King Abdallah is perceived in the eyes of the Saudi public as a ‘reformer’, who has had up to now, critical, but substantially positive relations with the internal opposition groups and he will dedicate himself to a slow traditionalist modernization (this is not a contradiction of words) of the Saudi Kingdom.
The political line of the new King has been denominated, ‘the Phase of Balance’ and it will be concerned with, according to many western observers, resolving the backward state of Saudi technology, the fight against the neo-terrorist version of Islam, the new geo-political position of the Kingdom in the framework of the new Middle-East, subsequent to the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Strangely enough, the new King is not among the ‘seven Sudayri’, or rather, not among the members of the reigning family who were born from the marriage between Abdul Aziz and Hussa al-Sudayri, a group which include the late King Fahd, the Sultan Prince, Minister of Defence, Nayef, Minister of Home Affairs, Salam, the Governor of Ryadh. We can say that the ‘seven Sudayri’ is the group within the reigning family, which is most explicitly sympathetic to the western world, in particular, to the United States(1).
Abdallah, instead, before the Gulf crisis of 1990-9l, was known for his criticism of the Saudi Kingdom’s dependence on the military protection of the United States and since that period, he has initiated a series of contacts with Syria and Iran on the basis of his personal geo-politics, which hold that the safety of his Country is strictly connected with a policy of good neighbours within the context of Islamic nations of the Middle-East.
His relations with Sultan, the oldest son of Abdul Aziz and, as already mentioned, a member of the ‘seven Sudayri’, will be the key to examine the political line of the Kingdom and the measure of the friendship between Saudi Arabia and the West.
Certainly, a confrontation with Sultan, actual Minister of Defence, would be difficult for any political leader.
Sultan commands the Armed Forces which number 105,000 men, chosen on the lines of strict personal and tribal loyalty, while Abdallah can directly order only 57,000 members of the National Guard, a formation which is not part of the Armed Forces, but chosen to be the Praetorial Guard of the royal family(2) Gregory Gause. The Approaching Turning Point: the future of U.S.Relations with the Gulf States, Brookings project on U.S. Policy towards the Islamic World, Analysis Paper, Washington D.C., May 2003.
Naturally, to understand the link between the Saudis and Syria, probably the future point of new developments of relations between the Kingdom and the whole Middle-East area, and geo-political centre of the new King Abdallah, it is necessary to go back to the end of the 60’s when Riyadh contributed with its petro-dollars to the construction of the Armed Forces of Assad, put out of action by Israel in the war of 1967.
In the subsequent years, the Kingdom has maintained its role of support, unstable, but also always fundamental to the baathista regime of the alawita family (and, therefore, at the limits of the apostasy, according to Islamic criteria) of the Assad.
Today, from reports of Turkish and German sources, it would even appear that the Syrian Government had advance knowledge from its agents, of the 11th September attack and also of the London attacks on the 7th of August last(3).
The geo-political logic of the Saudi activism was, and is, quite understandable: cultivate preferential relations with a country which can control Iraq, which can supply the strategic depth of the Al Saud towards the Caucasus, essential area for the geo-political control of the non-OPEC oil, and which can put pressure on Iran, allied-competitor for the oil market of the OPEC cartel, and which was a supporter, during the years of the first Gulf crises, of the Shiite minority in the Kingdom and, above all, is the future supplier of an atomic global strategy to the entire Gulf area(4).
The Saudi assistance to the Syrians reached its height when the Kingdom advanced the lion’s share of the Pan-Arabic financing of five billion American dollars to Hafez el Assad, who, incidentally, used the greater part of it to buy Russian arms systems.
What is more, it is essential to understand that the Syrian policy of exploitation of Lebanon (which is a political and economic element essential for the maintenance of the baathista regime of the Assad), and which will proceed regardless of how the internal political balance of the ‘land of the cedars’ goes ahead, is financed and supported, almost totally, by the Saudi Kingdom, which sees in the Syrian presence in Lebanon the guarantee of a pressure from the North towards Israel, which is fundamental, according to the new Pan-Arabic strategies of King Abdallah, to ensure that the pressure of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to the east and south (5) of the Jewish State is entirely effective.
