In the 1920s and 30s, there was no stauncher enemy of Soviet Communism than Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill. But when the Nazis invaded Russia in June 1941, he swiftly concluded a formal alliance with the Soviet leader Stalin, with each country promising “to render each other assistance and support of all kinds in the present war against Hitlerite Germany” until it had been defeated. Afterward, Churchill famously commented that while he may have “supped with the devil”, he had been careful to use a “long spoon”.
Reports that Churchill’s current successor Rishi Sunak spoke this week to his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in order to invite him to Downing St “at the earliest opportunity” bring this to mind, for in the eyes of many, “MBS” is a diabolical figure. Having become his country’s de facto ruler in 2017, for a while he was widely praised in the West for his reforming zeal, issuing eye-catching decrees such as lifting the ban on women drivers and mounting a ruthless campaign against corruption. The murder and dismemberment of the Islamist opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 brought this honeymoon period to a brutal end. Accused by US intelligence of ordering the murder, MBS, who denies the charge was cast out into the diplomatic cold – which is why he hasn’t been asked to the British prime ministerial residence since Khashoggi was assassinated.
So what’s changed? The evidence suggests that the crucial factor is Israel. In fact, Saudi moves towards “normalising” its relationship with what the kingdom used to call “the Zionist enemy” started well before Kashoggi’s death, with the lifting of trade bans and increasing security collaboration in order to deal with both countries’ common enemy, Iran. But in recent months, they appear to have accelerated. Antisemitism and Israelophobia have been reportedly expunged from Saudi school textbooks, and influential Israelis have been hymning a possible comprehensive deal as a “game changer” for both Israel’s global position and as a way to ease the Israel-Palestinian conflict – as well as a career-crowning triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu, who earlier normalised relations with key Gulf and North African states such as the United Arab Emirates and Morocco with the Abraham Accords in 2020.
It's clear that the Biden administration is doing all it can to encourage this process. (The head of Mossad, David Barnea, held talks with his US colleagues on the issue in Washington last month.) And by inviting MBS to London, Sunak appears to be joining what has become a three-dimensional diplomatic chess game. If Khashoggi has not been forgotten, MBS has been forgiven, with Sunak’s spokesman announcing that the PM “looked forward to personally deepening the long-standing ties” between the Saudis and the UK.
Not everyone is happy. Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokeswoman, who happens to be of Palestinian descent, said “It beggars belief that Rishi Sunak is rolling out the red carpet for Mohammed bin Salman”, claiming that the invitation “sends a signal to MBS that he can continue acting with impunity and we and our allies will do nothing about it”. Amnesty International’s UK foreign policy adviser Polly Truscott added that the visit looked likely to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Kashoggi’s “sickening assassination”, insisting that MBS “must be properly held to account for abuses by Saudi officials, including Khashoggi’s murder, the widespread use of torture in Saudi jails and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Yemen.”
In recent weeks I’ve argued in this column that diplomatic engagement with the other regional power with a shocking human rights record is a waste of time – I refer, of course, to Iran. Indeed, this week the JC publishes another installment in our investigation of the influence of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, revealing that the same individual who arranged to pipe talks by IRGC commanders into UK universities has also been trying to persuade UK-based academics to share their knowledge of “dual use” technologies to boost Iranian military capability – yet further evidence, in my view, of the need to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation as soon as possible.
However, I don’t share the opposition expressed by Amnesty and Moran to a visit by MBS.
Is this a double standard? I don’t think it is, and the reason it isn’t was contained in Churchill’s assessment of his 1941 alliance with Stalin. There’s a great deal one would like to see different in Saudi Arabia – not just the issues mentioned by Truscott, but also its continued use of barbaric public beheadings. But Saudi Arabia doesn’t pose an existential threat to anyone. Like Nazi Germany in 1941, Iran does, and the ideology of the regime and IRGC explicitly demands the destruction of what it calls the “cancerous tumour” that is Israel.
Earlier this year Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a partial rapprochement, brokered by China. Welcoming MBS to Downing St may help to ensure that this unsettling development goes no further – a valuable prize in itself. And although the hurdles to achieving a wide-ranging deal between the Saudis and Israel remain considerable, if Sunak’s intervention assists in their removal, that would be a still greater boon.
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