US President Barack Obama is set to arrive to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to consult Washington's Gulf allies on the crises in Yemen and Syria. He will meet Saudi King Salman, before a Gulf Cooperation Council summit of leaders from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Oman on Thursday. The president is expected to push Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter and biggest buyer of US-made arms, and other Gulf allies for greater cooperation and military backing in the fight against ISIS, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria. While the two powers have warm ties that stretch back for seven decades, Saudi Arabia has been frustrated with Obama on a number of issues, including the US-led Iranian nuclear deal. Last year, the US and five other world powers negotiated a deal Iran to end its economic and diplomatic isolation in return for curbs of its nuclear program. Since March last year, Saudi has led an Arab coalition battling Iran-backed Houthi militias and forces loyal to the deposed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who control the capital and much of the country's north. The Arab coalition is seeking to restore the internationally-recognized government of Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi to power. A fragile UN-backed truce between warring parties is currently holding. The US has provided logistical support. Both the US and Saudi have backed moderate opposition groups in Syria, where a devastating five-year-conflict shows little signs of stopping. Recently, Saudi Arabia has established a 34-state Islamic military alliance to fight terrorism in Syria, among other countries, and expressed its willingness to the US to send Saudi ground troops to the country. On the eve of Obama's visit, a US official said that Washington wishes greater special forces and naval cooperation with Gulf states to counter Iran's "destabilizing activities" in the region. Saudi is keen to curtail the activities of both the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and the Houthis, which it sees as Iranian proxy groups. A messy, unspoken hurdle for the two allies to trudge past is Obama's recent comments to The Atlantic magazine, in which he said Saudi Arabia and its nemesis Iran need to "share the neighborhood" rather than expect the United States to use its military power to settle scores on behalf of its Gulf allies. Then, in a rare open letter to Obama, a prominent Saudi prince explained his view of the Obama administration's commitment to the kingdom. Prince Turki Al-Faisal, who once headed the kingdom's intelligence agency, wrote in response to The Atlantic interview that the president had given King Salman assurances in Washington last September on the need to counter Iran's "destabilizing activities," but "now, you throw us a curveball." He rejected Obama's characterization of Saudis as "free riders" before asking Obama if he had "pivoted to Iran so much" that he had equated Saudi Arabia's long-standing friendship with the U.S. to Iran's leadership. After concluding his Saudi visit, Obama will then travel to Britain and Germany.
