Saudi Arabia’s long-time ruler King Abdullah was pronounced dead in the early hours of Friday, sending oil prices on an upward spiral and raising questions over the future of the Middle East peace process and US-Iran Nuclear talks. Oil prices rose on the news of the death of 90-year-old King Abdullah, but the king’s death is not expected to change the course of oil prices over the next several months. The price of US crude was up 88 cents, or 1.9 per cent, to $47.19 a barrel in after-hours trading. Brent crude, an international benchmark, was up 2.1 per cent to $49.58 a barrel.
“Commodity markets might have a knee-jerk reaction but it will soon settle down,” said larry Goldstein, a veteran oil adviser at the Energy Policy Research Foundation. As the world mourned the death of King Abdullah, his successor and half-brother King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud promised to continue the policies of his predecessors in a nationally-televised speech, taking control of the kingdom after the death of the iconic ruler, who presided over the destiny of the nation for over two decades.
“We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment,” Salman said in the speech aired on the state-run Saudi 2 television station. Salman also made an oblique reference to the chaos gripping the greater Middle East as the extremist Islamic State group now holds a third of both Iraq and Syria. “The Arab and the Islamic nations are in dire need for solidarity and cohesion,” the king said.
Salman, 79, had increasingly taken on the duties of the king over the past year as his ailing predecessor and half brother, Abdullah, became more incapacitated. Salman had served as Defence Minister since 2011. That made him the head of the military as Saudi Arabia joined the US and other Arab nations in carrying out airstrikes in Syria in 2014 against the Islamic State group, the Sunni militant group that the kingdom began to see as a threat to its own stability.
He takes the helm at a time when the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom and oil powerhouse is trying to navigate social pressures from a burgeoning youth population -- over half the population of 20 million is under 25 -- seeking jobs and increasingly testing boundaries of speech on the Internet, where criticism of the royal family is rife. Salman's health has been a question of concern. He suffered a stroke that has left him with limited movement on his left arm.
King Abdullah passing away is seen as a watershed moment not only in Saudi Arabia politics, but it will have wider ramifications of the entire Middle East. His changes looked minute to the outside world. But in a kingdom where ultra-conservative Muslim clerics have long held a lock on all aspects of society, King Abdullah's incremental reforms echoed mightily.
When Abdullah took the unprecedented step of opening a new university where men and women could mix in classrooms, part of his gradual campaign to modernise Saudi Arabia, grumbling arose among the hardliners who form the bedrock of the powerful religious establishment. One Sheikh dared to openly say that the mingling of genders at the king's university was “a great sin and a great evil.”
Abdullah sent a tough signal: He fired the critic from the state-run body of clerics who set the rules for Saudi life. As one of the world's largest oil exporters, Saudi Arabia is governed by a mix of tribal traditions and perhaps the world's strictest interpretation of Islam. Its royal family prefers to act quietly in the background, shies away from direct confrontation, avoids putting itself on the line and prefers slow-paced change to radical reform.
But Abdullah acted at times with unusual forcefulness for a Saudi monarch. At home, the results were reforms, including advancements for women that were startling - for the kingdom at least - and a heavy crackdown against al-Qaeda militants. Abroad, his methods translated into a powerful assertion of Saudi Arabia's influence around the Middle East.
Backed by the kingdom's top ally, the United States, the king was aggressive in trying to put up a bulwark against the spreading power of Saudi Arabia's top rival, mainly Shiite Iran, thus shaping the Arab world along new lines, an anti-Iran camp and a pro-Iran camp. According to a leaked US diplomatic memo, Abdullah urged Washington in 2008 to consider military action against Iran to “cut off the head of the snake” because of its nuclear advances. Another memo spoke of how Abdullah angrily berated Iran's foreign minister in private that “Persians” had no business meddling in “Arab” affairs.
He pushed Gulf allies into taking increasingly vocal stands against Iran and sought to isolate Syria because of its alliance with Tehran. In Syria, Abdullah stepped indirectly into the civil war that emerged after 2011. He supported and armed rebels battling to overthrow President Bashar Assad and pressed the Obama administration to do the same. Iran's allies Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias rushed to back Assad, and the resulting conflict has left hundreds of thousands dead and driven millions of Syrians from their homes.