Saudi Arabia has ways to hit back at 9/11 law

Saudi Arabia and its allies are warning that U.S. legislation allowing the kingdom to be sued for the 9/11 attacks will have negative repercussions.

The kingdom maintains an arsenal of tools to retaliate with, including curtailing official contacts, pulling billions of dollars from the U.S. economy, and persuading its close allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council to scale back counterterrorism cooperation, investments and U.S. access to important regional air bases.

“This should be clear to America and to the rest of the world: When one GCC state is targeted unfairly, the others stand around it,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an Emirati Gulf specialist and professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University.

“All the states will stand by Saudi Arabia in every way possible,” he said.

When Saudi Arabia wanted to pressure Qatar to limit its support for the Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt, it spearheaded an unprecedented withdrawal of Gulf Arab ambassadors from Doha in 2014 and essentially isolated the tiny gas-rich nation within the GCC.

When Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom strongly criticized Saudi Arabia’s human rights record last year, the kingdom unleashed a fierce diplomatic salvo that jolted Stockholm’s standing in the Arab world and threatened Swedish business interests in the Gulf. Sweden eventually backpedalled.

On Wednesday, the Senate and House voted to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Sept. 11 legislation, with lawmakers saying their priority wasn’t Saudi Arabia, but the 9/11 victims and their families.

Chas Freeman, former U.S. assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs and ambassador to Saudi Arabia during operation Desert Storm, said the Saudis could respond in ways that risk U.S. strategic interests, like permissive rules for overflight between Europe and Asia and the Qatari air base from which U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are directed and supported.

“The souring of relations and curtailing of official contacts that this legislation would inevitably produce could also jeopardize Saudi cooperation against anti-American terrorism,” he said.

Relations with Washington had already cooled well before the 9/11 bill sailed through both chambers of Congress.

The Saudis perceived the Obama Administration’s securing of a nuclear deal with Iran as a pivot toward its regional nemesis. There was also Obama’s criticism of Gulf countries in an interview earlier this year, despite their support for the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Obama had vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, arguing that allowing U.S. courts to waive foreign sovereign immunity could lead other foreign governments to act “reciprocally” by giving their courts the right to exercise jurisdiction over the U.S. and its employees for overseas actions. These could include deadly U.S. drone strikes and abuses committed by U.S.-trained police units or U.S.-backed militias.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters in June that the U.S. has the most to lose if JASTA is enacted. Despite reports that Riyadh threatened to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the bill becomes law, Al-Jubeir says Saudi Arabia has only warned that investor confidence in the U.S. could decline.