Saudi lobby spends hundreds of millions to whitewash the reputation of the regime

The Saudi government’s good leverage in the American legislators enabled the Kingdom to shape and influence the U.S. perception for decades. And obviously, it played a role in laundering the Saudi image among politicians and the public.

Over the past decades, the Kingdom successfully evaded sanctions by winning the side of influential pressure groups, law firms, prominent think tanks, and defence contractors who believe that Saudi should be on Washington’s side.

According to the Center for Strategic Thought for Studies, the roots of the Saudi lobby go back to the mid-1980s, when Prince Bandar bin Sultan was appointed as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington.

Bandar bin Sultan continued in this position for more than twenty years (1983-2005), and he played a significant role in maintaining American-Saudi relations and strengthening the part of the Saudi lobby to preserve Saudi interests with American legislation. There was no lobby before the arrival of Prince Rather. Bilateral relations were based on oil in exchange for security and arms.

Bandar states that as soon as he arrived in the United States, he mastered the game of pressure groups. During his long years in Washington, he concluded several important arms deals for Saudi Arabia, including the sale of F-15 planes during the era of President Carter. In addition, he participated with others in the negotiations to end the Iran-Iraq war.

With the events of September 11, Prince Bandar focused most of his activity on mitigating the weight of the American accusations against the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of financing the perpetrators of the attacks, and it can be said that he managed this file effectively.

After his resignation in early 2005 and his return to the Kingdom, a different stage of influence and pressure activities began through public relations companies’ traditional institutions and offices. The Kingdom had begun to deal with them before.

After the September events, Saudi Arabia contracted with Qorvis, one of the largest public relations companies, which was newly established at the time, and Saudi Arabia was its first foreign customer. Between 2001 and 2010, Saudi paid the company over $75 million.

Since 2001, the company has provided various services to Saudi Arabia, including political pressure, presence in the American media, holding media conferences and meetings for senior Saudi officials, and running media campaigns on various files such as the Yemen war, the JASTA law, armaments deals, and the file of normalisation with the Israeli entity.

The Ed Newberry Company of Square Patton Boggs (SPB), one of the largest relationships firms in Washington, DC, is also one of the lobbyists for Saudi Arabia, where the company was registered in 2016 as a foreign agent for the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs.

The company signed a partnership agreement with the Saudi Center in September 2016 for an annual fee of $1.2 million to defend the interests of Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Center before U.S. government officials, and the company continues to represent the Saudi Center, as disclosed in the Foreign Agents Registration Act of July 29 2021.

Among the companies whose names were also mentioned in official U.S. disclosures about Saudi financial support for them: BGR Group, a company founded by prominent Republicans Ed Rogers and Haley Barbour, and the Glover Park Group, launched by many Democratic political strategists, including Joe Lockhart Carter Esquiw; The Podesta Group, which Democrat Tony Podesta ran.

Perhaps the Saudi shift from the influence based on personal relations to the institutional methodology through special offices and channels was associated with the consequences of the events of September 11, which forced the Saudi government to invest in the channels used within the circles of American governance.

In addition to the means of influence that the Kingdom possesses through its oil wealth and the accompanying building of a network of personal relationships that believes in preserving the Kingdom’s oil gains in its relations with Washington.

However, the role of these offices is nothing more than a service in exchange for a fee they receive, which affects the degree of belief in the issues they influence, in addition to the focus of these offices on the official side at the expense of societal components.

This makes the Saudi position and its issues absent from the American public opinion, in which other pressure groups are active, which may have carried an agenda that contradicts the facts and focuses on attacking Saudi Arabia within the corridors of American politics.

What proves the validity of this view is the Kingdom’s failure to prevent the passage of the JASTA “State Sponsors of Terrorism” Act, which allows U.S. citizens affected by the events of September 11 to prosecute and sue Saudi officials.

The Saudi government has spent huge amounts of money on public relations offices, signing contracts with Hogan Lovells, Flywheel Government Solutions, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Glover Park, and others to achieve a significant achievement in this law.

Significantly since the adoption of the law is a setback in the history of Saudi-American relations, it harms senior officials of the Saudi state. Moreover, the two countries’ common interests are jeopardised if cases are filed against Saudi officials.

Indeed, the law passed by Congress in 2016 does not directly accuse Saudi Arabia of terrorism. Still, it makes it in the circle of accusation and accountability, as hundreds of lawsuits have been filed by survivors and relatives of the victims of the September 11 attacks against Saudi Arabia.

In March 2016, Salman Al-Ansari, a political analyst specialising in Saudi affairs, established the American Saudi Public Relations Committee (SAP RAC).

The Committee actively implements volunteer activities in partnership with local American organisations. For example, it sends volunteers to participate in humanitarian work, promoting tourism in Saudi Arabia and introducing Saudi culture to American communities.

Accordingly, it seems that the Saudi side has realised the necessity to carry out the process of pressure and influence by itself through particular institutions established under American legislation and the importance of gaining public opinion and power outside the circles of the American administration.

The Saudi lobby was not satisfied with that. It expanded its scope to fund many influential research centres in the United States.

Most notably: the Middle East Institute, the Middle East Policy Council, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and other research institutions.

The Middle East Center is one of the most important centres that receive Saudi funding. Between 2016 and 2017, the Center received grants ranging between $1.25 and $4 million from Saudi interests, according to its public disclosures.

The same Center has relations with other pressure institutions through its network of relations, as the Center communicates with (Qorvis Communication), the public relations spokesperson for the Saudis for a long time, through Michael Petrozzello, one of the members of the board of directors, and with the Saudi Oil Company, the North American branch of Jack Moore, a member of the Center’s board of directors and director of the oil company’s Washington office.