Shifting Regional Interests for Saudi Arabia and Jordan

© RIA Novosti . Aleksandr Yurev / Go to the mediabankThe general view on the Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
The general view on the Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. - Sputnik International
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Like Jordan, Saudi Arabia is often maligned by countries in the Arab and Muslim world for its alliance with the United States. Other countries in the Middle East, like Syria, have strained its ties in recent years for Jordan’s tacit recognition of Israel, and for Saudi Arabia’s overt adversarial tone toward Iran, as both seek regional hegemony.

NEW YORK, September 12 (RIA Novosti), Jared Feldschreiber — The role of Islam within Jordan and Saudi Arabia continues to shape regional policies, as both kingdoms have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile their deep commitment to Islamic principles, while also ensuring political stability.

For over fifty years, Jordan has received military and financial aid from the United States; this has been a tricky act for the kingdom, which seeks to reap the benefits from the West, while it is also committed to regional interests at home. Jordan is not a rich country and relies solely on imports. Last week, for instance, a US-Israeli partnership of energy companies “agreed to supply Jordan with natural gas from Israeli offshore gas fields,” as reported in The Washington Post. “A nonbinding letter of intent, signed [last week] by Texas-based Noble Energy and Israel’s Delek Group – and Jordan’s National Electric Power spelled out a plan to supply 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas to Jordan over the next 15 years.”

Israel discovered natural gas off its northern coast in 2009 and by 2013 began to distribute the commodity domestically. The deal with Jordan represents Israel’s first export deal. While the US and British are seen as its chief Western allies, Saudi Arabia has also provided economic assistance to its development projects.

Within the geopolitical prism, King Hussein’s Jordan was a case study of a Mid-East country built on survival. Most states in the region long denied Israel’s right to exist, and yet King Hussein’s grandfather, King Abdullah already began secret peace talks with Israel, essentially since its inception. [Israel became independent on May 14, 1948]. When a Palestinian gunman at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem assassinated King Abdullah in 1951, many believed it was because of these very talks. The Palestinian problem with Jordan, and his cordial (albeit oft-times discreet) relationship with Israel in the ensuing decades continued to plague King Hussein until has death in 1999. King Hussein was bombarded, threatened and worse still, accused of ‘collusion’ with the Israelis; he had been seen as a traitor to the Arabs.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) sought King Hussein’s overthrow in the 1960s, severely threatening the monarchy. As a result, the kingdom waged a bitter struggle with the PLO, which culminated in a bitter civil war in 1970. To quash the PLO, the kingdom accepted financial and military support from the US and the British to destroy the PLO’s infrastructure. Ultimately, the PLO was banished and expelled to Lebanon. By 1994, Jordan’s peace deal with Israel became as no great surprise for Mid-East scholars.

Unlike Jordan, Saudi Arabia is heavily independent and economically rich with its plethora of oil fields, which began in the 1930s, but began to show great dividends by the 1970s. For political scientists, the 1970s had been called the Saudi era, as its oil was seen as a ‘political weapon’ to force governments, including the US, to become dependent on its valuable resources. Because the country was self reliant on its own resources, it managed to help shape regional policies. Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical independence has its roots with the reconciliation between then-Egyptian President Gamal Nasser and King Faisal following the disastrous 6-Day War.

Nasser’s Egypt, along with Syria and Jordan, endured a humiliating defeat to Israel in 1967, which opened up a newfound friendship between King Faisal and Nasser. Both were on opposing sides during the five-year civil war in Yemen earlier in the decade, as Saudi Arabia supported the Royalist Regime, while Nasser supported the insurgents. In subsequent decades, the flow of Saudi Arabian oil would be the main resource to assuage many of the ensuing regional problems. The wealth found in its oil fields helped to preserve the ‘status quo,’ enabling Saudi Arabia to serve as the chief arbiter to various inter-Arab conflicts.

Saudi Arabia created the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in 1981, an organization that included Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. With its headquarters based in Riyadh, the GCC served to protect member states from foreign intervention. The Saudis also brokered the Fahd Peace Plan in 1981 and the Arab Peace Initiative in an effort to promote coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians, despite the Kingdom’s longtime opposition to Israel’s right to exist. Despite drastic regional changes in the past fifty years, including the 2011 Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia has relied on its one stabilizing force to preserve status quo: its oil.

And yet, in the end, it is survival that remains the guiding principle for countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia to exist in a volatile region, a prevailing motif ever-present in the Middle East.

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