Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee: A reminder of the special bonds between Saudi and British royal families

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Updated 03 June 2022
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Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee: A reminder of the special bonds between Saudi and British royal families

  • Cables sent by King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bespeak a friendship dating back decades
  • Since Elizabeth came to the throne in 1952, there have been four state visits to Britain by Saudi monarchs

LONDON: As congratulations flooded into London this week from heads of state around the world, two messages in particular served as reminders of the special relationship that has flourished between the Saudi and British royal families throughout the 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Behind the formality of the cables sent by King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, wishing her “sincere felicitations and best health and happiness” on the occasion of her platinum jubilee, is a history of friendship dating back to the earliest days of her reign, which began on Feb. 6, 1952.

 

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That day, her father King George VI died while the 25-year-old Elizabeth and her husband Philip, duke of Edinburgh, were in Kenya on a tour of Africa.

Having left England a princess, she flew home in mourning as Queen Elizabeth II. Her coronation took place on June 2 the following year.

Among the guests at the coronation were members of four royal families from the Gulf: The rulers or their representatives of the then-British protectorates of Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, and Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz, representing the 78-year-old King Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s founder and first monarch, who had only five months left to live.

The bonds between the Saudi and British monarchies cannot be measured by the frequency of formal occasions alone, although an examination of the record of state visits held by Buckingham Palace reveals an illuminating distinction.

Since the queen succeeded her father, there have been no fewer than four state visits to Britain by Saudi monarchs, a number matched by only four other countries, including the UK’s near-neighbors France and Germany.

The first to travel to London was King Faisal, greeted with all the pomp and ceremony of a full British state welcome at the start of his eight-day visit in May 1967.




Queen Elizabeth II with Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal in 1967. (AFP/Getty Images)

Met by the queen, members of the British royal family and leading politicians — including then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson — King Faisal rode to Buckingham Palace with Elizabeth and Philip in an open horse-drawn state carriage, drawn through London streets lined with cheering crowds.

During a busy eight-day schedule, the king found time to visit and pray at London’s Islamic Cultural Centre.




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with Saudi Arabia’s King Khaled in 1981. (Alamy)

His son Prince Bandar, who that year graduated from the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, deputized for his father on a visit to inspect English Electric Lightning fighter jets being readied for shipment to Saudi Arabia. Later, the prince would fly Lightnings as a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force.

King Faisal was followed on state visits to Britain by his successors King Khaled in 1981, King Fahd in 1987 and King Abdullah in 2007. 




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd in 1987. (AFP/Getty Images)

In February 1979, traveling on board the supersonic jet Concorde, Queen Elizabeth visited Riyadh and Dhahran during a Gulf tour that also took her to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman.

In Saudi Arabia, she was hosted by King Khaled and enjoyed a series of events, including a desert picnic and a state dinner at Maathar Palace in Riyadh.




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with King Hussein of Jordan in 1955. (AFP)

In return, she and her husband hosted a dinner for the Saudi royal family on board Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia.

Poignantly, Britannia would return to the Gulf one last time, in January 1997, during its last tour before the royal yacht was decommissioned in December that year.

However, the relationship between the two royal families has not been limited to the great occasions of state.




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 2010. (AFP/Getty Images)

Analysis of the regular Court Circular published by Buckingham Palace shows that members of Britain’s royal family met with Gulf monarchs more than 200 times between 2011 and 2021 alone — equivalent to once a fortnight. Forty of these informal meetings were with members of the House of Saud.

Most recently, in March 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a private audience as well as lunch with the queen at Buckingham Palace. 




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018. (AFP/Getty Images)

Later, he dined with the prince of Wales and the duke of Cambridge during a visit to the UK that included meetings with then-Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Serious topics, such as trade and defense agreements, are often the subjects of such meetings. But good-natured fun, rather than stiff formality, is frequently the hallmark of private gatherings between the royal families, as Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2006, would later recall.

In 2003, Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s future king, was a guest of the queen at Balmoral Castle, her estate in Scotland.