Immediately after the coming to power of Bashar El Assad in July, 2000, four Saudi companies formed a consortium to invest 100 million US dollars in the baathista country, but what is more important is that this line of bilateral relations between the Saudi monarchs and the ‘national socialism’ of the Syrian baath also concerns Intelligence, given that Abdallah, in the most critical moments of his confrontation with the elite of the ‘seven Sudayri’ used the apparatus of the Syrian Services and accepted the support of Syrian agents (trained in East Germany and by the Soviets) to update the techniques of political and social control of the National Guard.
Besides, it was the very same Syrian Intelligence which played a key role in the preparations of the attack on the United States base in Saudi Arabia in 2002, as has been demonstrated by both the United States and Saudi Police enquiries.
The relations with the neo-terrorist and jihadist area in the Middle-East held by Saudi Arabia is always a connection which is mediated and careful, but largely founded on geo-political choices which are essential for the stability and autonomy of the Reign.
One thinks of the support given to Syria for the training of the various Lebanese and Palestinian neo-terrorist and jihad groups which, thanks to Saudi financing, is not limited to only arming and training, but also to direct financing of the various groups(6).
In particular, Saudi Arabia has underwritten the Syrian costs (but also the Iranian) for the training of, let us call it, the section of the Brigade of the Martyrs of Al Aqsa (today, officially called, in the documents of the Palestinian Authorities, Brigade Yasser Arafat) direct from the commander of Al Fatah Mounir Al-Maqdah, who works from Lebanon.
This is just the umpteenth verification of the link between the Pan-Arabic politics of the new King Abdallah and the careful management of the neo-terrorist and Palestinian situation to de-structuralize Israel, or rather, to avoid the ‘coupling’ between U.S. presence in the Middle-East and American support to the State of Israel.


Oil and politics in Saudi Arabia

Therefore, the country of the Al Saud, with the new King Abdallah, lives in a political phase in which the two key references in the area are Iran and Syria, while the post-Hussein Iraq is not considered, by the local leading-classes close to the Royal House, as an immediate threat, neither from a geo-economic standpoint of the oil, nor with regard to the military pressure or the Iraqi potential of priming a crisis within the Saudi world.

On the contrary, the United States politics in Iraq are seen, both by the Arab public opinion and from that influenced by Saudi Arabia, as ambiguous and basically hypocritical: the validity of the ONU resolutions regarding the Mesopotamian country is affirmed, while the United Nations resolutions which concern Israel are not implemented(7).
But, in order to create a policy of regional hegemony, which breaks the ‘coupling’ between the United States and Israel and reconstruct an autonomous presence of the Saudi Kingdom, resources are needed and, therefore, the key is the management of the oil.
The perception that the Saudi ruling classes have of the future world oil market is that of a slow, but inexorable saturation, of a multiplication of competitors and a steady tendency towards an excess of supply(8).
Therefore, the politics of the House of Al Saud are to create an oil industry regional hegemony, which slows the growth of the Caucasian global competitors, and to open to political and bi-lateral management, the growing markets of the new geo-economic areas, which are in the phase of structural development: China, India and, in the near future, Islamic Indonesia and the Asiatic South-East.
This is why there is the geo-political necessity of distancing Saudi Arabia from the global interests of the principal western buyers: the United States, the European Union and Canada.
The production growth at the present time, therefore, serves Saudi Arabia to make cash and direct the penetration of the future available oil towards other geo-political areas which are disposed to reconstitute a buyers’ market like the one of the 70’s, up to the time of the attack on the Twin Towers.
At the moment, the Kingdom of the Arabic Peninsula declares to have produced 9.25 million barrels per day in February last; 9.5 in March and April; 10 million bpd in May, according to the most recently diffused data(9). According to the most qualified forecast, the demand should grow for another three years, although at a lower rate than the present one.
What is more important for the Saudi planners, however, is that the production of the non-OPEC countries does not keep pace with the growing world demand. On the contrary, the growth of non-OPEC production should diminish with respect to that of 2002-2003.
Furthermore, what renders the geo-political situation of the House of Saudi more difficult and obliges it to quicken the pace of its internal transformation and its new role in the Middle-East, is that the productive elasticity of Saudi Arabia has tended to diminish constantly in the last three years, which means that middle-east producers must sell their stock-on-hand at cut prices to follow the growing global demand(10).
