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The Vast Power of the Saudi Lobby

[Harper's] John R. MacArthur - Given my dissident politics, I should be up in arms about the Israel lobby. Somehow, though, when I think of pernicious foreign lobbies with disproportionate sway over American politics, I can't see past Saudi Arabia and its royal house, led by King Abdullah. Ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt met aboard ship in 1945 with King Ibn Saud, the special relationship with the desert kingdom has only grown stronger. The House of Saud is usually happy to sell us oil at a consistent and reasonable price. In exchange we arm the Saudis to the teeth and turn a blind eye to their medieval approach to crime and punishment. Lately, King Abdullah has been making anti-American noises, calling the U.S. presence in Iraq an "illegitimate foreign occupation." But like the Saudis' paper-thin devotion to the Palestinian cause, this is just so much realpolitik. Today, as the Shi'ism scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb told Mohamad Bazzi of Newsday, "the Saudis are being more autonomous, but it's a very contrived sense of autonomy" designed "to give [them] more political cover so they can rally Arab support against [Shi'ite] Iran." The writer is the publisher of Harper's Magazine.
2007-04-20 01:00:00
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