Any discussion in the US media as it relates to that nation’s respective relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Iran is an exercise in complete and utter dishonesty, and following the Arab state’s very recent execution of 47 alleged terrorists, including a prominent Shia cleric, the US media has gone into chicanery overdrive.
By C.J. Werleman
Any discussion in the US media as it relates to that
nation’s respective relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Iran is an
exercise in complete and utter dishonesty, and following the Arab state’s very
recent execution of 47 alleged terrorists, including a prominent
Shia cleric, the US media has gone into chicanery overdrive.
Image Attribute:
President Barack Obama visited with King Salman bin Abdulaziz in the Saudi
Arabian capital of Riyadh / Source: CommonDreams
It matters not whether you toggle between CNN and Fox
News; NBC and CBS; ABC and PBS. It matters not because one politician after
another is able to state to one television journalist after another that Saudi
Arabia remains a vitally ally to the United States – without a single
journalist asking, in turn, “why?”
Why is this question, a simple question, so completely
out of bounds? On CNN today alone, no less than four different spokespeople
and/or surrogates for the Obama Administration stated the Kingdom remains a
staunch US ally, and yet again – not one CNN journalist asked, “Why?”
Not only is this question never asked, never answered,
but also US television audiences are subjected to pro-Saudi, anti-Iran
narratives that betray both honesty and reality. This week The Intercept
tracked how Saudi Arabia’s “well-funded public relations apparatus” clicked into
gear to “shape how the news is covered in the United States” following the
execution of Nimr al-Nimr – the Shia cleric.
Politico,
The
Washington Post, and the Wall
Street Journal each spun the mass executions to fit a pro-Saudi narrative,
according to the journalists Zaid Jilani and Lee Hang – with each print media
outlet presenting pro-Saudi analysts to paint either al-Nimr a violent radical
or Iran as the chief protagonist.
Max Boot, a Marco Rubio 2016 foreign policy advisor,
penned an opinion piece titled “[Saudi Arabia]: An American Ally of Necessity.”
His piece essentially boiled down to the following sentence: “Distasteful as
the Saudis are, the Iranian regime is far worse.”
Nowhere in Boot’s unapologetic pro-Saudi piece is an
explanation of what’s in it for America, and let’s be frank– US foreign policy
is hardly known for its commitment to altruistic benevolence.
Even when US politicians can bring themselves to
mutter something about how Saudi Arabia serves to protect US “vital,”
“strategic,” or “national” interests in the region, they never mention what
those interests are. And again no US journalist is ever inclined to ask the
obvious question, either.
So I’ll answer the never asked question for you: Saudi
Arabia is a US ally because Saudi Arabia is essential for the US economy. Yes,
you already knew this. Yes, there is nothing conspiratorial here. Yes, it’s s
statement of the bleating obvious, so why can no US politician summon the
intestinal fortitude to state this all too conspicuously, self-evident
matter-of-fact, and why can no US journalist lead a single politician to state
this on the record?
I can’t give you the answer to either question, but I
can tell you exactly how beneficial Saudi Arabia is to the US economy. In
short, it’s very good. Almost, existentially good, and it’s not just about the
oil – although oil is a big part of it.
As the head of OPEC, Saudi Arabia controls 40% of the
world’s oil supply. Saudi Arabia itself sits on 460 billion barrels of proven
reserves. While the US has successfully moved away from OPEC oil
dependency, with analysts predicting US oil independence will be achieved
within the next two decades, it’s OPEC oil that keeps the world economy
humming. China, the world’s second biggest economy, has now overtaken the US as
the biggest importer of oil – with 46 percent of China’s 7.4
million barrels per day coming from the Middle East.
Given China
is the US’ second largest trading partner, one can see how devastating a Saudi
led 1970s “oil shock” would be not only to China, but also to the US and the entire
global economy.
But as mentioned earlier, the Saudi-US alliance is not
only based on keeping the oil spigot turned on, it’s also about keeping the US
petrodollar system intact, which again is something you never hear mentioned
anywhere in mainstream US media.
I will spare you the history lesson but the key
headline here is that in 1973 a deal was struck between the US and Saudi Arabia
to price oil in US dollars – thus creating permanent demand for the greenback.
How does global demand for US dollars help the US
economy? It gives the US Treasury a “permission slip” to print more, says
economist Jeremy
Robinson – who also points out that the US really only has four ways of
resolving its economic problems: Increase taxes, which is politically
unpopular; cut spending, which is politically unpopular; borrow money via
government bonds, or finally the preferred and politically convenient
kick-the-can-down-the-road solution - print more money.
Global demand for the US dollar keeps inflation low,
while allowing the US to “print” its way out of trouble. Faced with a more than
$18 trillion national debt – one can see how calamitous an un-pegging of the US
dollar to oil would be for the US economy. Yes, think a Weimar
Germany-esq hyper-inflationary environment. It also goes along way to explain
how countries that have attempted to move away from the petrodollar – Iran,
Venezuela, North Korea – have been labeled as enemies of the United States.
Beyond that, Saudi Arabia is the United States’ most
valuable arms customer. Under the Obama administration alone, the Kingdom has
procured more than $100 billion worth of US manufactured weapons, which is not
only huge for the US trade balance, but that also translates to tens of
thousands of high-paying jobs at corporations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and
co.
Beyond oil, dollars, and arms is the enormous amount
on investment Saudi Arabia infuses into the US economy. More than 80,000 Saudi
students paying exorbitant international tuition fees adds up, while some
estimates have total Saudi investment holdings in the US up to $1 trillion.
These are the reasons why Saudi Arabia remains a US
ally come hell or high water. Saudi Arabia could execute 10,000 political
activists at the same time Iran swore to uphold an unblemished human rights
record – and the US would still stand firmly by the monarchy. Same rule applies
if let’s say, hypothetically, 15 out of 19 US airline hijackers, some time in
the future, happen to be Saudi.
So ignore US politicians and pundits who say we side
with Saudi Arabia because their export of terrorism is not as bad as Iranian
sponsored terror, or that Iran’s human rights record is worse than Saudi
Arabia’s. This is all gobbly-gook to distract you from the reality of the
situation: the US would dump Saudi Arabia for Iran in a heartbeat if Iran
offered the US a bigger, better deal, which coincidently – given the success of
the Iranian nuclear deal – is exactly what Saudi Arabia is concerned about.
About The Author:
CJ Werleman is a journalist, political commentator,
and author of 'The New Atheist Threat: the Dangerous Rise of Secular
Extremists'.
Publication Details:
This article was originally published at American Herald Tribune under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