The inherent political risk to other producer countries, such as Nigeria and Venezuela, should, however, keep the price of the middle-east barrel high. Here is an intuitable geo-political utility of the neo-terrorism: to keep the raw material markets ‘hot’ by selectively de-structuralizing certain producer countries, and immobilize the structure of the demand of the consumer countries.
The world growth of energy consumption should reach around 57% by 2025.
The present struggle for internal stability in Saudi Arabia and the new geopolitical balance of the middle-east area are, however, elements of a new form of internal competition between the OPEC countries, and between these countries and the area of non-OPEC producers; a geopolitical fight to introduce internal de-stabilizing phenomena between competitors, and between these competitors and the non-OPEC area; facts to which the jihad terrorism is not, by any means unrelated. On the contrary, it is an essential element.
The form of the production is a sign of some problem, whether infrastructural or strictly geological, which, obviously, can be resolved only over a medium-long term: more than 50% of the Saudi reserve is concentrated in 8 fields of extraction, Ghawar and Safaniyah (offshore fields) two of the oldest sites of extraction. They produce 65% of the Saudi oil (with evident added danger with regard to safety, given the concentration of the production) and the Munifa field, which is blocked, at the moment.
The percentage of drying wells must be, inductively, 23-30% and, therefore, to maintain the same productive potential, it is necessary for Saudi Arabia to bore new wells(11).
In the present position of high prices (and growing) per barrel, the production tends to diminish over a short period, as the demand for oil industry goods in the newly developing countries falls.
Therefore, at the political level, a strong capacity of capital transfer is created from the first world countries towards the OPEC producers, and in particular, Saudi Arabia, which permits the availability of capital in petrodollars for investments in the OPEC area in the newly developing countries – future clients of the petroleum cartel, the majority being Islamic nations.
The discussions with the United States, on the part of King Abdallah, coming to a head in the recent Texas summit between the then Saudi Crown Prince and George W. Bush, concerned the accusation by the oil producing countries towards the United States, of having caused price increases due to excessively backward technology of the United States refineries, while President Bush urged the Saudis to increase oil extraction in the shortest time possible in order to lower the price per barrel on the world market.
A Saudi structural investment in American refineries is possible, while the Kingdom has presented to its U.S. counterpart a plan of internal investments in the Saudi extraction system of 50 billion U.S. dollars to increase the production to 12.5 million barrels per day by 2009, and reaching 15 million barrels per day within 15 to 20 years.
The world consumption level of oil energy is foreseen as rising beyond 50% by 2025. Therefore, the strategic game of Saudi Arabia to become the political pivot in the middle-east area and to force the old buyers of the ‘first world’ to follow their own oil necessities is, as one would say in economics, ‘a game which costs nothing’.
An example of this new geo-economic formation of the relations between producers and consumers of oil, is the proposal to form in Iran, an Oil Exchange.
At the present time, those who deal on the market outside of the Dollar area must bear additional transaction costs are far as oil buying is concerned(12).
But the producers keep only 120 billion US dollars a year of the 110 billions USD per month, (on the basis of 20 working days) which arrive in their coffers.
It is a clear indication that the producers go to invest elsewhere.
Therefore, if the US dollar were restricted in its role of national currency, the proposal of an Iranian Oil Exchange would be more dangerous, for the geo-political and interior balance of the United States, of a nuclear attack launched by the same Iran.
The point is that, since 1998, the transformation of the western consumers, the rationalization of technology, the differentiation of the energy sources, have created a structural mechanism of over-production of the oil which, in that year, caused a 50% fall in the price per barrel.
This has left the OPEC countries with strong public debts, which can be resolved only by creating a structural shortage of oil in the West, also through geo-political means, among which is neo-terrorism.
Today, China is responsible for one third of the world oil demand, and India will be increasing its demand for oil to above 10 million barrels per day in the next 10 years(13).
The presence of the United States in Iraq is, therefore, in function of Washington’s control of the second oil reserve available on the planet, but not such, however, as to exercise geo-political control over a China thirsty for oil.
It is understood, naturally,” that no strategic choice is managed for only one end”, and the popular Marxism of the economic foundation of the foreign policy is now unserviceable.
