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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
Saudi relations with Iraq have been the most problematic,
vacillating from tension to de facto alliance to war. Throughout
the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Riyadh had suspected Baghdad
of supporting political movements hostile to Saudi interests, not
only in the Arabian Peninsula but also in other Middle Eastern
countries. Saudi-Iraqi ties consequently were strained; the
kingdom tried to contain the spread of Iraqi radicalism by
strengthening its relations with states such as Iran, Kuwait,
Syria, and the United States, all of which shared its distrust of
Baghdad. Beginning about 1975, however, Iraq began to moderate
its foreign policies, a change that significantly lessened
tensions between Riyadh and Baghdad. Saudi Arabia's diplomatic
relations with Iraq were relatively cordial by the time the
Iranian Islamic Revolution erupted in 1979.
The Saudis and Iraqis both felt threatened by the Iranian
advocacy of exporting Islamic revolution, and this shared fear
fostered an unprecedented degree of cooperation between them.
Although Riyadh declared its neutrality at the outset of the
Iran-Iraq War in 1980, it helped Baghdad in nonmilitary ways. For
example, during the conflict's eight years, Saudi Arabia provided
Iraq with an estimated US$25 billion in low-interest loans and
grants, reserved for Iraqi customers part of its production from
oil fields in the Iraq-Saudi Arabian Neutral Zone, and assisted
with the construction of an oil pipeline to transport Iraqi oil
across its territory
(see External Boundaries
, ch. 2).
Despite its considerable financial investment in creating a
political alliance with Iraq, Saudi Arabia failed to acquire a
long-term friend. On the contrary, in August 1990, only two years
after Baghdad and Tehran had agreed to cease hostilities, Iraqi
forces unexpectedly invaded and occupied Kuwait. From a Saudi
perspective, Iraq's action posed a more direct and serious threat
to its immediate security than the possibility of Iraniansupported subversion. The Saudis were genuinely frightened and
requested the United States to bring troops into the kingdom to
help confront the menace.
Riyadh's fears concerning Baghdad's ultimate intentions
prompted Saudi Arabia to become involved directly in the war
against Iraq during January and February 1991. Although the
United States was the principal military power in the coalition
of forces that opposed Iraq, the kingdom's air bases served as
main staging areas for aerial strikes against Iraqi targets, and
personnel of the Saudi armed forces participated in both the
bombing assaults and the ground offensive
(see Persian Gulf War, 1991
, ch. 5). Iraq responded by firing several Scud-B missiles at
Riyadh and other Saudi towns. This conflict marked the first time
since its invasion of Yemen in 1934 that Saudi Arabia had fought
against another Arab state. Saudi leaders were relieved when Iraq
was defeated, but they also recognized that relations with
Baghdad had been damaged as severely as Iraqi military equipment
had been in the deserts of Kuwait and southern Iraq.
Consequently, postwar Saudi policy focused on ways to contain
potential Iraqi threats to the kingdom and the region. One
element of Riyadh's containment policy included support for Iraqi
opposition forces that advocated the overthrow of Saddam Husayn's
government. In the past, backing for such groups had been
discreet, but in early 1992 the Saudis invited several Iraqi
opposition leaders to Riyadh to attend a well-publicized
conference. To further demonstrate Saudi dissatisfaction with the
regime in Baghdad, Crown Prince Abd Allah permitted the media to
videotape his meeting with some of the opponents of Saddam
Husayn.
Data as of December 1992
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