How would a President Harris deal with Saudi Arabia?

The relationship between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is long. In 1951, the two countries signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement that facilitated arms sales and allowed the establishment of the U.S. Military Training Mission near Riyadh, which has remained the lynchpin of the security relationship ever since. Arms sales and the trade in oil represents hundreds of billions of dollars over decades, and America is the kingdom’s second-largest importer; last year, exports to the U.S. grew by a third.

The relationship has not always been easy. The U.S. has usually managed to maintain alliances easily enough with autocracies, and, to be clear, Saudi Arabia remains an absolute monarchy: the king rules by decree; the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is prime minister and chairman of the Council of Ministers; and the Consultative Assembly, a largely advisory body, is appointed by the king.

However, Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the bloody civil war in Yemen and the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi government stretched matters to a breaking point.

While campaigning for president, Joe Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” In 2021, he announced an end to “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales,” though calls for a full-scale arms embargo were resisted. Later that year, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm blamed OPEC (in which Saudi Arabia wields great influence) for rising gasoline prices. Mohammed bin Salman avoided Biden’s calls after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and, despite the intervention of CIA Director Bill Burns, Riyadh refused to increase oil production.

MBS, as the crown prince is known, was shunned internationally because of his suspected direct involvement in ordering Khashoggi’s murder. But he is gradually being rehabilitated. In July 2022, Biden visited Jeddah and met both MBS and his father, the aging King Salman. Recently, the crown prince attended the inaugural EU-Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Brussels. Doors are opening once again.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s stance on Saudi Arabia has in the past been critical. In the Senate, she voted to withdraw military support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen and signed a resolution accusing MBS of organizing the murder of Khashoggi. She said that President Trump had turned a “blind eye to the heinous assassination,” and called for the U.S. to “fundamentally reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia, using our leverage to stand up for American values and interests.”

That was then, and this is now. Harris is finding, since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 2023, that simple, unambiguous moral stances are hard to take and even harder to maintain. Moreover, while a senator can act with relatively few consequences, and a vice president can try to disavow responsibility, someone who aspires to spend their working days in the Oval Office has no such luxury.

As president, Harris would need to engage with Saudi Arabia or take a conscious — and momentous — decision not to do so.

The current situation in the Middle East seems almost impossibly complicated: Israel is enmeshed in Gaza and southern Lebanon, deaf to voices calling for restraint; in Syria, despite American sanctions and occasional air strikes, President Bashar al-Assad maintains his grim hold on power; attacks on shipping in the Red Sea by Houthi militants in Yemen continue, as the U.S. Navy provides the biggest contribution to Operation Prosperity Guardian.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic of Iran has twice directly attacked Israel this year. It also supports militant groups across the region, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthi and proxies in Iraq like the Badr Organization. How would President Harris, relatively inexperienced in foreign policy, fit Saudi Arabia into this quagmire?

With a clear head, Harris would likely see that there are some fundamental elements that are not complicated. It is time to accept that the geopolitics of the region boil down to a struggle for dominance between Shiite Iran and Salafist Saudi Arabia. Acknowledging this creates a series of decisions. Choosing Riyadh over Tehran is inescapable, no more than a restatement of American policy since 1951.

Is Saudi Arabia the perfect ally? Of course not. It is no democracy, and dissent is fiercely repressed. After China and Iran, Saudi Arabia executes more people every year than any other country. The media is heavily censored and there is no real freedom of speech.

On the other hand, all of that is even more true in Iran, which is anyway ideologically irreconcilable under the current regime. MBS is not the liberal hero some hoped when he became crown prince in 2017, but he has instituted modest reforms, and — rare for a Gulf leader — is grasping the nettle of a post-fossil fuel future. For the U.S., Saudi Arabia is the only game in town.

As president, Harris would have to accept that close ties with Riyadh are necessary. There is already a draft bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia that includes security guarantees and cooperation on civilian nuclear power. While the vice president is campaigning, improbably, as the candidate of change, she should pick up the threads of Biden’s existing policy on Saudi Arabia.

America needs a Middle East that is stable and open to mutual trade and investment, one that can contain and constrain a weakening Iran. That does not demand rolling over for Saudi Arabia, but it is much easier to persuade your friends than strangers or adversaries.

Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.