The U.S.-Saudi Arabia alliance is built on decades of security cooperation and strong business ties dominated by U.S. interests in Saudi oil. The relationship has survived severe challenges, including the 1973 oil embargo and 9/11 attacks, in which fifteen of the nineteen passenger jet hijackers were Saudi citizens. Successive U.S. administrations have held that Saudi Arabia is a critical strategic partner in the region. Relations between the two countries have grown especially warm under U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Saudi de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, who was elevated to crown prince in mid-2017. Both have ramped up efforts to counter Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival. However, recent actions under the crown prince’s leadership, particularly the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, are posing new strains on the alliance, as many members of the U.S. Congress have called for punishing Riyadh and reassessing the relationship. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded in 1932, traces its roots to an alliance between the Saud family and descendants of religious cleric Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahab, who espoused conservative Sunni jurisprudence. This pact has endured for centuries, influencing the country’s domestic and foreign policy. Saudi authorities enforce religious restrictions, denying women rights they enjoy in Western democracies, and the government promotes its interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, by funding religious schools around the world. Though it has recently lifted some restrictions, including a ban on women drivers, human rights groups say rights abuses persist. The United States, first through its oil industry and then through government contacts, established a relationship with Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, and his successors that evolved into a close alliance despite a stark clash in values. U.S. businesses have been involved in Saudi Arabia’s oil industry since 1933, when the Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron) won a sixty-year concession to explore eastern Saudi Arabia. It made its first oil discovery there in 1938. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the oil discovery’s strategic nature. His meeting with King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy in Egypt in 1945 solidified the relationship. Saudi Arabia was officially neutral during World War II but allowed the Allies to use its airspace. Standard Oil and the Texas Oil Company (Texaco) formed a partnership in Saudi Arabia in 1936 and together founded the Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco, in 1944; the consortium later expanded to include what would later become Exxon and Mobil, helping Saudi Arabia become one of the world’s largest oil exporters. (The United States is expected to soon overtakeSaudi Arabia as the top exporter.) Saudi Arabia gradually bought out foreign shareholders, and since 1980, the company, now known as Saudi Aramco, has been wholly government owned. U.S. companies Chevron, Dow Chemical, and ExxonMobil still have refining and petrochemical ventures in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s proven crude oil reserves are among the largest in the world. Its oil production averaged 10.7 million barrels a day, of which 7.43 million were exported, in September 2018, according to the Joint Organizations Data Initiative, which compiles information about global energy production. The scale of the kingdom’s oil output and its founding role in the oil cartel Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gives it great influence over energy markets; it has played a “central banker” role, adjusting its oil production levels to stabilize global oil prices. Protecting Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades. OPEC has tried to steer oil markets since its formation in 1961, often directly affecting U.S. consumers. In 1973, Saudi Arabia embargoed sales of its oil to the United States in response to U.S. support for the Israeli military in its war against Arab states. In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia led OPEC in a price war to knock out competition from non-OPEC producers; the kingdom’s ability to quickly boost production caused oil prices to plummet by more than 60 percent over a six-month period. The drop severely hurt the Soviet Union’s oil revenues in the years before its collapse. Balancing the oil market, or making the price “fair” [PDF] for both producers and consumers, is the stated goal of Riyadh’s energy policy. However, more recently, the kingdom has manipulated oil prices to try to keep U.S. shale from becoming a viable competitor in the global market. In 2014, facing a glut in supply, Saudi Arabia and OPEC once again faced calls to curb production. But the Saudi oil minister at the time, Ali al-Naimi, persuaded OPEC to keep pumping to force high-cost producers—those exploiting shale, oil sands, and deep-sea resources—to reduce their output. Another Saudi aim was to undercut Iran’s economy. The policy also put heightened pressure on Russia, which was sanctioned by the United States and others after its invasion of Crimea. Oil prices subsequently fell to record lows of around $35 a barrel, and in a late 2016 reversal, Saudi Arabia, along with Russia, pressed OPEC members and other states to collectively curb their production. The six-month agreement, which went into effect in January 2017, was largely honored, defying some analysts’ expectations. OPEC continued to reduce its collective output, and by fall 2018 prices topped $80 a barrel. However, following U.S. pressure, Saudi Arabia boosted its supply toward the end of the year amid declines in exports from Venezuela, suffering an economic crisis, and Iran, hit with new U.S. sanctions. Providing security for the oil-rich Persian Gulf region has been a U.S. priority since World War II. U.S. companies were responsible for much of the oil produced in the region through the 1970s, and even as Saudi Arabia nationalized its oil industry at the end of that decade, it remained an important U.S. partner in the Cold War. The United States had for many years relied on Iran, under the rule of the shah, as part of a “twin pillar” policy of stabilizing the region. However, Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution upended that approach, leaving Saudi Arabia as the primary U.S. ally in the region for nearly four decades. U.S.