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in 2007. (AFP/Getty Images)

It was his first visit to Balmoral and, happily accepting an invitation to be taken on a tour of the large estate, he climbed into the passenger seat of a Land Rover, only to discover that his driver and guide was to be the queen herself.

Having served during the Second World War as an army driver, she has always driven herself at Balmoral, where locals are used to seeing her out and about behind the wheel of one of her beloved Land Rovers.

She is also known for having great fun at the expense of guests as she hurtles one of the vehicles along the narrow lanes and across the rugged terrain of the estate.




Queen Elizabeth (2nd R) and Prince Philip (L) receive Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (R) and his wife Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser at Windsor Castle on Oct. 26, 2010. (AFP)

By Sir Sherard’s account, Prince Abdullah took the impromptu fairground ride well, although at one point, “through his interpreter,” he felt obliged to “implore the queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.”

Aside from the commonality of their royalty, the queen and the monarchs of the Gulf have always bonded over their mutual love of horses, a shared interest that dates back to at least 1937, when Elizabeth was an 11-year-old princess.

To mark the occasion of her father’s coronation that year, King Abdulaziz presented King George VI with an Arabian mare.

A life-size bronze statue of the horse, Turfa, was unveiled in 2020 at the Arabian Horse Museum in Diriyah, where it has pride of place today.

At the time of the unveiling, Richard Oppenheim, then-Britain’s deputy ambassador to Saudi Arabia, highlighted how the two royal families had always bonded over this common interest.

“The queen has many horses, and King Salman and the Saudi royal family also have a long-held love of horses,” he said.

The queen also shares that love with Sheikh Mohammed Al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and vice president of the UAE, who owns the internationally renowned Godolphin horse-racing stables and stud farm in Newmarket, the home of British horse racing.




Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum in 2010. (AFP/Getty Images)

The two have often been seen together at great events on the horse-racing calendar, such as the annual five-day Royal Ascot meeting, regarded as the jewel in the crown of the British social season, which this year runs from June 14-18.

Team Godolphin has had several winners at Royal Ascot, where the queen’s horses have won over 70 races since her coronation.




Britain's Queen Elizabeth with the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah. (Toby Mellville/Pool/AFP)

This weekend, as flags fly from homes and public buildings, thousands of events are taking place across Britain to mark her platinum jubilee, including street parties; the traditional Trooping the Colour at the Horse Guards Parade; gun salutes; a fly-past by the Royal Air Force, watched by the queen from the balcony of Buckingham Palace; and the lighting of more than 3,000 beacons nationwide.

At the age of 96, Elizabeth — queen of the UK and the Commonwealth, and monarch to more than 150 million people — has reached a royal milestone rare not only in Britain, but across the world.

By Friday, she will have reigned for 70 years and 117 days, putting her within nine days of becoming the second-longest-serving monarch in world history.

Bhumibol Adulyadej, king of Thailand from 1946 until his death in 2016 at the age of 88, ruled for 70 years and 126 days.

Only Louis XIV of France was on the throne for longer, ruling between 1643 and 1715, for 72 years and 110 days.

The secret to Elizabeth’s longevity, perhaps, lies in the words of the British national anthem “God Save the Queen,” which will be sung heartily at events across the UK this weekend: “Long live our noble queen … Happy and glorious, long to reign over us, God save the queen.”

 


White House says US forces remain in ‘defensive posture’ in Middle East

Updated 5 sec ago
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White House says US forces remain in ‘defensive posture’ in Middle East

  • “We will defend American interests,” White House spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer added in a post on social media

WASHINGTON: US forces in the Middle East remain in a “defensive posture, and that has not changed,” the White House said Monday as Israel and Iran traded heavy strikes for a fourth day.
“We will defend American interests,” White House spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer added in a post on social media.

