The United States is playing a risky game with Saudi Arabia and Iran.The HillHe talks about the policy pursued by Washington towards Riyadh and Tehran.
The article written by Lawrence Haass, a researcher at the US Council on Foreign Relations and a former White House official, explained that Riyadh still wanted to obtain assurances from US President Joe Biden that “it is a reliable partner in the face of Iran’s regional expansion.” At the same time, he met US and Iranian officials have recently been in Doha, hoping to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
He added that the nuclear deal goes against what Riyadh wants, which wants to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in the long term.
He pointed out that Washington is facing a difficult equation, as it wants to reassure “the country, the leader of the Sunni Arab countries that seeks to contain Iran,” and at the same time, it wants “to reach a temporary nuclear settlement with Iran.”
The biggest danger for the United States is that it will lose the equation completely, by failing to revive the nuclear agreement, and feeding more fears in Riyadh, which might prompt them to reconsider their dependence on Washington for regional security.
He pointed out that Biden is facing an “extraordinarily complex scene”, which forced him to retreat from his pledges to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” because of its human rights file, as he hopes to persuade Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to increase oil production to reduce prices in the global market.
The Saudi newspaper, Al-Riyadh, had written in an editorial that “the Biden administration must prove that its interest in the Gulf states is not just a condition imposed by the need for oil… and that it must prove by deeds that it is still committed to the security of the Gulf.”
The author of the article stresses that Biden’s commitment to reviving the nuclear agreement is problematic, because it will not curb Iranian nuclear activity, and threatens to undermine his efforts to restore relations with Riyadh, which has become “increasingly important to American strategic interests,” according to what he sees.