US President Barack Obama and Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud reaffirmed the “enduring relationship” between their countries in a joint statement following their White House meeting on Sept. 4.
Differences are not the material of joint statements, and it was left to the leakers, pundits and advocates to remind us of the tensions in the bilateral relationship. But differences, either slight or significant, are more normal than not in US-Saudi relations. Today it’s Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria and Yemen; at other times it has been Israel, Palestine and Iraq. Bruce Riedel writes that the United States and Saudi Arabia have been “uneasy allies for 70 years. They share interests, not values.” In other words, the Saudi kingdom is not the United Kingdom.
