The Saudi lobby

Usually one speaks comically of the Arab lobby in Washington, D.C.. Since the oil boom in the 1970s, various Arab-American businesspeople and crooks traveled to the Middle East offering their services to Gulf regimes and promising—in return for large sums of money—to launch an Arab lobby in Washington, D.C.. Those personalities explained that what the “Arab cause”—there was a talk about that back then—only needed money, and once it becomes available in Washington, D.C. the Israeli case would be immediately defeated. Many of those Arab crooks advanced anti-Semitic scenarios about the nature of American politics, and the Saudi political elite loved those scenarios, as does [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas. They believed that a small elite runs US foreign policy in the region.

But Gulf regimes were never generous with their funding, and instead relied on American public relations firms to advance their cause: and their cause has always been to improve their image to the American public and to arrange for arms sales. Some money were made available to Arab-American and Muslim-American organizations but only to make sure that opposition to Saudi policies doesn’t become vocal in the Arab community. The Iraqi regime also offered some funding, as does the UAE which has an Arab-American lobby of its own. The rest cater to Saudi royal wishes.

There was never a serious effort to create an Arab lobby to counter the Zionist lobby. Some Gulf governments in the past invested money to go against the Israeli lobby but only because the latter opposed all major American arms sales to Middle East governments, although American arms always arrive with strings and ropes attached to the effect that they can never be used against Israel. The quality of US arms to Gulf countries does not match the quality that Israel receives. But in recent years, ever since the Gulf war in 1991, the relationship between Gulf regimes and Israel has grown and the Israeli lobby does not anymore oppose arms sales to Gulf regimes.

Nevertheless, there is a Saudi lobby of sorts in Washington, D.C.. Back in the 1980s, a militant American Zionist wrote a book about “the American House of Saud” to try to downplay the influence of the Israeli lobby. But just as the Shah had a lobby for this regime in Washington DC (read James Bill’s The Eagle and the Lion), there is a powerful lobby for the Saudi royal family in Washington, D.C.. The lobby is a complex that links defense contractors, oil corporations, PR firms, and Arab-American and Muslim-American organizations. This Saudi lobby, however, can’t exist in the capital without being an appendage of the mother Israeli lobby. The power of the lobby has risen with the intensification of the Israeli-Saudi alliance in the region and the focus on the Iranian danger.

The Saudi Lobby also has friends in the media. Just as the Shah’s ambassador cultivated relations with major American personalities and lavished them with expensive gifts, the Saudi embassy in Washington and visiting Saudi princes operate in the same manner. There will come a time years from now when the corruption of American media toward Saudi Arabia will be revealed. That conservative and liberal journalists come to the defense of the Saudi regime is not accidental, just as liberal and conservative members of Congress have been increasingly coming to the defense of the Saudi regime.

The entire debate about ISIS in American media and Congress bizarrely leaves out a major element of the story: that the ideology of ISIS is indistinguishable from the ideology that has governed the Saudi regime since its founding. Nevertheless, there is a deliberate US governmental and media attempt to make the ideology of ISIS entirely different from the Saudi Wahhabi ideology. That is a manifestation of the Saudi lobby and its influence in Washington.

Dr. As’ad AbuKhalil is a Professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus, a lecturer and the author of The Angry Arab News Service. He tweets @asadabukhalil.