Contagion effect and the Saudi grand game in the Middle East
King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, and his son Defense Minister Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud in Hafr Al Batin area, north of Saudi Arabia, on March 11, 2016. Balkis Press/ABACA/ABACA/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Domestic
politics in the Middle East especially in a country like Saudi Arabia never
stays that way for long. Recent events in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, demonstrate
the contagion effect not only on the politics in the Middle East but
internationally too.
On November 3, regime forces of King Salman
and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman embarked on an arrest purge of some of the
most powerful figures in the country.
They called it an anti-corruption drive and in some
international capitals such as Washington the ‘cover story’ was parroted.
Despite the cover story about a corruption drive it is clear that the moves
reflect the ongoing power-grab by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince as he clears the
way both internally and externally to accede power from his father and remove
perceived opponents.
The
regional dimension of moves in Riyadh were apparent when the Lebanese Prime
Minister Saad Hariri who had allegedly been called to visit the Saudi capital
city then made a televised announcement of his resignation.
The Saudi regime
also contended with a missile attack targeting Riyadh fired from neighbouring
Yemen and responded by closing ports and borders
on this broken state.
The
current political landscape in Saudi Arabia is being shaped by an ambitious
individual who has hitherto been hailed as a ‘reformer’ and ‘moderate’. Crown Prince
Mohammed Bin Salman, commonly and also casually referred to as ‘MbS’ has been
credited as the driving force behind Saudi Arabia’s plans to reform and
diversify an economy that has been
tanking and causing cause for concern as local unemployment rates rise. Promises to float an Aramco IPO under his vision
were also welcomed in international trade and finance circles.
Moreover, when
Saudi Arabia made a dramatic volte face and over-turned an archaic driving ban on women in the
Kingdom, the ‘mark’ of Mohammed bin Salman the ‘moderate’ was divined in some
press opinion. On the surface all well and good. However, a series of moves and
political calculations in the last six months have given rise to speculation
that the power grab extends in terms of ambition beyond the borders of this
increasingly unstable Kingdom.
The significance of
this confluence of events lies in the contagion effect on the Middle East at a
time of growing instability, tensions and conflict. There are fears that
Mohammed bin Salman may be considering taking his country to the brink of war with Iran and seeking to
recover some much-needed kudos in the wake of regional failures in, for example,
Yemen and Syria.
Saudi Arabia has been seeking to recover some authority within
the region ever since the Arab Uprisings of 2011. The masses forced
Saudi-friendly autocrats such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power and newly mobilized citizens
elected populist Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood to power.
With allies
such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia has designed and pursued foreign policy approaches
that have sought to intervene in regional hotspots to beat back the so-called
Shi’a arc spreading from Tehran to the hillsides of South Lebanon and Israel’s
border as well as claim the title of Sunni hegemon from groups like
the populist Muslim Brotherhood.
Within this regional context, however, Saudi
Arabia has had to contend with a record of failures rather than successes.
Regional contagion
Under the already
relatively short tenure of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi foreign policy strategies
can be described as aggressive and confrontational. Nevertheless, rather than
steering the country away from further fiasco in the region they are
increasingly augmenting regional instability
and
inducing a greater likelihood of conflict and military intervention.
Effectively, foreign policy strategy
approaches under Mohammed bin Salman’s influence are contributing to rising
national and regional security concerns with simultaneous fears as it relates
to the security of energy supplies and the grip on power of its regional
proxies.
This is apparent in
the recent Saudi-led campaign against Qatar. In June 2017, Saudi Arabia
spearheaded a campaign against Qatar interpreted as all but an attack on its sovereignty. Saudi Arabia and
three other countries – UAE, Bahrain and Egypt – have imposed land, maritime
and air blockades, cut diplomatic ties, and taken other measures.
They issued
Qatar’s leader Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani with thirteen demands that amounted to a
capitulation of any independence in domestic or foreign policy unless aligned
to Saudi-inspired diktat. Qatar has not yielded to the Saudi-inspired plan.
The
Gulf region has become further de-stabilized with ripple effects apparent in
the international coalition against ISIS, Lebanon, Libya, the occupied
Palestinian territories, Iraq, and beyond. The confidence that Mohammed bin
Salman had in terms of imposing a new regional dispensation according to his
agenda has dangerously faltered.
Mohammed bin
Salman’s strategic agenda raises significant concerns about the regional
contagion effect of machinations in Saudi Arabia.
Yemen will continue to
exhibit ungoverned spaces that Saudi Arabia can never hope to occupy if it
continues its military campaign, detains its President, and
imposes closures on its border that inhibit the supply lines of the most basic
humanitarian relief to this collapsed state.
Qatar remains defiant and
continues to enjoy powerful support within the US administration and in other
foreign capitals.
Hezbollah’s response to Hariri-baiting them from Riyadh only
demonstrates their more powerful strategic calculus and tenacious hold on power
in Lebanon.
This is a hold that Mohammed bin Salman will not be able to defeat.
This is the lesson Israel was taught when it went to war with Hezbollah in
2006.
The willingness of Mohammed bin Salman to embark on a series of moves
against what might be considered natural ‘Sunni’ allies in the region as part
of a broader conception of hostilities against Iranian power in the Middle East
already shows evidence of severe miscalculation.
That Saudi Arabia would turn
to its new allies, such as Israel, to shore up an emerging military union facing Tehran and its
associates demonstrates how reckless the Crown Prince is being when it comes to
the strategic functioning of the regional system and the role of the Kingdom, whose throne he aspires to sit on, in it.