Relief is palpable in Washington over the well-planned and seamlessly executed transfer of Saudi Arabia’s throne to King Salman bin Abdulaziz, 79, following the death of his 90-year-old half brother King Abdullah.
The kingdom, despite signaling rare public dissent with the Obama administration over Iran and the Arab Spring, is a fulcrum of U.S. diplomacy in a region where Washington is struggling to adapt to dissolving national borders, chaotic change and sectarian carnage.
Never mind that the U.S. is the world’s foremost democracy and the transfer of power in Saudi Arabia was from one autocrat to the next.
Saudi Arabia is crucial to U.S. goals on counter-terrorism, the campaign against ISIS and Al-Qaeda, the free flow of energy that sustains the global economy, as a counter-balance to Iran and as a sponsor of the long frustrated quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
In a sign of the kingdom’s importance to the United States, President Barack Obama made hurried plans to call in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday after his trip to India to pay his respects to Abdullah and his family and to meet with King Salman. Originally, Vice President Joe Biden was to have made the trip.
The message from Washington is clearly : Long live the new king.
The regal choreography in Riyadh is especially welcome to the White House as it contrasts with events just across the border in Yemen, another key ally where a US-backed government crucial to its anti-terror campaign has just been toppled to rebels supported by Iran.
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In recent years, the Obama administration has attempted to assuage Saudi fears. The US president made a visit to Riyadh last year, on a trip that was widely seen as an attempt to mend fences.
Saudi Arabian pilots, reportedly including one of Salman’s sons, Prince Khaled, helped carry out the first air attacks on ISIS in Syria last year.
Saudi Arabia also approved of Secretary of State John Kerry’s exhaustive but ultimately futile efforts to keep Israel and the Palestinians talking. And White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that an underpinning of those efforts, an Arab Peace Plan framed by Abdullah would stand as his lasting memorial.
Smith said that the relationship between Riyadh and Washington was now better than it had been earlier in the administration.
“A key element of our relationship with the Saudis over the years has been transparency, not always in public but we have done a good job in talking to each other,” he said.
“When you leave your allies out of the conversation and they don’t understand your negotiating position or don’t understand how you are going to enforce an agreement. they are left to their own conclusions.
“I think we are doing a lot better at that.”
