Relation with Saudis gets trickier

On Afghanistan, the official line on both sides is that the US never asked Saudi Arabia for permission to mount combat operations from Saudi bases, and that Saudi has helped in every other way. Saudi sources say the US did request combat help, and was refused.

Even before Sept. 11, the Pentagon was reportedly working on non-Saudi contingency plans.

Riyadh also opposes Washington's policy of "regime change" for Baghdad.

"Their view is that if the Americans get it wrong, you'll end up with an irate Saddam who is a threat, or a pro-Tehran theocracy that is also a threat," says Mr. Henderson. "And why deal with Saddam at all, if the US security guarantee is that the cavalry will come over the horizon anyway when the kingdom is in crisis?"

"Two more different societies never existed," says a Western diplomat. He calls the Americans and closed-society Saudis "intimate strangers ... that can quite easily talk past each other – and easily rub each other the wrong way."

In January, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told CNN that the Saudis have been "wonderful allies in this war against terrorism" – a view shared by many diplomats here – but that Riyadh had been "asking a long time" to reduce troop levels. "We are looking to reduce the footprint within Saudi Arabia," he said, "consistent with America's interests and consistent with the interests of Saudi Arabia."

That view coincided with concern of the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, who said in January: "There's a real problem when we're told that a country that's presumably an ally of ours doesn't want us to be seen by its people."

American forces moved to the remote Prince Sultan air base, after vulnerable city locations – including a US Air Force barracks at Al-Khobar – were targeted by bombers in 1995 and 1996.

"We are aware of the pressure around the military presence here and work to keep it low key," says a US official here. "But this is the heart of the relationship.... The idea that people feel threatened by 'crusader, infidel' forces has no traction."

"Osama Bin Laden has tried his [hardest] to put a wedge between Saudi Arabia and the US, by the fact that he chose [so many Saudis] of the suicide group," says Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, in an interview. "But you are an American here: Has anyone stopped you in the street?"

Still, he adds: "A family feud is the most intense feud, and having that closeness and affinity makes it feel like a personal issue."

Indeed, distress over US support of Israel caused Crown Prince Abdullah last August to write to Bush: "We are at a crossroads," he said in the message. "It is time for the US and Saudi Arabia to look at their separate interests."

"The Saudis are looking to move back" from the "intense" US-Saudi ties since the Gulf War, says Gregory Gause, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the University of Vermont. "It is not a divorce, not a 180-degree turn, but something like what pre-dated 1990: cooperation, but with some distance."

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