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Putin Heads to Saudi Arabia, Offers Himself as Peacemaker

Jamie Dettmer

   MOSCOW - Russian leader Vladimir Putin travels to Saudi Arabia, a
   traditional U.S. ally, Monday, offering to act as a peacemaker between
   Riyadh and Tehran in a diplomatic offensive aimed at balancing Moscow's
   relations across the Middle East.

   His second aim, say analysts, is to needle Washington. While courting
   Iran, Russia's ally in Syria, the Kremlin has also been wooing Tehran's
   top foes, Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as other major powers in the
   region like Turkey, a member of the U.S.-led NATO Western military
   alliance.

   Putin's visit coincides with a Pentagon announcement that it is
   dispatching 3000 additional troops and two squadrons of fighter jets to
   the Gulf kingdom in an effort, U.S. officials say, to deter Iranian
   aggression following the drone and Cruise missile attack on Saudi
   Arabian oil facilities last month, which rattled global energy markets
   and added to war tensions in the Gulf.

   Saudi Arabia and the U.S., as well as other Western powers, blame Iran
   for the attack.

   In recent months, Russia's president has been assiduously courting
   Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a move which has
   been compared by some analysts to trolling the U.S. in the Gulf. The
   Crown Prince hasn't discouraged the attention -- as much a warning,
   some analysts say, to Western powers and as a rebuff of their criticism
   for his human rights record.

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