FDR's promise to Saudi King, quickly broken

By G. Jefferson Price III

  If President Barack Obama had waited a few more weeks to meet up with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, who succeeded his brother Abdullah on the throne of Saudi Arabia last week, they could have marked the 70^th anniversary of the first meeting between a Saudi monarch and a U. S. president.

     That meeting occurred February 14, 1945 between President Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, the first king of modern Saudi Arabia, who was transported from the Saudi port of Jidda aboard a U. S. Navy destroyer to the secret rendezvous with Roosevelt awaiting him aboard a U.S. cruiser in the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal.

     Roosevelt was on his way home from Yalta, the Crimean resort town where he had held what was to be his last summit meeting with the leaders of America’s allies in World War II, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain.

      Roosevelt’s chief  reason for meeting the king was to secure advantages for U. S. oil interests over those of Great Britain in the exploitation of the vast oil resources of the Saudi kingdom. They could not have picked a more appropriate date than St. Valentine’s Day for the beginning of what would abide as one of history’s most enduring love affairs between two countries whose cultures were as different then as they are today.

    The romance even included a vow quickly broken.

    The cultural differences were stark enough in this early meeting, turning the transport of Ibn Saud and his party into a bizarre challenge for the commanders of U. S. naval ships in the final days of World War II.

     Arranged in the utmost secrecy, Ibn Saud was to be taken to Roosevelt from Jidda aboard the U.S.S. Murphy. The Saudi king showed up with an entourage of some 200, including women from his harem, according to published descriptions of the voyage by Col. W. A. Eddy, the U. S. minister to Jidda, and Capt. John S. Keating, commander of the destroyer squadron that included the Murphy.

     Both Americans were appalled by the prospect of throwing together the king’s harem and the all-male crew of the Murphy who had been at sea and at war for more than three years. Equally appalling, in addition to his human entourage the king wanted to transport with him enough live sheep to guarantee that Islamic dietary laws restricting consumption to freshly slaughtered livestock would be followed.

    The human entourage was ultimately reduced to 48 people with no women, but including coffee servers, cooks and six huge Nubians with swords. The animal cargo was reduced from 100 to seven. “As the Murphy steamed out of Jidda harbor, to the amazement of the sailors, one of the sheep was already being skinned on the fantail of the destroyer,” Eddy recalled.

     In the two-night and a full day voyage, the king and his entourage stayed and slept under tents and over carpets that had been laid down on the deck of the Murphy. The king sat on a throne all day facing the forward deck except for the six times a day when he was called to prayer and faced toward Mecca whose direction would be determined by the Murphy’s navigator.

     Roosevelt and Ibn Saud seem to have immediately warmed to each other. In an exchange of gifts, the king gave Roosevelt an Arab robe of camel hair embroidered with gold threat, hand-painted bottles of perfume and a jewel-encrusted sword and dagger.
     Learning that the king was virtually immobilized by various infirmities, Roosevelt gave him one of his spare wheelchairs. He also gave him a DC-3 airplane equipped with a throne that swiveled so he could face Mecca at any time without standing.
     But Roosevelt could not move Ibn Saud on the issue of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Ibn Saud repeatedly rejected Roosevelt’s assertions that the Jews of Europe deserved a safe haven in Palestine after the horrors of the Holocaust.
     “Let the Germans pay,” Ibn Saud told Roosevelt, according to Eddy’s account of the meeting. “Amends should be made by the criminal, not the innocent bystander. What injury have the Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? It is the Christian Germans who stole their homes and lives.”
     Roosevelt did not agree with this formulation, but he did promise that with regards to the future of Palestine, which was then under British mandate, his government would not act in a way that would offend Arab sensitivities.
     On April 5, 1945, Roosevelt sent a letter to Ibn Saud confirming the promise he had made aboard the Quincy.

     "Your Majesty will recall that on previous occasions I communicated to you the attitude of the American Government toward Palestine and made clear our desire that no decision be taken with respect to the basic situation in that country without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews. ... [D]uring our recent conversation I assured you that I would take no action, in my capacity as Chief of the Executive Branch of this Government, which might prove hostile to the Arab people."

     Seven days after that letter was sent, Roosevelt was dead. Harry S. Truman became president and Roosevelt’s promise was set aside in favor of a policy that exists to this day.

      In 1947 Facing down critics warning him against a bias in favor of the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Zionist state, Truman explained: "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands of people who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."

     G. Jefferson Price III is a former Middle East correspondent and foreign editor of The Baltimore Sun.