 


China tells citizens in Israel to leave ‘as soon as possible’

Updated 6 min 9 sec ago
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China tells citizens in Israel to leave ‘as soon as possible’

  • The notice recommended Chinese citizens to leave via the land crossing toward Jordan

BEIJING: China’s embassy in Israel on Tuesday urged its citizens to leave the country “as soon as possible,” after Israel and Iran traded heavy strikes.
“The Chinese mission in Israel reminds Chinese nationals to leave the country as soon as possible via land border crossings, on the precondition that they can guarantee their personal safety,” the embassy said in a statement on WeChat.
“It is recommended to depart in the direction of Jordan,” it added.
After decades of enmity and a prolonged shadow war, Israel launched a surprise aerial campaign last week against targets across Iran, saying they aimed to prevent its arch-foe from acquiring atomic weapons — an ambition Tehran denies.
The sudden flare-up in hostilities has sparked fears of a wider conflict, with US President Donald Trump urging Iran back to the negotiating table after Israel’s attacks derailed ongoing nuclear talks.
Beijing’s embassy said on Tuesday the conflict was “continuing to escalate.”
“Much civilian infrastructure has been damaged, civilian casualties are on the rise, and the security situation is becoming more serious,” it said.
 

 


Macron urges end to strikes against civilians, warns against Iran regime change

Updated 54 min 30 sec ago
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Macron urges end to strikes against civilians, warns against Iran regime change

  • Macron called on both Israel and Iran to “end” strikes against civilians and warned that aiming to overthrow Tehran’s clerical state would be a “strategic error”

KANANASKIS, Canada: French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday called for strikes against civilians in Iran and Israel to end, as he warned against forcing regime change in Tehran.
“If the United States can achieve a ceasefire, that’s a very good thing,” Macron told reporters at a G7 summit in Canada, just as the White House announced President Donald Trump would leave the event early due the escalating crisis in the Middle East.
Macron called on both Israel and Iran to “end” strikes against civilians and warned that aiming to overthrow Tehran’s clerical state would be a “strategic error.”
“All who have thought that by bombing from the outside you can save a country in spite of itself have always been mistaken,” he said.

 


Why attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities have placed Israel’s own secret arsenal in the spotlight

Updated 17 June 2025
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Why attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities have placed Israel’s own secret arsenal in the spotlight

  • Estimates suggest Israel possesses at least 90 nuclear warheads, deliverable by aircraft, land-based missiles,
  • Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refuses to place its facilities under international safeguards

LONDON: To this day, Israel maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity in regard to its nuclear capabilities, but it is a fact accepted by experts worldwide that Israel has had the bomb since just before the Six Day War in 1967.

And not just one bomb. Recent estimates by the independent Stockholm International Peace Institute, which has kept tabs on the world’s nuclear weapons and the states that possess them since 1966, suggest Israel has at least 90 nuclear warheads.

SIPRI believes that these warheads are capable of being delivered anywhere within a maximum radius of 4,500 km by its F-15, F-161, and F-35I “Adir” aircraft, its 50 land-based Jericho II and III missiles, and by about 20 Popeye Turbo cruise missiles, launched from submarines.

A woman looks at a wall decorated with national flags during the IAEA's Board of Governors meeting at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria on June 3, 2024. (AFP)

While Iran is a signatory to the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel is not, which begs the question: while Israel is wreaking havoc in Iran, with the declared aim of crippling a nuclear development program, which the International Atomic Energy Authority says is about energy, not weaponry, why is the international community not questioning Israel’s?

In March, during a meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Jassim Yacoub Al-Hammadi, Qatar’s ambassador to Austria, announced that Qatar was calling for “intensified international efforts” to bring all Israeli nuclear facilities “under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency and for Israel to join the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear state.”

Israel refuses to sign up to the NPT or cooperate with the IAEA. Furthermore, it is a little remembered fact that since 1981 Israel has been in breach of UN Resolution 487.

This was prompted by an attack on a nuclear research facility in Iraq by Israel on June 7, 1981, which was condemned by the UN Security Council as a “clear violation of the Charter of the UN and the norms of international conduct.”

Iraq, as the Security Council pointed out, had been a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty since it came into force in 1970.

Like all states, especially those developing, Iraq had the “inalienable sovereign right …  to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation.”

