We Must Cut Off Our Relationship with Saudi Arabia

The Khashoggi affair signals the beginning of the end for Mohammad bin Salman, the impulsive and out-of-control prince. The United States and Western countries can no longer be allied with Saudi Arabia, the regressive regime characterized by fear.

After letting his Saudi protégé Mohammad bin Salman (“MBS,” the impulsive and out-of-control prince) destroy Yemen, wreaking havoc between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, saluting ridiculous human rights developments, and looking the other way when it came to the insanely high number of yearly beheadings that have undermined any serious strides toward modernization of the country (notably, the blogger Raïf Badawi was left to languish in the country’s prisons), Donald Trump would be wise to threaten to break off the Quincy Pact once and for all. And the Europeans should follow suit and call back their ambassadors from the country. The events and revelations have been coming one after another for many days. Last August, we learned that Riyadh had been planning to invade Qatar in the wake of the crisis and that the unwavering position of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had led to his firing.

Relations with the United States

This year marks almost three-quarters of a century that Saudi Arabia has benefited from the American umbrella in spreading its deadly ideology throughout the Arab world. Historically, the Quincy Pact, signed in 1945 between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, sealed political, diplomatic and military cooperation to stabilize the region. It is high time that stops. Among the last gifts of President Barack Obama to the rest of the world was the continuation of the Quincy Pact between the top enlightened global power and now the strongest regressive power in the Gulf region.

With such friends, the West no longer needs enemies. It is no longer possible to supply and sell weapons to Riyadh or to allow the assassinations of foreign opponents without calling into question our relationship with the country that houses the first holy sites of Islam. The situation in the Muslim world and the shock that’s affecting the Arab world can no longer be permitted to protect such a black sheep.

The Beginning of the End

The operation that saw the Oct. 2 disappearance of the opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul,* potentially signified the beginning of the end for the crown prince, MBS.

Following one strategic error after another since 2015, the country is now reeling from state terrorism after having tried in vain to accuse its neighbors of it. Such suicidal politics may also result in the beginning of the end for MBS, who, on Oct. 13, formally denied having been implicated in that affair, despite a history of such behavior.

Recall the death of Nasser Saïd, a Communist opponent of the regime, who was removed in 1979 from Beirut and “fell” from an airplane.

In effect, the latest events in Saudi Arabia seem to definitively bury any kind of quick evolution of the human rights situation in the country. The country risks veering into chaos. Vision 2030 remains MBS’s trademark and will thus unravel with the leader.

The collapse is even more difficult as Western countries want to believe Saudi Arabia’s modernization plan, having largely contributed to constructing it. Is it a mirage? It’s off to a bad start. How do you forget the 10,000 deaths brought about by the senseless war that led MBS to Yemen in 2014 to conquer the Houthi rebels supported by Iran? We are currently facing, powerlessly, the worst humanitarian tragedy since the beginning of the century. And yet we continue to make Riyadh the kingmaker of the region.

The whole world has been beating around the bush for years while asking one question, a question that often doesn’t have a clear response: what is so extraordinary about Saudi Arabia that we have made it one of our staunchest allies in the Middle East? To legitimize the absurdity of our strategic choices, it was necessary to create a worst enemy to sweeten the Saudi pill. That was done with Iran, whose problematic revolution has only served to reinforce the blind support that we give to Riyadh. The Saudi kingdom has, in effect, largely regained strength in the region since the arrival of Donald Trump and America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, sealing new alliances such as those with… Israel. For many months, not a day has passed during which we don’t talk about Saudi Arabia in world geopolitics.

Tragedy and Provocation

Riyadh is at the heart of Europe’s political tragedy and portends a chain of events that could quickly get out of control. The spread of Salafi and Wahhabi ideology by a fleet of low-cost imams exported throughout Europe, taken up by many terrorist organizations including al-Qaida and the Islamic State, is right at our doorstep; the stirring of tensions with Iran, which has to this day respected the terms of the Iran nuclear deal signed on July 14, 2015 in Vienna, a de facto arrangement in a cold war environment that’s on the verge of crumbling at any moment; provocation with the United Arab Emirates against Qatar in triggering a blockade on June 6, 2017 which called into question the existence of the Gulf Cooperation Council, one of the only organizations in the region capable of bringing any stability; historic reconciliation with Israel now improbable, to the point of burying any hopes that an Arab Muslim community (in the absence of unity) is still possible to save the region, etc.

Faced with the impulsiveness of two brothers of circumstance, Trump and MBS, blunders can quickly happen. In a context where global Islam seems to be in crisis and exploited by extremism that is rooted in contradiction, just like the country that is supposed to shelter the temples of its wisdom but which is on the brink, any additional support to Riyadh is an implicit vow on the part of our policies to bring about the destruction of the Middle East. And the security implications for Europe in the future will be enormous. Beyond the Quincy Pact, it is also time for Europe, which wants to prevail on the world stage as best as it can, to sever diplomatic relations with Riyadh in the name of a certain vision of human rights: the one it is supposed to defend as often as possible since its creation, despite the shift in a world that does not care and violates international law (prominent Western leaders in mind). The Frankenstein beast could soon be out of control, and we may find ourselves confronted before long by a new Saddam, who was also one of our allies at the time.

*Author’s note: Riyadh acknowledged this on Oct. 15, 2018, and then we learned that those close to MBS were directly involved.