Some of the highest-paid sportsmen in history, the golfers of the LIV league, had bad news recently. Saudi Arabia said it was pulling out of LIV Golf after sinking $5-6 billion into it. The highest-paid golfer was reported to have been on a $600 million contract over four years; others were getting more than $100 million. The men in plaid are, in a sense, victims of Donald Trump’s war with Iran.
The LIV announcement is not just sports news. The Saudis were, by their standards, already in financial trouble, and then they had to spend tens of billions on defence and propping up their economy during the 38 days of the war. Crude oil prices have gone up but not enough to compensate, given the difficulties in exporting it. Saudi Arabia can no longer afford to engage in so-called ‘sportswashing’ on the grand scale of the past few years.
LIV Golf was part of an ambitious plan by the Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to rebrand the kingdom and improve its international image. The chief reason its image needed to be improved was that – as the CIA found – MBS’s henchmen killed one of his critics, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and cut him up with a bone saw.
Now that Trump’s war is so clearly failing, the Saudis are trying to distance themselves from it
It’s a kind of justice that the economies forced on Saudi Arabia include cutting the Crown Prince’s vanity projects. The main casualty is the Line, his shining city of the future. It was supposed to be a 170km-long linear habitat of mirrored glass cutting through the desert; it may end up being just a 2.4km stub. Work has also stopped on Riyadh’s Mukaab cube – a 400m-high golden structure big enough to swallow 20 Empire State buildings – and on the Trojena ski resort (planned for a country with no snow).
In the US, the MAGA movement is being torn apart over claims that Israel bounced President Trump into the war with Iran, but Saudi Arabia was lobbying just as hard. The Washington Post reported that MBS made ‘multiple private phone calls’ to Trump in the run-up to Operation Epic Fury. Meanwhile MBS was also calling the Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, to assure him of ‘the kingdom’s support for any efforts aimed at resolving disputes through dialogue’.
To be fair to MBS, he did support the Trump administration’s efforts to get a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme, the casus belli for the war. Last year, he sent his brother, Khalid bin Salman (KBS), to meet Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. It was the first high-level Saudi visit in 20 years, and KBS brought a letter from King Salman, still nominally Saudi Arabia’s ruler. The letter was never published but Reuters got the gist from the Iranians and other sources. The Saudis told Khamenei ‘bluntly’ that an Israeli attack was coming unless they took Trump’s deal. They said the US President had little patience for drawn-out negotiations and ‘the window for diplomacy would close fast’. The message was that Trump would hit them harder than either Barack Obama or Joe Biden, so don’t provoke him. KBS reportedly softened this warning with a promise that Saudi airspace would never be used to attack Iran.
As minister of defence, KBS may be the most consequential figure in Saudi Arabia after the Crown Prince himself. He is 37 years old and an F-15 pilot who trained at a US air force base in Mississippi. He flew combat missions during Saudi Arabia’s brutal campaign in Yemen. He was also, at the age of 29, appointed as ambassador in Washington DC. He was there when Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The CIA said that KBS, on his brother’s instructions, had telephoned Khashoggi to assure him it was safe to go in. KBS has always denied it.
KBS was back in Washington in January to push for the US to go to war with Iran. The public position was still to give diplomacy a chance. But Axios quoted KBS as saying in a private meeting: ‘If Trump doesn’t follow through on his threats against Iran, the regime will end up stronger.’ Three weeks later the war began and Khamenei, whose hand KBS had shaken in Tehran the year before, was assassinated by airstrike.
Despite the Saudi promise not to allow their airspace to be used to attack Iran, US military aircraft flew from Prince Sultan air base near Riyadh. The Saudis also allowed US aircraft based in nearby countries to fly over their territory. They could hardly do anything else, given their reliance on the US for their security. Throughout, they maintained the fiction that their airspace was not being used ‘for offensive military operations’. They called for ‘de-escalation’.
The Iranians were not fooled. They fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Saudi targets. Refineries and other facilities accounting for a fifth of Saudi oil production were hit. The country’s east-west oil pipeline was shut down, especially important as Saudi Arabia, like everyone else, can’t use the Strait of Hormuz for its exports.
Now that Trump’s war is so clearly failing, the Saudis are trying to distance themselves from it. Prince Turki al-Faisal, who ran Saudi intelligence for two decades, has published an article blaming Israel for the mess. He wrote: ‘Had the Israeli plan to ignite war between us and Iran succeeded, the region would have been plunged into ruin and destruction.’
Despite this extraordinary semi-official repudiation of the war, the conflict may have been good for Saudi Arabia. Tehran’s been broadcasting its usual bombast, but Iran has largely been neutered. If we are to believe Trump, the Iranian navy has been obliterated, with 150 ships sunk; and ‘85 per cent’ of ballistic missile production has been destroyed. Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shia militias and the Houthis are (relatively) quiet.
Unlike Israel, Saudi Arabia achieved all this without having to do any fighting. The alliance with the US has never been stronger. In November last year, in the run-up to the war, Trump designated Saudi Arabia a ‘major non-Nato ally’.
On Saturday, Trump sat in a suite on the 18th hole at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, watching the LIV Golf tour play through. The crowd chanted USA. Trump gave them a fist pump. The Saudis had just announced they would no longer be paying for any of it.
This is hitting Trump where it hurts. More importantly, he shows no sign of knowing how to finish the war he started. Perhaps he should ask MBS and KBS – it was their war too.
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