Charles Kenny is senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and author of The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest is Great for the West from which this article is adapted.

We don’t know yet what happened to San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik during her many years living in Saudi Arabia, or what her U.S.-born husband and accomplice, Syed Farook, might have experienced during his two recent visits to the country. But it isn’t news that Saudi Arabia, a supposed U.S. ally, has a long record of promoting religious extremism at home and exporting it abroad. According to a Reuters report, relatives of the Pakistani-born Malik say she and her father appeared to have become more radicalized during years they spent in Saudi Arabia. Between 1,500 and 2,500 Saudis have joined the fighting in Iraq and Syria in part thanks to the close relationship between the ideology of the Islamic State and of Saudi Wahabism. In the last month alone, Saudi Arabia has declared its intent to behead 50 people across the country and has threatened legal action against any who suggest beheading is “ISIS-like.”

For years since 9/11, U.S. and Western officials have mostly looked the other way at all this ideological support for extremism: Saudi oil was just too important to the global economy, even though many of these Saudi petro-dollars were underwriting repression at home and the growth of Salafist fundamentalism abroad. But today, two things have changed: first, the global cost of Saudi-backed extremism has continued to climb—with the rise of ISIS and Boko Haram, the bombings in Beirut and Paris and the shootings in San Bernardino.


The other factor that has changed is that there is no longer as much economic justification for America to kowtow to the Saudi regime. With Saudi Arabian dominance of the global oil market declining, and the United States moving itself closer to energy independence—and the deal to halt Iranian nuclear weapons technology moving ahead, neutralizing for the moment at least the threat of a Mideast arms race—there has never been a better time to reconsider America’s close relationship with the House of Saud. That means moving toward a regime of sanctions designed to pressure the ruling royal family toward respecting rights at home and peace abroad. Other major nations appear to be recognizing the same thing: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over,” Sigmar Gabriel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

It’s long past time, in other words, to make Saudi Arabia pay for its ideological support of extremism. The United States should be pressuring Saudi Arabia to reform and—if necessary—move on to targeted sanctions modeled on those the United States has applied to Russia, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Such sanctions block the sale or transfer of money, goods or services owned by specifically named individuals, and prevent those named from entering the United States.

Saudi Arabia, of course, denies that it is involved in underwriting extremism; it maintains, on the contrary, that it is part of the coalition against Islamic State and it has been a victim of extremist terror attacks. But the record of Saudi Arabia’s global support for extremists suggests it should be on the shortlist for inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, at the least. Both the government and individuals within the country have been a major source of support for international terror groups before and since 2001—when most of the 9/11 bombers came from Saudi Arabia. In 2012, the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan had multiple high-level contacts with the Haqqani network, which was behind a 2011 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Saudi donors were the “most significant source of foreign funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” and that Al Qaeda and the Taliban “probably raised millions of dollars” in the country every year.

This support for radicalism abroad should come as little surprise given that Islamic State is an ideological cousin of Saudi Arabia’s own state-sponsored extremist Wahhabi sect—which the country has spent more than $10 billion to promote worldwide through charitable organizations like the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The country will continue to export extremism as long as it practices the same policies at home.

In fact, the country’s domestic human rights abuses are enough reason to impose sanctions alone. Venezuela is under U.S. sanctions at the moment for “erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations.” It might be shorter to list the human rights Saudi Arabia upholds than those it abuses. To quote the U.S. State Department Human Rights Report, Saudi “citizens lack ... the right and legal means to change their government” while there are “pervasive restrictions on universal rights such as freedom of expression, including on the internet, and freedom of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and a lack of equal rights for women, children, and noncitizen workers... torture and other abuses... [v]iolence against women, trafficking in persons, and discrimination based on gender, religion, sect, race, and ethnicity.”

Beyond the floggings and beheadings meted out to those who dare suggest reform, Saudi Arabia’s record on women is a sick form of gender apartheid. They are banned from obtaining a passport, marrying, traveling or going to college without the approval of their husband or other male guardian. None may drive and they are also banned from most jobs. And the treatment of blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for suggesting the country embrace women’s rights and freedom of thought, demonstrates a determined commitment to curtail press freedom. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is sanctioned because certain persons have been “undermining democratic institutions or processes.” It would be hard to do that in Saudi Arabia, but only because there is so little to undermine.

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Yet we haven’t really even started this discussion about Saudi Arabia in America. Indeed, the United States is still deeply implicated in Saudi Arabia’s abuses. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. exported $934 million in arms to Saudi Arabia from 2005 to 2009. From 2010 to 2014, it exported $2.4 billion more. This month, it approved another billion-dollar shipment. The U.S. provides training, shares intelligence and gives logistics support to Saudi Arabia’s military. And President Barack Obama rushed to Riyadh to pay obeisance to the country’s new king, Salman, early in 2015, only days after the death of his predecessor, Abdullah.