But certainly, this line of interpretation of the Reign of Abdallah, closed between a political constriction through the oil towards the West - moving towards a condition of “oil overload”, and a series of medium expanding powers ( clearly in contrast with the US and the Western World) which are to be supplied with high priced oil, - is a scenario to be followed closely.
The Indian and Chinese societies are looking for new areas of extraction and research, almost all places are in ‘enemy’ countries to the United States and the West: The Indian OVL has three concessions in the Sudan, other Indian companies are leaders in explorations in the Libyan Gulf of the Sirte.
There are contracts with Iran for the gas and a pipeline project across Pakistan(14).
Saudi Arabia must resolve many internal problem of a regional character in order to manage this new picture. While the interests to maintain high oil prices keep the Iran of Ahmadinejad and the new Saudi King convergent in their ideas, no problem.
On the contrary, the geopolitical interest of the Kingdom will be aimed at supporting the nuclear policy of the Shiite Republic, which will liberate oil resources for exportation and permit a ‘strong’ negotiation with the entire group of western country consumers, above all, with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian question and the political-military presence of the USA in Iraq.
The Saudi Reign must, however, resolve the security question of its oil exportations and simultaneously guarantee the peace in the strategic picture of the Southern Gulf.
Bahrain and Kuwait, in particular, are especially vulnerable, given that they border on the Saudi Kingdom and their oil fields are in zones which are very close to Iraq and Iran.
It is obvious that Saudi Arabia is more than able to sustain the defence of its minor allies in the Gulf Security Council, Emirates and bordering countries, but it is absolutely unable to sustain a combined political-military pressure by Iraq and Iran.

It must, therefore, carry out a policy of asymmetrical alliance with the other regional powers in the southern OPEC.
The combination of arms of mass destruction and conventional ones allows Iran to impose unconditional control on the Straits of Hormuz, a vital line for the Saudi trade.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has remedied the old dispute over borders with Kuwait, which now permits the development of the Dorra fields of extraction of gas that are situated in the waters at the crossroads of the Iranian, Saudi and Kuwaiti borders.
In the Southern Middle-East picture, the Saudi Arabia of Abdallah, has every interest of maintaining a leadership profile in the Islamic world for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it was amply demonstrated in the King Fahd Plan of 2002.
Israel has no interest, whatsoever, in expanding the conflict to encompass Saudi Arabia(15).
Certainly, the Kingdom of Abdallah cannot avoid, if the situation should come to a head, a non-irrelevant military commitment, but also not excessive, even though the Jewish State is certainly the pivot of a significant indirect threat to Saudi security.
The constant pressure of the Jewish State towards the Palestinian Authorities and Syria means that Saudi Arabia is subjected to constant requests from the Arab world and from a large part of domestic public opinion, to significantly reduce its military and security ties with the United States, which would result in its becoming an area subject to the hegemony of Iran and, eventually, that of Iraq.
Two countries, what is more, which have an oil extraction capacity comparable to that of Saudi Arabia.
Furthermore, the problems of the Jordan area are essential to the Saudi geo--politics.
In the worst case, the Saudi Kingdom must study the possibility of a fall of the Hashimite Reign and the threats which would be placed at the Saudi borders by a radical Palestinian state which could rise from the ashes of the Jordanian Reign.
Neither can Saudi Arabia be indifferent to the Syrian and Palestinian military pressure on Israel, which could generate internal tensions and/or excessively increase the Saudi costs of financing Syria and, to a large extent, the Palestinian neo-terrorism.
The Reign does not perceive threats from Egypt. Furthermore, the Nile Republic is the only Arabian military power able to push Saudi Arabia into a conflict with Iran and Iraq.
As far as the geo-political and military relations with the United States are concerned, the question is extremely complex, and it does not seem possible that the new King could transform relations with the United States as rapidly as might be desired.
Saudi Arabia does not have sufficient resources to sustain alone its necessity of military force and strategic security, but the United States is a non-Islamic country and, above all, remains Israel’s best ally.
Besides this, the American presence in Saudi Arabia creates problems of cultural friction, beyond the fact that after the beginning of the Second Intifada, the bilateral relations between the United States and Israel became extremely difficult to sustain, together with the military support for the Saudi interests.
