WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia
has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will
sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held
by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi
government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The
Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage,
according to administration officials and congressional aides from both
parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense
discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the
State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of
diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.
Adel
al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message
personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers
that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury
securities and other assets in the United States before they could be
in danger of being frozen by American courts.
Several
outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through,
saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end
up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of
the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
The
administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans
at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill
that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In
their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the
kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be
the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist
plot.
“It’s
stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its
own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World
Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family
members pushing for the legislation.
President Obama
will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with King Salman and
other Saudi officials. It is unclear whether the dispute over the Sept.
11 legislation will be on the agenda for the talks.
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Saudi
officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the Sept.
11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi
government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually
funded the organization.”
But critics have noted that the commission’s
narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or
parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have
lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional
inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials
living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot.
Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly.
The
dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress about
Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial American
ally in the Middle East and half of a partnership that once received
little scrutiny from lawmakers.
Last week, two senators introduced a
resolution that would put restrictions on American arms sales to Saudi
Arabia, which have expanded during the Obama administration.
Families
of the Sept. 11 victims have used the courts to try to hold members of
the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable because of what
the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for terrorism. These
efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that
gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.
The
Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to
foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations
are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United
States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be
signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi
government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.
The Big Four in Saudi Arabia’s Government
Brief background information on the most powerful
figures in the kingdom, and how they stand in the sometimes complicated
order of succession.
Obama
administration officials counter that weakening the sovereign immunity
provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens
and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might
retaliate with their own legislation. Secretary of State John Kerry told
a Senate panel in February that the bill, in its current form, would
“expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our
sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”
The
bill’s sponsors have said that the legislation is purposely drawn very
narrowly — involving only attacks on American soil — to reduce the
prospect that other nations might try to fight back.
In
a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on March 4, Anne W. Patterson,
an assistant secretary of state, and Andrew Exum, a top Pentagon
official on Middle East policy, told staff members of the Senate Armed
Services Committee that American troops and civilians could be in legal
jeopardy if other nations decide to retaliate and strip Americans of
immunity abroad.
They also discussed the Saudi threats specifically,
laying out the impacts if Saudi Arabia made good on its economic
threats.
John
Kirby, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement that the
administration stands by the victims of terrorism, “especially those who
suffered and sacrificed so much on 9/11.”
Edwin
M. Truman, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International
Economics, said he thought the Saudis were most likely making an “empty
threat.” Selling hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets
would not only be technically difficult to pull off, he said, but would
also very likely cause global market turmoil for which the Saudis would
be blamed.
Moreover, he said, it could destabilize the American dollar — the currency to which the Saudi riyal is pegged.
“The only way they could punish us is by punishing themselves,” Mr. Truman said.
The
bill is an anomaly in a Congress fractured by bitter partisanship,
especially during an election year. It is sponsored by Senator John
Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New
York. It has the support of an unlikely coalition of liberal and
conservative senators, including Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and
Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. It passed through the Judiciary Committee
in January without dissent.
“As
our nation confronts new and expanding terror networks that are
targeting our citizens, stopping the funding source for terrorists
becomes even more important,” Mr. Cornyn said last month.
The
alliance with Saudi Arabia has frayed in recent years as the White
House has tried to thaw ties with Iran — Saudi Arabia’s bitter enemy— in
the midst of recriminations between American and Saudi officials about
the role that both countries should play in the stability of the Middle
East.
But
the administration has supported Saudi Arabia on other fronts,
including providing the country with targeting intelligence and
logistical support for its war in Yemen. The Saudi military is flying
jets and dropping bombs it bought from the United States — part of the
billions of dollars in arms deals that have been negotiated with Saudi
Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations during the Obama administration.
The
war has been a humanitarian disaster and fueled a resurgence of Al
Qaeda in Yemen, leading to the resolution in Congress to put new
restrictions on arms deals to the kingdom. Senator Christopher S.
Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, one of the resolution’s sponsors and a
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Congress has
been “feckless” in conducting oversight of arms sales, especially those
destined for Saudi Arabia.
“My
first desire is for our relationship with Saudi Arabia to come with a
greater degree of conditionality than it currently does,” he said.
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