Is new ambassador sign of thaw in Baghdad-Riyadh relations?
Saudi Arabia restores diplomatic relations with Iraq by appointing an ambassador to Baghdad, but the kingdom will need to recognize the diversity of the Shiite political actors in Iraq and shift its foreign policy accordingly.
On June 3, Saudi Arabia appointed its first resident ambassador to Iraq after 25 years. The long-lasting rift between the two countries followed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. At their best, relations between the two countries had always been tense, oscillating between uneasy accommodation and hostility. The appointment of Thamer al-Sabhan as the new Saudi ambassador may ease off the tension between the two countries and encourage other Gulf Cooperation Council states to follow the lead. Iraq welcomed the decision to resume diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi sources. But starting a new era of cooperation and trust need more than the restoration of diplomatic relations.
Both countries have drifted away from each other and replaced the rivalry that had been masked in the 1980s by the shadow of the Iran-Iraq War with utter ostracization and even hostility, especially after the 2003 US invasion in Iraq. Since then, Saudi-Iraqi relations became hostage to two outcomes of the invasion, each mitigated against immediate reconciliation and cooperation.
First, Saudi Arabia never came to terms with the new government of Iraq under Nouri al-Maliki and to a lesser extent his successor Haidar al-Abadi. Saudi Arabia found it difficult to accept and live with the dramatic overthrow of the old regime. Although Saudi Arabia must have felt comfortable with the demise of Saddam and the Baath regime, it did not envisage a post-invasion Iraq in which it could not carve a space for its own influence, let alone power. Immediately after the invasion, it tried multiple strategies to find allies in Iraq, mainly among the Sunnis. Backing Sunni tribal leadership, supporting the peaceful Sunni hirak (mobilization) in western Iraq in 2013 and resurrecting Baathists who survived the invasion, Saudi Arabia worked only with Iraqi Sunnis. Yet, none of its efforts yielded tangible success. Saudi Arabia was left without real influence in a country that drifted into conflict and civil war. It had never truly accepted that Baghdad is now outside its sphere of influence under what it described as a Shiite government, marginalizing the Sunni Iraqi population and with multiple Shiite militia, backed by Iran. More recently, it turned its attention to Iraqi Kurdistan where it found it easier to start political and economic ties.
Second, Saudi Arabia saw the 2003 invasion of Iraq as another opportunity for Iran, its regional rival since 1979, to take over yet another Arab country with which it has common borders. The Saudi leadership feared most the Iranian expansion and its aftermath. It warned and reprimanded the United States for allowing it, which must have remained a contentious issue between the two countries in recent years. As late as March 5, former Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told US Secretary of State John Kerry that "Iran is taking over Iraq."
