERIES: So Robert, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have had a longstanding public disagreement
over policy towards Iran and Syria. Give me a sense of what they are and what came out
of this meeting in terms of those issues.
NAIMAN: Well, like the Israeli government, the Saudi government has been critical of
what they fear is the coming rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran, of which I would
say the most prominent part is the Iran nuclear deal, with everybody wondering what comes
next. Is this isolated, or are there other things coming out of this? Many people want
other things to come out of it. Many people wanted the U.S. and Iran to talk about Syria
and Yemen and other regional issues. That of course is something that the Saudis fear.
However, the Saudis have had a very different kind of dispute with the U.S. than the Israeli
government has. Not nearly as confrontational, and in fact the Saudis have accepted that
the Iran deal is going forward. So that, those I think are the fundamental dynamics. As you
said, there's a list. The U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia in Yemen, I think inadvisably,
but perhaps understandably from their point of view. That's a lot of human destruction.
The U.S. has somewhat significantly supported Saudi Arabia in Syria. Again, that's led to
a lot of human destruction. We're seeing some of the consequences of that now spill over
to Europe in terms of their refugee crisis.
So there's a lot of questions to be answered going forward. I'm in the camp of people that
hope this will, we're going to see a more fundamental turn where the U.S. will move
on from this to try to use diplomacy to resolve other regional conflicts, including the civil
war in Syria and including the civil war in Yemen.
PERIES: Now, though the U.S. officials consistently refer to the destabilizing activities of the
Iranians they often miss to point out the destabilization activities that the Saudis
are conducting in the region, including the war in Yemen, support for opposition groups
in Syria and propping up regimes against the Arab Spring revolts in places like Egypt and
Bahrain. Not to mention their role itself in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and so on.
Their role in supporting that.
Why is the relationship between the Saudis and the U.S. in spite of all of this in the
region and in spite of 9/11 so tight?
NAIMAN: Well first of all, you know, the word 'destabilizing' is a very funny word. Regardless
of what you think of Iranian policy in Syria or the Russian policy in Syria, to call it
destabilizing is quite odd. Regardless of what one thinks of the Assad government, it
is the internationally recognized government. It does hold a seat at the United Nations.
So it's strange to call Iran and Russia destabilizing when they're supporting the internationally
recognized government. Again, that's different from whether you like the government or not.
Its legal status is clear, and of course the Saudis and also the U.S. to some degree, at
least until recently, supporting armed opposition groups attacking the Syrian government. Which
you know, again, if the word 'terrorism' has any objective meaning surely apples to armed
groups fighting the Syrian government. In fact, some of these groups are classified
as terrorists by the U.S. government, like Al-Qaeda, like ISIS, like Al-Nusra, which
is the Al-Qaeda affiliate.
So that's, that sort of Iran destabilization, I think that's a boilerplate thing that probably
nobody in the U.S. government really believes. That's something that they put out to say
that we're concerned about Iran and Syria, we're concerned about Russia and Syria. Of
reassuring our allies.
The relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia goes back to World War II when the
United States took over from Britain as the European patron, as the colonial power, as
the guarantor of the Saudi monarchy. And this has been something sort of outside of question
in the United States. Certainly up until 9/11. And even after 9/11 was not really subjected
to public scrutiny, although it did lead to a shift in Washington of people saying, okay,
well maybe we have to be allies with the Saudis, but we need to figure out some kind of shift
because these people are crazy. You know, the 15 of the 19 hijackers being Saudi, questions
of links to these people from the Saudi royal family. We don't really know. That section
of the 9/11 report is still classified.
But what we do know is, what's been in dispute, is that something like 90 percent of the ISIS
ideology, something like 90 percent of the Al-Qaeda ideology, is basically the same as
the ruling ideology of Saudi Arabia. We saw in the last week Thomas Friedman in the New
York Times have a column calling out the role of Saudi Arabia in promoting this ideology
in the Arab and Muslim world, which has clearly fostered anti-American terrorism, anti-pluralist
terrorism, sectarianism, so on and so forth. And it's unfortunately been a long-standing
U.S. policy to tolerate this and even sometimes connive with it. As I wrote in my chapter
on Syria in the WikiLeaks book that just came out, it was actually U.S. policy to support
Saudi efforts to promote sectarianism in Syria, with consequences that we see today.
PERIES: Now Robert, at the heart of this visit is also a billion-dollar weapons deal, when
Saudi Arabia is pounding the hell out of Yemen at the moment with those weapons. And this
is a situation where one of the richest countries in the region is attacking the poorest country
in the region. How does the U.S. justify this kind of arms sales to a nation that's doing
this to Yemen?
NAIMAN: Well, I'm sorry to say that selling arms is so practiced in Washington as a normal
currency of U.S. foreign policy that it's rarely controversial. It is considered sort
of, this is a thing that we do. This is how we reward our friends, is we sell them U.S.
weapon systems. And of course it doesn't hurt that the Pentagon-industrial complex profits
handsomely from these relations. We saw it in the case of the military coup in Egypt,
when supposedly, according to U.S. law, U.S. aid to the Egyptian government should have
been cut off.
The Pentagon contractors screamed and cried [inaud] wait, those are our contract. That's
our money. Don't you dare cut that off. So of course, the Pentagon contractors love it
that the United States is selling more weapons to Saudi Arabia. And from the point of view
of the Obama administration this is something very easy to give. We have the weapons. Nobody's
going to--hardly anyone will complain if we sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia.
I don't think the conflict in Yemen is going to end by us blocking the U.S. government
from selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. I think what's more likely, I hope, is that there
will be political pressure on the administration to use its influence to push for diplomatic
and political resolution.
PERIES: Let's hope so. Robert Naiman, thank you so much for joining us today.
NAIMAN: Good to be with you.
PERIES: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.