Many observers still suggest Saudi Arabia and its oil is simply too important to U.S. interests to countenance a change in policy. But that is based on a dated view of both the country’s economic power and the impact of sanctions. Imposing an embargo on Saudi oil exports like the one imposed against Iran for its nuclear program would surely have a dramatic effect on global oil prices at least in the short term. But targeted sanctions would not do that. And, regardless, Saudi Arabia’s power over global—and in particular U.S.—energy markets is on the wane.

A decade ago, economists Robert Barsky and Lutz Kilian of the University of Michigan studied the impact of oil price shocks on the U.S. economy and concluded that “the case that oil price shocks create recessions is weak ... disturbances in the oil market are likely to matter less for US macroeconomic performance than has commonly been thought.” That conclusion is even more true today. Oil is simply not as important to the economy as it used to be. America uses less petroleum in 2014 than it did in 2000 according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Since 1980, the amount of oil it takes to produce a dollar’s worth of U.S. output has fallen by 55 percent. Meanwhile, North American production is rising (U.S. oil output climbed 30 percent from 2008 to 2012). The combination of greater domestic supply and slackening demand translates into falling imports. By 2035, forecasts the International Energy Agency, “[t]he net North American requirement for crude imports all but disappears ... and the region becomes a larger exporter of oil products.”

A range of long-term trends suggests the influence provided by Saudi Arabia’s oil will decline not just in the U.S. but worldwide. The rise of renewable energy and the increasing threat of carbon taxes will slacken demand. And global exploration alongside new drilling technologies are opening up huge new reserves: According to the Energy Information Agency, Saudi Arabia’s share of global proven oil reserves has fallen from 26 percent to 16 percent just since 2000.

Furthermore, we know that targeted sanctions and a continued oil trade can coexist because they already do. In 2014, Saudi Arabia was responsible for 13 percent of U.S. oil imports—426 million barrels. Russia and Venezuela (both under U.S. sanctions) exported 408 million barrels to the U.S. between them. Globally, Saudi Arabia and Russia each produced about 12 percent of the world’s oil. The idea that targeted (non-oil) sanctions on Saudi leadership would have anything like the impact on global oil markets of invading Iraq is hard to support. We also face the possibility of being able to import oil from Iran thanks to the recent nuclear deal.

Saudi Arabia’s power to damage America economically may be weak, but it does retain considerable political influence. From 1991 to 2003, Saudi Aramco, the country’s national oil company, sold crude oil to U.S. refineries at a significant discount to the market price. That acted as an $8.5 billion gift to refineries—which used some of that money to lobby Congress. The refineries that benefited nearly doubled their political contributions on average, and the recipients were more likely to support Saudi-related interests (and oppose Israeli interests) in Congress, according to analysis by economist Jennifer Peck of Swarthmore College. While that program is over, in the past few weeks the Saudi government has hired elite Washington lobbying firm the Podesta Group to shore up its support on Capitol Hill—alongside half a dozen existing lobby firms including DLA Piper and Hogan Lovells.

But 30 years ago, apartheid South Africa also spent lavish amounts in lobbying to prevent U.S. sanctions—invoking regional stability and the fight against communism as the excuse for overlooking the country’s institutionalized racism. Popular pressure was still enough to provoke a congressional override of Ronald Reagan’s veto of sanctions against the country. And Saudi Arabia is already mistrusted by most Americans. In 2014, suggests the Gallup organization, only 35 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the country. That beats out Iran, Syria and Iraq, but is only 1 point ahead of Russia, and behind China and Cuba (it is also behind Venezuela’s 2013 rating). So it isn’t clear that Saudi Arabia’s enhanced lobbying campaign will necessarily have much effect.

The new approach to Saudi Arabia would not develop overnight. It might start with tighter controls on arms exports and reduced military cooperation. From there, the U.S. could embrace a sports boycott—at least until girls are actually allowed to play sports in the Gulf kingdom. And then, perhaps, a ban on tourist visas for male members of the Saudi Arabian royal family until Saudi women can leave the country without permission of their husband or male guardian.

Again, smart sanctions are no panacea. But the Saudi royal family has a lot of overseas assets to freeze, because it has aggressively globalized its investments. Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, son of the late King Fahd has amassed a U.S. property portfolio worth nearly$1 billion with his partner and relative Sheikh Khalid N Al Assaf. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bought a $300 million stake in Twitter four years ago when he was also the second largest shareholder in News Corporation. His investment company currently owns large stakes in Citigroup, Fairmont Raffles hotel chain, Motorola and eBay. If any ruling elite is likely to be susceptible to international pressure, the Saudi royal family must be near the top of the list.

And if any ruling elite worldwide deserves to be under pressure, it is the Saudi royal family. For years, it has protected its own against languishing in jails abroad for murder, rape and drug smuggling, while executing people at home for acts that should not be criminal at all. The repression is not a matter of high-minded religious principle, merely the desire to keep control of the country’s wealth and power—whatever the cost to citizens at home or the victims of Saudi Arabia’s extremist client groups abroad. It is high time—and the right time—for America to lead the world in saying “enough.”