SAUDI ARABIA/US: Arms deal will cement military ties

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SIGNIFICANCE: As Iran comes under growing diplomatic and military pressure over its nuclear programme, the Gulf states are being drawn into the evolving stand-off. With a 30-60 billion dollar US arms sale on the cards, Riyadh is gravitating towards the tougher US stance on Iran.  

ANALYSIS: The United States has expanded its security assistance to Gulf states since July 2007, when a major new raft of planned arms deals with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was unveiled under former President George W Bush. To demonstrate US commitment to the GCC, 40 billion dollars worth of future deals were identified in 2007, half for Saudi Arabia and half for other GCC members combined. Since then, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has signed a 9 billion dollar memorandum to procure the US-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) ballistic missile defence system and to purchase 288 Patriot Advanced Capability PAC-3 missile defence systems. In addition, Kuwait has requested 80 PAC-3 missiles and upgrades for its current PAC-2 missiles in a deal worth 1.36 billion dollars, and Bahrain, Oman and Qatar have signed smaller US arms deals.  

Though a trickle of Saudi purchases has continued since 2007, mostly to maintain and upgrade existing US weaponry, the largest Saudi defence deal signed since 2001 was the 2005 purchase of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon multi-role combat aircraft in a 7-8 billion dollar deal. The recent announcement of a 30-60 billion dollar Saudi sales request to the US Department of Defense may to an extent dispel doubts concerning the health of the Washington-Riyadh military relationship and the lingering effects of cooling relations following the September 11, 2001 attacks. 

Also included are advanced precision weapons such as the Boeing AGM-84H Standoff Land Attack Missile Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) or the Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM), with ranges of 170km and 370km respectively. The deal includes provision of helicopters, including 72 United Technologies Corporation UH-60s to add to the 22 it currently owns, as well as up to 5 billion dollars worth of advanced helicopter-carrying Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) including the new Littoral Combat Ship. Finally, the deal will provide upgrades to Saudi Arabia's 96 US-supplied Raytheon Patriot Advanced Capability 2 missiles.  

Politics. King Abdallah and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were the driving forces behind the proposed sale, which has been under secret negotiation since 2007. Though Riyadh has consistently been a major consumer of US defence articles -- purchasing 11.2 billion dollars of US arms in 2005-08 (the highest of any nation) -- the scale of the Saudi arms request is highly significant.

New procurement deals on the scale of the proposed US-Saudi agreement are very rare in today's global defence market and even rarer in Saudi Arabia, which significantly curtailed its procurement of new weapons systems from the late 1990s, to focus resources on training of the armed forces. Since the September 11 attacks, Washington and Riyadh have each been hesitant to press the issue of major arms sales, fearing that congressional debate might prove too bruising for the recovering bilateral relationship.

However, behind the scenes, Abdallah has been slowly convinced of the sincerity of US commitment to Riyadh and the GCC. The king pushed the arms request despite opposition from the RSAF head and other defence officials who wanted to distribute the sales between US and European vendors. By confronting his own defence officials (and in a number of cases sacking them) Abdallah made a significant statement of support for the US-Saudi relationship at a time when the Iranian threat is looming large on his agenda. 

To avoid potential political complications, the administration will wait until after the November 2 mid-term elections to present the arms sale formally to Congress.

In the past, Congress has interfered with a number of major arms sales to Saudi Arabia in order to preserve Israel's so-called 'Qualitative Military Edge.' For the first F-15C/Ds sale in 1978, Riyadh faced Congressional restrictions on the number of aircraft it could use at any time (60) and on the technology incorporated into the aircraft. When F-15S variants were purchased in 1993, they were downgraded and limits initially placed on how close to Israel they might be deployed.  

In the case of the current arms request, the usual critics of such deals -- in the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee -- have been fairly muted, and the Israeli government has given its tacit support for the deal. These factors should assure it a relatively quick passage through Congress and reflect the changing political realities in the region, namely the shared threat assessments of Israel and Saudi Arabia vis-a-vis a nuclear Iran.  

Regional implications. The Saudi arms request signals Riyadh's willingness to reassert its GCC military leadership and to recognise and counter growing Iranian military power. While the UAE and Kuwait have invested in primarily defensive equipment since 2007, the Saudi deal includes significant offensive capabilities and is by far the largest defence deal in the region since the early 1990s.

These features will probably further raise the temperature of Gulf security, straining relations between Riyadh and Tehran. Whereas most GCC states -- Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait -- counterbalance their status as US allies with reassuring gestures of non-aggression to Iran, Riyadh appears to be willing to back the United States up to, and possibly beyond, a potential (but still unlikely) strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. 

This also gives some indication of a Saudi response to a potential Israeli strike on Iran. While Riyadh would demonstrate public outrage at such a strike, it is likely to be privately grateful. Though possibly showing token military retaliation for Israeli passage through Saudi Arabia for this, Israel would probably be able to use Saudi (and also Iraqi) territory with little real resistance.  

CONCLUSION: The Saudi arms request will probably pass through Congress with limited amendments and will lock Riyadh and Washington into a close military relationship for 20 more years at least. It reflects a shift in regional political realities, most notable in the convergence between Saudi and Israeli security assessments vis-a-vis Iran -- and it has the potential to escalate military tensions in the region, further straining Riyadh-Tehran ties.

© Oxford Analytica 2010