Saudis could cut cooperation over US law: Analysts

SAUDI ARABIA could reduce valuable security and intelligence cooperation with longstanding ally Washington after a Congressional “stab in the back” allowing 9/11 victims to sue the Kingdom, experts warn. Cutting such cooperation is among the options available to Riyadh after Congress voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Saudis could cut cooperation over US law: Analysts(JASTA). “I’m afraid that this bill will have dire strategic implications” for the United States, Salman Al-Ansari, the president of the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), told AFP. “This partnership has helped provide US authorities with accurate intelligence information” that helped stopped attacks, said Al-Ansari, whose committee is a private initiative to strengthen Saudi-US ties. JASTA allows attack survivors and relatives of terrorism victims to pursue cases against foreign governments in US federal court and to demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on US soil. Ties between Riyadh and Washington became increasingly frayed under Obama, but analysts said security cooperation and intelligence sharing remained solid. Whether that will continue, analysts said, is now a question. “Saudi has been stabbed in the back by this unthoughtful and unrealistic bill,” Al-Ansari said. “How can you sue a country that is collaborating against the very same terrorism that they are baselessly being accused of?” Mustafa Alani, a senior adviser to the Gulf Research Center, suggested a review of the Saudi-US alliance. “Your financial investments have to be reduced in the US, your political and security cooperation has to be reduced,” he said. “It will be very difficult for Saudi Arabia to continue in intelligence cooperation when they take such a hostile position,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist and analyst. Obama opposed the law, saying it would harm US interests by undermining the principle of sovereign immunity, opening up the US to private lawsuits over its military missions abroad. The erosion of sovereign immunity is also a concern among the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which the Kingdom is the most powerful member, and Saudi Arabia’s Gulf allies have lined up beside Riyadh to criticize the law. United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan warned before the vote that the law “will have negative effects on international cooperation in the fight against terrorism.” Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa said on Twitter on Thursday that the law “is an arrow launched by the US Congress at its own country”. He asked: “Are there no rational people among you?” “This should be clear to America and to the rest of the world: When one GCC state is targeted unfairly, the others stand around it,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an Emirati Gulf specialist and professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University. “All the states will stand by Saudi Arabia in every way possible,” he said. Chas Freeman, former US assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and ambassador to Saudi Arabia during operation Desert Storm, said the Saudis could respond in ways that risk US strategic interests. “The souring of relations and curtailing of official contacts that this legislation would inevitably produce could also jeopardize Saudi cooperation against anti-American terrorism,” he said. The US-Saudi Business Council’s CEO and Chairman Ed Burton says business between the two countries will continue, though potential deals could be jeopardized by JASTA. “No business community likes to see their sovereign nation basically assailed by another nation,” Burton said. As one of the world’s largest oil exporters with the biggest economy in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia also has other business partners to choose from in Europe and Asia, said President and CEO of the National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce David Hamod. “America is no longer the only game in town,” he said. “No one knows how Saudi Arabia might respond to an override of President Obama’s veto.” — Agencies