The USA reacted, in part, until after the 11th of September, with the re-positioning of their navy at Diego Garcia, and by expanding their presence in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and in the United Arab Emirates.
In addition, it seems probable that the new Saudi King would like to improve his security and military relations with other ‘partners’: Great Britain is already working on the up-dating of the Saudi Air Force, while France has supplied the Kingdom with modern naval armaments.
In conclusion, only the United States possess an adequate armed-forces potential in the Middle-East area to be a deterrent to Iran and (in the future) a stabilized Iraq and, therefore, effectively protect Saudi interests.


The jihadi terrorism in Saudi Arabia

In 1989, Osama Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan, where the Soviets had retreated after defeat, but the following year, Bin Laden moves to the Sudan after having been imprisoned in Gedda and forbidden to leave the country, due to his arms smuggling activities.
This is the ‘original scene’ of the relations between Bin Laden and his country.
The network of Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, centre of operations of the jihad of Osama Bin Laden, which has among its objectives, the separation of the Arab Kingdom from the United States and the overthrow of the Al-Saud family, was originally formed by Yussef al Ayeri, who was the only regional head of Al-Qaida to directly communicate with Osama Bin Laden.
The secondary cell was directed by Al Ghamdi, or rather, Abu Bakr Al Azdi, but both of them, as well as those that followed, were infiltrated from the beginning, by Saudi security agents.
The Bin Laden organization accuse the Saudi monarchy of being illegal, according to the interpretation of Islamic precepts, and corrupt, which Al-Qaida sees as being due to the presence of the USA on Saudi soil(16).
The policy of the new King seems quite clear, by now, after the recent arrests and actions of the Security: to break ties between members of the vast royal family with Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist organization, sometimes utilized for internal political struggles between the various power groups. A further intention is to destroy the jihad network in Saudi Arabia and place these successes on the balance of a new relationship with the United States, which will allow the Reign a major geo-political autonomy in its relations with both Iran and post-Saddam Iraq.
The accusations against Saudi Arabia after the 11th September attack(17) are the sore point of the new image which the Reign intends to give of itself in the West.
Up till now, the Al-Qaida organization has hit the economic interests of the Royal Family, but has committed the grave error of underestimating the efficiency and professionalism of the Saudi Security Force, which could be part of the political game within the group of the ‘seven Sudayri’ and the new King.
The balance of loyalty, both personal and tribal, between the Armed Forces and the Security of the Reign, between the Minister of Defence and the King, will be of central importance in coping with the terrorist threats within Saudi Arabia.
The other objective which the new King intends to push ahead is, as we have already mentioned, the modernization, in a traditional Islamic key, of the Saudi Kingdom.
A modernization which foresees a major control of the Islamic preaching, actually imposed by the then Crown Prince Abdallah, since the day after the 11th September attack and is, therefore, a sort of rearrangement of the Islamic hierarchy which could result in Saudi Arabia becoming representative of a new religious leadership within the Sunnite area.
It is the counter-item of the reform modernizer: the Reign of the Al Saud, born from the fusion, also of family and clan, between the tribal group of the Bin Abdulaziz and the preaching of Al-Wahab, has always ruled on the direct management of the relations between subjects and the bureaucratic apparatus of the Al Saud family(18).
Today, with King Abdallah, this mechanism is re-proposed in function of a possible and strong presence of an autonomous Saudi civil society, sensitive to the demands of jihad neo-terrorism.
Keeping Bin Laden at a distance, first in Afghanistan and then in Sudan, before the 11th of September, did not resolve the problems of political security within the Reign.
The instability potential of Saudi Arabia remained very high, to the point of not permitting a re-definition of the regional security after the pacification of Iraq.
Furthermore, we must remember that the Saudi society is, like all the Islamic societies today, characterized by a population, 50% of which is under 25 years of age, by a progressive lack of jobs (which the ‘Saudi-ization’ of the primary sectors, previously managed by foreigners, has not improved), by the expansion of radical Islamic power in the universities and schools, by the new disruption of the oil potential and security in the Middle-East(19).
