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Saudi Arabia has been a strategic ally of the United States for more than 60 years. Despite occasional differences, Riyadh was a firm – and generous – partner of American policy in the Cold War and in distant conflicts from Afghanistan to Nicaragua. President Bush and King Abudullah reaffirmed the two countries’ ties during Bush’s two visits to the Kingdom this year.

But the Saudis are putting a good deal of distance between themselves and the United States in one of the most important arenas of American Middle East policy – Iran.
Riyadh does not endorse U.S. efforts to isolate Iran and to put additional pressure on the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And the Saudis firmly oppose any move by the United States or Israel to use military force in an effort to shut down the Iranian nuclear program.

After a week of conversations in Riyadh with Saudi government officials, academics, businessmen and journalists, the reasons for this Saudi reluctance are not a mystery. There are reportedly some officers in the Saudi armed forces who favor a confrontation with Iran, but most Saudis forsee short-term dangers and long-term strategic damage in any such policy.

In simplest terms, the Saudis recognize that Iran is a major regional power, a potentially agressive neighbor that is not going away. Iran is much more capable of making trouble for Saudi Arabia than the other way around, and therefore the Kingdom’s security over time requires accommodation with Iran, however difficult it may be to manage the relationship. Americans and other foreigners may come and go, but Iran and its nearly 80 million people—almost four times the population of Saudi Arabia--will remain, a few miles across the Gulf.

Relations with Iran presented few problems for Riyadh before the Iranian revolution,. Iran under the Shah was also a Cold War ally of the United States, the two countries were founding partners in OPEC, and Iran in those days made no effort to export the Shiite version of Islam.

With the rise of the Islamic Republic, Tehran followed a different path, challenging the religious supremacy of Saudi Arabia and denouncing Riyadh’s alliance with the United States. The Iranians were furious over Saudi Arabia’s support for Iraq in its war with Iran. Iranian pilgrims to Mecca began staging anti-Saudi and anti-American political demonstrations, which culminated in gunfire when rioting erupted in 1987. The Saudis reported that 402 people died.

This was an intolerable provocation for a regime that bases its legitimacy on its custodianship of Islam’s holy sites, and Riyadh broke diplomatic relations with Iran. Mobs sacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. Relations were at their nadir, not to improve until the Iran-Iraq war ended and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani became president of Iran.

The Saudis remember those years with dread and do not wish to repeat them, especially in pursuit of a policy they do not believe will succeed. Having reached a modus vivendi with Iran in the 1990s, they are determined to stay on peaceful terms. King Abdullah made symbolic public declaration of this policy last year when he invited Adhmadinejad personally to the pilgrimage.

Of course the two countries differ on many issues – on Lebanon, oil production, Iranian support for Shiite political movements, and the prospect of peace with Israel – but in the Saudi view, these can be managed. The Saudis were angered recently when Ahmadinejad publicly criticized their long-time foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, but they swallowed hard and let it pass.

A policy of confrontation, on the other hand, could leave Saudi Arabia vulnerable to Iranian troublemaking on many fronts, beginning with agitation among Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority. And in the event of military action against Iran, the Saudis fear that they would be the first targets of Iranian retaliation. Saudi Arabia’s most important oil installations and most of its crucial water desalination plants are on the Gulf coast, within range of Iranian missiles. The Saudis are well aware that, as Anthony Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid wrote in National Security in Saudi Arabia, Iran could “launch asymmetric attacks in the gulf that would have a strategic effect out of proportion to the size and capability of its forces”—not to mention the effect of such a conflict on world oil markets.

The Saudis certainly would prefer that Iran not acquire nuclear weapons, but they do not believe Washington’s methods of trying to prevent such a development are constructive.

Moreover, several Saudis said they have to take the long view. President Bush will be gone in seven months, and the provocative Ahmedinejad might fail to win reelection next year. The Iranian people, however, have long memories. A policy of confrontation, even in the unlikely event that it succeeded in the short run, could inspire Iranian grievance that will last for a generation, making the Gulf region more difficult to manage than it already is. The Saudis fail to see how such an outcome would benefit them.