US President Barack Obama arrived in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh Friday for a two-day visit. Obama was met at the airport by the Emir of Riyadh, but neither the king, nor even his foreign minister was present. The reception has serious symbolic significance. The conspicuousness of the message was glaring. Niceties and red carpet treatment apart, one should be under no illusion that in Saudi eyes America and Obama have failed to deliver. Obama met with Saudi King Abdullah later, though. The Saudis believe that the US is pussyfooting over Syria and procrastinating over whether to militarily assist the Syrian opposition or not. Obama was accompanied by US Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials. The special bilateral relationship between Washington and Riyadh has deteriorated sharply in the past year, or more precisely since the so-called Arab Spring. At the Arab League Summit in Kuwait last week, Saudi Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdul-Aziz declared that the world had “betrayed” the Syrian opposition. There is much resentment in Saudi Arabia of the manner in which the US is handling the Syrian crisis. Even Obama's visit cannot salvage the Saudi loss of faith in America's presumed invincibility, or the reasoning of American policymakers. There is talk of double standards and comparisons with NATO's swift intervention in Libya in 2011 are drawn. What is clear is that Saudi Arabia is redefining its “special” relationship with America. There is no room, in Saudi reasoning, for obtuse abstractions. Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and Iran topped the agenda. Qatar, host to a large US air base, was also a bone of contention. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as Bahrain, have withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar but stopped short of severing diplomatic relations altogether. Another apple of discord is Saudi trepidation of a rapprochement between the US and Iran. The tender spot being Saudi sensitivities to what Riyadh regards as the intervention of Iran on behalf of the region's Shia Muslim population in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Bahrain. Riyadh believes that Washington virtually handed Iraq to Iran on a silver platter, whether unwittingly or not. Saudi Arabia regards itself as a bulwark against Shia resurgence in the region. Wahhabi Sunni Islam, the official ideology of the oil-rich kingdom, views Shia Muslims as heretics. Saudi Arabia, for instance dispatched troops to Bahrain, a tiny island kingdom ruled by a Sunni royal dynasty, in the face of a disgruntled Shia majority. Similarly in Syria, the sore point is that Iran has supported the Alawite ruling clique in Damascus allied to Iran for the past 40 years. The Alawites, like the Twelver Shia of Iran, are also seen by Wahhabi Saudis as heretical. Nevertheless, Saudi authorities now have reservations about certain Syrian opposition groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda and have declared officially that Saudi nationals who fight in Syria alongside Al-Qaeda groups will be penalised upon their return to the kingdom. The point in question for Saudi Arabia is Washington's close ties with Israel and increasing cordiality with Iran, Saudi Arabia's arch rival in the Middle East. But Washington, too, has reservations about certain aspects of Saudi petrodollar diplomacy in the region. The two countries used to consult more closely in the past, even though there have been tensions. A case in point was the Saudi oil embargo on the West, including the US, in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli 1973 War. Washington is also perturbed by Riyadh's rapprochement with Russia and its increasingly closer economic ties with China. Indeed, less than a week before Obama's visit to the oil-rich kingdom, Crown Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia embarked on an unprecedented visit to China. Riyadh has essayed its own pivot to America's political and economic rivals, Russia and China included. More provocatively, as far as Washington is concerned, are Saudi Arabia's independent political positions with regards to the countries of the region. The Saudis have long ceased to consult the Americans on such matters. The $12 billion financial assistance to Egypt by the Saudi authorities angered the US, which had reservations about the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood ex-president Mohamed Morsi. Saudi Arabia also gave Lebanon a $3 billion grant because the Lebanese economy is strained by the influx of an estimated one million Syrian refugees. Saudi Arabia's petrodollar diplomacy miffs Washington in general and Obama administration officials in particular. It is an inconvenient fact that Saudi Arabia has its own political priorities that do not always coincide with America's — and increasingly so. The current altercation between Washington and Riyadh is not necessarily grounds for war, yet it is a pressing matter at hand. Washington has never quite forgotten that 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the US on 11 September 2001 were actually Saudi nationals. Yet Obama appears to have conceded the necessity of a strong drive to improve poor relations with Saudi Arabia, a country with tremendous political weight internationally, and to iron out differences between the two countries. Saudi Arabia is a power to be reckoned with, after all. When the Saudis recalled their ambassador from Qatar, the tiny Gulf state lost $8 billion in three days. Its stock exchange was obviously jittery. Heeding these certainties of realpolitik can go some way towards restoring the broken trust between Washington and Riyadh. Nevertheless, there are certain ways action can be swiftly taken to improve relations between Washington and Riyadh. One is transparency. One presumes Obama's visit to the kingdom was a step in the right direction. It is only fair that American foreign policy, on Israel in particular and the Middle East in general, is subject to Saudi scrutiny. Obama's visit to the kingdom should help impose greater discipline on American foreign policy makers and will make it harder to hide agreements that are not in the interests of Saudi Arabia and its allies in the region. In the end, one thing is clear: the days of a Saudi surrogate are over. The brevity of Obama's visit to the world's largest oil exporter is an indication that Saudi Arabia is no longer an American proxy.
