Perspective: Saudi war with Iran?

Saudi security forces on parade

Saudi Arabian Ambassador Prince Turki Al Faysal arrived in Washington and left with barely a murmur, more or less ignored by the Bush Administration. Turki was at the post only 15 months before he suddenly resigned last week without explanation; by contrast his predecessor, Prince Bandar, the best connected envoy in Washington in the last half century, spent 22 years in the post. As if anyone had any doubt about Bandar's status, two days after 9/11 Bandar was sitting on the Truman balcony with Bush, helping to decide the world's future.

But it isn't as if Turki lacked for status in Washington. When Turki was Saudi intelligence chief, he more or less ran the mujahedin forces in the Afghan war, putting the last nail in the coffin of the Soviet empire. When Congress halted funding to the Contras, Turki was behind the decision to step in and help pay the Reagan Administration's bills. A Georgetown graduate and realist, Turki would have made an ideal interlocutor for the new secretary of defense Bob Gates. You would have thought Washington would have embraced Turki. Even the neocons.

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