US aims to fix ties with client regimes: Analyst

A political analyst says the ongoing Middle East tour by US Secretary of State John Kerry is merely aimed at patching up Washington’s “frayed relations” with its “client regimes,” Press TV reports.

In an article published on Press TV website on Monday, Finian Cunningham wrote, “It is transparent… that the urgent purpose of Kerry’s 11-day mission is to patch up frayed relations with US client regimes, in particular, Saudi Arabia and Israel, rather than pursuing some higher, noble goal, such as peace in the region.”

Kerry, who arrived in Saudi Arabia on November 3 on the second leg of his trip to the Middle East and North Africa, described Washington-Riyadh relations as “strategic and enduring,” reassuring that there is “no difference in our mutually agreed upon goal in Syria.”

In October, Saudi Arabia’s spymaster Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud said Riyadh-Washington ties have been deteriorating for a while, saying the kingdom plans a ‘major shift’ in its dealings with the United States over several issues including the crisis in Syria and Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Cunningham further wrote that while the US has balked at launching a strike against Syria, it continues to seek a regime change in the Arab country through political means, an objective shared with Saudi Arabia, which is nevertheless still pushing “for the covert military option” to reach the same goal. “The difference is merely tactical, not strategic.”

The political commentator described Kerry’s trip to the region as a “tour to reassure” Middle East despots of continues backing from Washington by “massaging their fragile egos.”

“That’s what Kerry was in Riyadh for this week, to reassure the American House of Saud puppets that fundamentally nothing has changed. Moreover, the underlying strategic hostility towards Syria also applies to Iran, and Kerry let the Saudi rulers know that too,” wrote Cunningham.

“We can be sure that the American diplomat will likewise soothe Washington’s Israeli clients similarly in regard to its diplomacy with Iran,” he wrote.