So, we are before a sort of bi-polar disturbance of the Saudi Kingdom: the internal crisis pushes the local ruling class to weaken their ties with the United States to support a radicalized public opinion, while the oil industry welfare state becomes always more difficult to sustain and the productive area of the population diminishes due to a growing birth rate.
If King Abdallah knows how to manage the new security pact with the United States, to keep them on his territory and, therefore, negotiate seriously and credibly with Iran and Iraq and together support an internal religious and cultural reform able to eradicate the neo-terrorism, this will really be an almost impossible task to challenge the traditional mediatory capacity of the Saudi Royal Family.
On the other hand, the United States know perfectly well, how much of the oil bill paid to Saudi Arabia, goes to support the Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan, North Africa, Bosnia and in all the countries where terrorist and fundamentalist guerrillas are installed(20).
But apart from pressure on the Saudi government, what could be the geo-political alternative? The abandonment of the area, which would lead to a rapid terrorist implosion of the country and to a subsequent regional Iranian hegemony, an “Axis of Evil” state?
The constriction to a western ‘democratization’ in the wahabita Country, on the Iranian model? It is probably that the population would revolt or even bring to power, by the vote, the very extremist preachers and declared supporters of the global jihad against the ‘crusaders and Jews’.
Therefore, it is probable that the United States will mobilize other military structures around the Saudi Kingdom, to condition the developments without generating other problems for the House of the Al Saud, but they are, however, condemned to remain the guardians of the wahabita dynasty, which will firmly finance, in the next ten years, the global competitors of the United States and will invest, in North America, petro-dollars which are becoming more and more necessary to support the ‘double-deficit’ (domestic and foreign) of the United States currency. Always provided that the Iranian hypothesis of ‘to do without the dollar’, does not become rather interesting.
In any case, King Abdallah will not attempt a particularly violent or police-like control of the Islamic network within Saudi Arabia.

The power of the Al Saud is too dependent on the general consent of the Islamic mullah mechanism and, in fact, the King, from the time he was the Crown Prince, has always sort to be in general agreement with the fundamentalist opposition within the Saudi Kingdom.
The arrested for the attack on the Torri Khobar, noted for their contacts with Iran, were interrogated with extreme difficulty by the US investigators. The attacks on the Saudi National Guard at Riyadh in 1995, perpetrated by four Saudis who declared that they had worked under the orders of Osama Bin Laden, were ‘protected’ against the USA investigators; they were hanged before the FBI could interrogate them(21). In short, one must presume that keeping the USA away from the Saudi strategic picture must continue.
From a psychological viewpoint, which is essential for the evaluation of mass behaviour, the Saudis feel themselves superior to their Arab ‘brothers’, besides fomenting a rooted resentment towards all foreigners, above all, obviously, the ‘infidels’.
This strange mass instability is also reflected in the ruling class: after the official coming to power of Abdallah in 1995, King Fahd retained partial power during 1996, because of pressure from the ‘seven –Sudayri’, who were unhappy with the new management of Abdallah. It is even said that the Crown Prince, now King, had it in mind to arrest the immoral and dissolute princes who were close to King Fahd(22) .
Regarding the internal reform, as we have already seen, everything will be very slow, if ever it sees the light.
Therefore: the management of the Saudi internal politics will be inevitably slow, but will profit from these years of ‘ oil industry fat cows’, while managing the pressure of the OPEC and non-OPEC competitors with all the arms, legal and illegal of international politics.
Another essential element will be the bi-lateral USA-Saudi Arabia politics, which will see the collateral support, with aimed investments, from the Royal House of the Saudis to US investments in the Gulf and, in any case, in the sector of the oil industry infrastructure.
King Abdallah’s idea to utilize Iran as a military pivot with regard to the West, to ‘keep out’ the non-Islamic interests of the oil, will continue, perhaps even with the Saudis financing the Iranian atomic arms project! as already happened years ago, with the Pakistani nuclear system against India.
If the Arab and Aryan-Islam world decide to change over to the Euro, the European Union will enjoy the benefits of the new, exceptional liquidity, but it will have no type of political-military control over decisions of the Gulf countries and the Persian area.
If it is decided that the Islamic neo-terrorism survives by itself, it will hit the marginal areas of the oil production and the countries which are least able to negotiate the financial conditions of the importation of the crude oil (23).