http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...important.html
The longtime coziness between the oil kingdom and the leader of the free world has gone cold for some time and turned frigid in 2013, when Obama refrained from bombing Syria and undertook negotiations with Iran—the Saudis’ two main enemies. Those moves came in the wake of Obama’s abandonment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, their main ally, during the Arab Spring protests of 2011.
At the low point, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief and former longtime ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar Sultan al-Saud, publicly grumbled that the kingdom was losing trust in Obama’s judgment and might reassess the whole web of relations between the two powers.
Obama didn’t panic over the threat, nor did he need to. Bandar’s rhetorical flourishes coincided with, and may have reflected, a weakening of Saudi power—its standing as the world’s largest petroleum supplier, the basis of its international influence, having just been overtaken by the United States. For once, they needed our arms more than we needed their oil.