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Throughout the presidency of Barack Obama, the relationship with Saudi Arabia has been hostile and downright tense, and this will be on full display Wednesday when the president travels to ‘the kingdom’.

This relationship got off to a rough start even before he assumed the presidency with Saudi Arabia never trusting Obama. In Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in “The Atlantic” titled “The Obama Doctrine”, they had never trusted Obama—he had, long before he became president, referred to them as a “so-called ally” of the U.S. “Iran is the new great power of the Middle East, and the U.S. is the old,” Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, told his superiors in Riyadh.

In the same article he referred to Saudi Arabia as a “free rider” living off the backs of America’s security umbrella without the U.S. getting much in return.

In last month’s addition in Foreign Affairs, Fahad Nazar reported Obama implied that Saudi Arabia was not doing enough in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). He also suggested that the country had contributed to the rise of Islamist militant groups by funding Wahhabi religious and educational institutions around the world. For their part, Saudi officials have become increasingly frustrated with Western dismissals of their contributions to counterterrorism, especially given that they have arrested hundreds of ISIS supporters inside Saudi Arabia and have taken what they see as adequate measures to ensure that the institutions they support abroad—and at home—do not propagate extremist ideologies.

Much of the angst against President Obama stems from his famous 2009 speech in Cairo where he was going to reset the United States relationship with the Middle East and repudiate the policies of President George Bush.  Many in the Kingdom and throughout the Middle East felt the president set the bar too high, underperformed, and viewed him as a weak president, rife with inconsistency, and a hypocrite for this policy toward the region.

Many in Saudi Arabia reacted harshly to how the president handled the turmoil of the “Arab Spring” revolution which swept the region in 2011, as Riyadh was leery of the destabilizing effects of the sudden change to the local political and social institutions.

The region reacted negatively on how the United States handled the removal of longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and close ally of Saudi Arabia, and then backed his ouster and replacement with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi.

This policy by the Obama administration with regard to the removal of Mubarak was universally opposed by the president’s entire national security team, who urged the president to move cautiously, but instead the president listened to three junior level officials who wanted him removed immediately.

Former Secretary of Defense in both the Bush and Obama administration Robert Gates stated, “Literally the entire national security team recommended unanimously handling Mubarak differently than we did. And the president took the advice of three junior backbenchers in terms of how to treat Mubarak.”

The former defense chief described how the analysis was based more on grandiose idealism then any actionable facts on the ground.

The real turning point came as Nazer mentioned, with Obama’s sudden reversal on air strikes against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s forces after Assad crossed Obama’s self-imposed “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in the summer of 2013. Syria, Saudi officials argue, is where Iran’s meddling in the Arab world must be stopped. They’ve also repeatedly maintained that Assad’s brutality is what enables ISIS to continue to recruit followers from around the world.

This entire episode coincided with the nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 nations and Iran began, with Riyadh being suspicious of the motives of the Obama administration as it relates to its handling of Tehran.

Since the agreement was signed last summer, Riyadh has seen the U.S. capitulating time and time again to Tehran, as Saudi Arabia views Iran through a different lens then the United States.

Over the past few months, and in recent interviews by President Obama, many feel that he sees Iran being reintegrated into the international community as regional power, able to shape stability in the Middle East, which is abhorrent to Saudi Arabia.

The final aspect to the president’s visit is the threat by Saudi Arabia to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other U.S. assets if Congress passes a bill holding Riyadh responsible in U.S. courts for any role in the terror attacks on September 11th 2001.