-Saudi military cooperation peaked in the first Gulf War, when in 1991 a U.S.-led coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. More than half a million U.S. troops flooded into the region, with many based in Saudi Arabia. The presence of U.S. soldiers drew ire from Saudi conservatives and reinforced arguments that the elite was too accommodating to Western and non-Muslim interests. The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan supported the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which lasted from 1979 to 1989. Cash and weapons flowed to the Afghan jihad, which attracted thousands of Sunni Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa. Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, son of the founder of the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, joined the jihad in the 1980s and recruited Saudi fighters. Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990 with close links to the kingdom’s intelligence officials. But his opposition to U.S. troops in the Middle East put him at odds with the royal family, which welcomed the U.S. forces that had driven Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait. Bin Laden, who would found al-Qaeda, left the country by early 1992 and was stripped of citizenship in 1994. From his new base in Afghanistan, where he was protected by the new Taliban leadership, bin Laden issued a fatwa against “Americans occupying the land of the two holy mosques” [PDF], referring to the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina, in 1996. Following the 9/11 attacks, a wave of popular anti-Saudi sentiment in the United States damaged relations between the countries. The George W. Bush administration’s omission of twenty-eight pages from the 9/11 Commission Report fueled speculation that the U.S. government was covering up evidence that Saudi officials were complicit in the attacks. In 2016, the U.S. Congress passed legislation, over President Barack Obama’s veto and Saudi threats of economic retaliation, that allows the families of 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom, an exception to the principle of sovereign immunity. Some legal scholars, however, say that plaintiffs would likely be unable to collect on any damages. Saudi Arabia is the top destination for U.S. arms, with U.S. defense sales to the kingdom totaling close to $90 billion since 1950, according to the Pentagon. President Trump has encouraged such deals, arguing that they create half a million American jobs; several major defense firms have made lower projections. During his May 2017 trip to the kingdom, Trump signed a series of arms deals expected to total some $350 billion over a decade. According to the arms researcher SIPRI, Saudi Arabia’s total arms imports were almost eighteen times greater [PDF] in 2017 than they were a decade earlier. U.S.-Saudi Arabia relations have never been in complete harmony. Terrorism financing, the export of the kingdom’s interpretation of Islam, human rights abuses, and the lack of democratic representation, as documented annually by the State Department, have all caused friction. Although historically the United States and Saudi Arabia have had the common objectives of regional stability and containing Iran, they differed on core issues during the Obama administration. Saudi Arabia was dismayed by the lack of U.S. support for ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and that it was not included in initial negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, which were conducted in secret in Oman in 2013. Saudi leadership also chafed at President Obama’s vision that the kingdom “share the neighborhood” with Iran
The U.S.-Saudi Arabia alliance is built on decades of security cooperation and strong business ties dominated by U.S. interests in Saudi oil Relations between the two countries have grown especially warm under U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Saudi de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, who was elevated to crown prince in mid-2017. Both have ramped up efforts to counter Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival Congress have called for punishing Riyadh and reassessing the relationship Saudi authorities enforce religious restrictions, denying women rights they enjoy in Western democracies, and the government promotes its interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, by funding religious schools around the world. Though it has recently lifted some restrictions, including a ban on women drivers, human rights groups say rights abuses persist The scale of the kingdom’s oil output and its founding role in the oil cartel Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gives it great influence over energy markets; it has played a “central banker” role, adjusting its oil production levels to stabilize global oil prices. Protecting Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades. Another Saudi aim was to undercut Iran’s economy. The policy also put heightened pressure on Russia, which was sanctioned by the United States and others after its invasion of Crimea. The presence of U.S. soldiers drew ire from Saudi conservatives and reinforced arguments that the elite was too accommodating to Western and non-Muslim interests Saudi Arabia is the top destination for U.S. arms, with U.S. defense sales to the kingdom totaling close to $90 billion since 1950, according to the Pentagon. President Trump has encouraged such deals, arguing that they create half a million American jobs; several major defense firms have made lower projections U.S.-Saudi Arabia relations have never been in complete harmony human rights abuses, and the lack of democratic representation, as documented annually by the State Department, have all caused friction Saudi Arabia was dismayed by the lack of U.S. support for ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and that it was not included in initial negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, which were conducted in secret in Oman in 2013. Saudi leadership also chafed at President Obama’s vision that the kingdom “share the neighborhood” with Iran