Bernard Haykel:
Well, I mean, I think the — from the Saudi perspective, the fact that the Trump administration doesn’t care or doesn’t seem to care very much about what we call values, namely, democracy, human rights, or at least doesn’t interfere, doesn’t seem to — or appear to interfere in the domestic affairs of Saudi Arabia is very welcome.
And, by the way, it’s very welcome by many other leaders in this part of the world, not just in Saudi Arabia. So they prefer a transactional, interest-based, realist foreign policy. And, of course, that’s something that they did not like about the first two years of the Biden administration and certainly some aspects of the Obama administration, where U.S. foreign policy played on the issues of values or at least invoked values.
This was also true, by the way, for the George W. Bush administration with the neocons, who were criticized by President Trump today. So the Saudis are definitely happier with this approach to American foreign policy.
I would also add one other thing, which is that the Saudi foreign policy now, the way it views the region, is also one that is based on realism and pragmatism. And they see arsonists in the region. They see the Israelis as — the right-wing Israelis as arsonist, people who want to use violence and military power, as Vali said, to change the political equation in the region.
They also see some elements in the Iranian regime who are extremists and who also would like to use nonstate actors and terror. And they very much want to move away from the — let’s call the arsonist view and plans for the Middle East towards one that focuses much more on order, stability, prosperity, economic development, because they cannot diversify their economy, they cannot move away from their dependence on oil without that stability and that order being the way the region is managed and run.