“I go back and forth on this in my own mind,” says Loewenstein, “but I think Saudi Arabia is more important to the Americans than Israel. Not just because of oil, although that’s a big part of it. But because Saudi Arabia is the dominant, ascendant power among Arab states.” America has been closely allied with the Saudi monarchy since it was established in the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. First the Saudi regime was indispensable for economic reasons, Loewenstein says, once it became clear that America’s domestic oil supply was drying up. Then the Saudis became important for political and strategic reasons, after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Access and control to Saudi Arabia’s bottomless petroleum reserves, and the freedom to use the kingdom as the center of American military power in the Middle East, trumped all considerations of human rights, democracy and ideology.
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