Time Questions U.S. Ties With Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON, July 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In its latest issue, a U.S. weekly magazine questioned the U.S.’s reluctance to isolate Saudi Arabia and posed several questions on its strategic importance to the U.S.

Under an article titled “Do we still need the Saudis?”, Time questioned the notion of oil sustaining the alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and whether this still applies, now that the U.S. has found alternative oil sources.

Saudi Arabia controls 30% of the world’s known oil reserves, said Time, and that is why for years, “in the interest of maintaining the world’s supply of crude, Washington has ignored evidence that the ruling Sauds are allowing the country’s powerful religious leaders to propagate anti-Western hate.”

“In the aftermath of Sept. 11, it’s worth asking whether America truly still needs the Saudis. In economic and strategic terms, the U.S. can probably manage without them. Saudi Arabia today provides only 8% of the oil consumed by Americans. It accounts for 15% of the U S.’s crude-oil imports, less than half the amount the U.S. imports from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.

“That’s a far cry from the 25% figure for 1973, when the Saudis, piqued by Israel’s victory in that year’s war, embargoed oil sales to the U.S. and prompted a 70% rise in crude prices,” said Time.

The magazine said that there are other “promising” new oil resources which are opening up in Russia and Central Asian states like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Other valid reasons, according to the magazine, to isolate Saudi Arabia is that open loathing for the U.S. and sympathy for Osama bin Laden’s cause.

“The kingdom’s latent anti-Americanism has been stoked in recent months by fierce opposition to the Bush Administration’s pro-Israel Middle East policies and the perceived harassment of Muslims in the U.S,” said that magazine.

Time also questioned the Saudi influence in the Palestinian crisis and sad that it was “limited”. “Though Abdullah has dangled normalized relations with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state, only Washington has the credibility to drag the two sides to the negotiating table,” it said.

The magazine added that the most important issue to consider when cutting ties with Saudi Arabia is the country’s reluctance to participate in the upcoming U.S.-led war against Iraq and prompting the U.S. military to begin planning around them.

While the Saudis believe that the U.S. will not try to go to war without them, in the war rooms inside the Pentagon and at Central Command in Tampa, Fla., military strategists no longer think the U.S. needs the Saudis to dislodge Saddam, said Time.

Alternatively, the war would require as many as 200,000 troops, with forces launching from Kuwait, Turkey and the smaller gulf emirates, reinforced by a massive U.S. Navy and Marine presence.

However, the paper spoke about a risk involved in isolating Saudi Arabia. “Western diplomats warn that the Al-Saud clan, which has ruled the kingdom for the past century, is the only Western-leaning institution left in a fundamentalist state that is growing younger, poorer and more radical,” said the magazine.

Meanwhile the paper said, Saudi Arabia is reluctant to be isolated from the U.S. In the past two months, it has been worried enough about its relations with America to launch a public relations blitz aimed at improving the image of the Saudis in the U.S.

“Only 32% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Saudi Arabia, down from 60% during the Gulf War. The point man for the campaign, Adel Al-Jubeir, a top aide to Crown Prince Abdullah, says that after September 11, “we discovered Americans don’t know us. So we decided to explain ourselves to them.”