Rift grows between
U.S., Saudi Arabia

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A showdown is brewing between Saudi Arabia and the United States – one that could impact the conduct of the terror war, global oil prices and the prospects for peace in the Middle East.

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DEBKA-Net-Weekly says in early December, when America was preoccupied with Afghanistan, Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto monarch, quietly negotiated a series of secret agreements with the anti-American regimes of Iran and Iraq.

Those pacts effectively gave birth to a new Riyadh-Baghdad-Tehran bloc for the Gulf and Middle East regions. Abdullah believed, DEBKA reports, this reorientation reflected the aspirations common to many younger members of the royal family, some of his army chiefs, a majority of tribal leaders and almost the entire religious establishment. The view they held in common was that the time had come, after half a century of close interdependence, for Saudi Arabia and the United States to go their separate ways. Abdullah's finishing touch: The time has come for Riyadh – not Washington – to be the No. 1 power in the Middle East-Gulf region.

Before Sept. 11, President Bush and Vice President Cheney might not have stood in the way of a partial separation with certain modifications. But after that trauma, both refused to accept Saudi Arabia directly counteracting Washington's interests in the Middle East, the Gulf and Central Asia.

As the rift widens, DEBKA reports, experts see severe instability in store for the Middle East and Gulf in the weeks to come, coupled with unrest and tensions on Saudi Arabia's borders, gaining force as the annual Hajj pilgrimage season approaches next month.

For the first time in Hajj history, Saudi, Iranian and Iraqi intelligence will work together to preserve calm among the millions of pilgrims. They will be overseen from a Saudi air force intelligence command center to be set up in Medina, one of the two holy cities. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran are on the threshold of creating mutual defense and trade pacts, DEBKA sources say.

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Aware of the reconciliation process, the United States was taken aback by the speed at which the three heads of state, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, found mutual understanding.

The trio also agreed to invite Syrian President Bashar Assad to join the new alliance and incorporate the secret Iraqi-Syrian cooperation agreements signed last year in the new mutual defense documents.

One view in U.S. government and intelligence circles holds that the secret treaties have already been formally signed; another that they have not. But the formalities are of little consequence, say DEBKA's sources. The new allies, in the interests of spreading the spirit of d?tente, have been implementing their understandings in rapid steps. Since last November, the three capitals have been synchronizing their policy-making with regard to Afghanistan, al-Qaida, the Palestinian issue, Syria and Lebanon and their oil strategies.

Washington was first alerted to the shifting Gulf sands last August. Word came from Los Angeles, where the Saudi intelligence chief at the time, Prince Turki al-Faysal, was spending the summer. Turki invited leading Saudi businessmen in London, Geneva, Marbella and other places to come and hear his news about Crown Prince Abdullah's three-way alliance scheme. The only senior members of the royal house in opposition were himself and the Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz.

Some of the Saudi business executives present at the gathering passed the word on to Washington. The Americans received separate corroboration from Sultan's people, German business interests operating in Saudi Arabia and financial groups in London, in which Gulf money is invested.

Three weeks later, Osama bin Laden's suicide bombers struck the World Trade Center. U.S. officials took it for granted that, under the influence of that shock, Prince Abdullah would hold his horses. They also believed that, after the onset of the U.S.-led Afghan War against the Taliban and al-Qaida, Abdullah would have a hard time persuading his fellow princes to endorse the kingdom's rapprochement with the violently anti-American, terror-promoting regimes of Baghdad and Tehran.

"This was a miscalculation," say DEBKA's sources. Abdullah was not deterred. By December, the final drafts of the Saudi-Iraqi-Iran accords were ready for exchanging.

These developments go a long way toward explaining Saudi Arabia's apparently aberrant policies. Most Saudi experts find it hard to believe that Riyadh is fast approaching a formal demand for the withdrawal of American forces from the oil kingdom. Equally incomprehensible are the Saudi authorities' welcome mat for al-Qaida fighters returning from Afghanistan, as well as their willingness to earmark Saudi funds to pay for their secret escape and for the flow of smuggled weapons from Iran to the Middle East, uncovered when Israel intercepted the Karine-A arms ship Jan. 3.

The radical turn in the Saudi ruler's orientation has registered strongly in Washington and produced far-reaching policy revisions. But, according to DEBKA sources, the U.S. administration and intelligence services chiefs are still debating just how far Abdullah will be prepared to go in lining up with the radical line charted in Tehran and Baghdad. One school of thought gaining strength among American policy-makers is that Abdullah may have miscalculated and lost control, only to find himself being dragged after the fact much further than he planned – into involvement in a new Middle East war.

Saudi experts explain that Abdullah is a conservative rather than a religious radical, but the directions he takes tend to promote the sort of radicalism that may get out of hand. He does not subscribe to al-Qaida's goals and appears to regard Osama bin Laden as a highly intelligent, extremist madman, much like Moammar Gadhafi in the 1970s. He believed that the Arab and Muslim world ought to restrain bin Laden, just as it did Gadhafi, until he became more rational. However, the Saudi Crown Prince never reckoned on bin Laden growing to the monstrous proportions that he did. By the same token, he may be underrating the dangers of the new radical alliance he has acted to create, and find himself unable to hold his partners in check.

Some of the disconnected events of recent weeks fall into a neat pattern when seen in the light of the new mutual defense understanding between Saudi Arabia and Iran (with Iraq a third partner), reports DEBKA. One is the overnight disappearance from Afghanistan of the bulk of the al-Qaida fighting force and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Another is the evidence of Iranian agents meddling in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The Karine-A arms smuggling vessel, intercepted by Israeli commandos on the Red Sea Jan. 3, fits into the same pattern.

The links between these events surfaced in the stern warning issued by Bush in the Oval Office Jan. 11. In a single address, he wrapped together warnings to Tehran to stop undermining Hamid Karzai's interim government in Kabul and harboring "al-Qaida murderers," and his opinion that the Karine-A's cargo was meant for terrorist use.

The Bush administration did not explain why the president's warnings to Iran were issued just after the seizure of the arms ship. But by then, he must have been informed of all the ramifications, the foremost of which was that the ship took on its cargo of weapons at the Iranian resort island of Kish.

This discovery prompted a series of harangues from Israeli leaders and generals on the peril Iran's military meddling posed for Israel and the Middle East at large. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was accused of overstating Iran's role to add to the pressure on Yasser Arafat.

Three days later, on Jan. 14, Iran's Khatami telephoned Karzai in Kabul with a promise of Iran's support for Afghanistan's massive reconstruction project.

The Iranian president denied allegations of Iranian attempts to undermine the interim government, a denial he made sure to repeat in another telephone call to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.