Iran won’t permit the blood of its martyrs to go unavenged, nor ignore violation of its airspace, says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader

The resolution, which remains in force, called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Israel has never complied with Resolution 487.

That ambiguity extends to Israel’s only officially stated position on nuclear weapons, which it has repeated since the 1960s, that it “won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.”

A picture shows the unrecognised Bedouin village of Ras Jrabah, east of Dimona city (background) in southern Israel, on May 29, 2024. (AFP)

Israeli policymakers, SIPRI says, “have previously interpreted ‘introduce nuclear weapons’ as publicly declaring, testing or actually using the nuclear capability, which Israel says it has not yet done.”

In November 2023, about a month after the Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party, said Israel should drop “some kind of atomic bomb” on Gaza, “to kill everyone.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly suspended Eliyahu from the cabinet. Eliyahu’s statements “were not based in reality,” Netanyahu said, while Eliyah himself took to X to say that it was “clear to all sensible people” that his statement was “metaphorical.”

Buildings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters reflect in doors with the agency's logo during the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria on June 13, 2025. (AFP)

Arsen Ostrovsky, an international human rights lawyer who on X describes himself as a “proud Zionist,” replied: “It is clear to all sensible people that you are a stupid idiot. Even if metaphorical, it was inexcusable. You need to know when to keep your mouth shut.”

Israel has no nuclear electricity generating plants, but it does have what experts agree is a vast nuclear facility.

The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center — built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, allegedly with French assistance, and renamed for the former Israeli prime minister following his death in 2016 — is a heavily guarded complex in the Negev Desert barely 70 km from the border with Egypt.

Iran has ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching the Negev Nuclear Research Center, approximately 1,500 km from Tehran. Why is Tehran hitting Israeli cities in retaliation to Israel’s attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear industry, when it could attack Israel’s nuclear facility?

The answer, most likely, comes down to the “Samson Option.”

The Samson Option is a protocol for mutual destruction, the existence of which Israel has never admitted, but has never denied.

As Arab News reported in March, Israel is believed to have twice come close to using its nuclear weaponry.

In 2017, a claim emerged that on the eve of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 Israel had been on the cusp of unleashing a “demonstration” nuclear blast designed to intimidate its enemies.

The plan was revealed in interviews with retired general Itzhak Yaakov, conducted by Avner Cohen, an Israeli-American historian and leading scholar of Israel’s nuclear history, and published only after Yaakov’s death.

In 2003, Cohen revealed that during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when it again appeared that Israeli forces were about to be overrun, then Prime Minister Golda Meir had authorized the use of nuclear bombs and missiles as a last-stand defense.

This doomsday plan, codenamed Samson, was named for the Israelite strongman who, captured by the Philistines, pulled down the pillars of their temple, destroying himself along with his enemies.

Mordecha Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician and peace activist, revealed Israel’s nuclear secrets back in 1986.

Ensnared in the UK by a female Israeli agent, Mordechai was lured to Rome, where he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and taken back to Israel on an Israeli navy ship.

Vanunu, charged with treason, was sentenced to 18 years in prison, much of which he spent in solitary confinement. Released in April 2004, he remains under a series of strictly enforced restrictions, which prevent him from leaving Israel or even speaking to any foreigner.

“We all believe that Israel has a nuclear capability,” Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London’s Institute of Middle East Studies, told Arab News in March.

“The fact that Israel found it necessary to catch Vanunu and put him in jail, and continues to impose strict limitations on him, just proves that it has probably got it.”

The emergence of another Vanunu, especially in the current climate, is highly unlikely.

“Israelis are scared,” said Bregman, who served in the Israeli army for six years in the 1980s.

“Even if you believe it is a good idea to restrict Israel’s behavior and make sure it doesn’t do anything stupid, you are scared to act because you know they will abduct you and put you in jail.

“Israel is very tough on those who reveal its secrets.”

 


Gaza marchers retreat to western Libya after being blocked

Updated 16 June 2025
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Gaza marchers retreat to western Libya after being blocked

  • The ‘Soumoud’ convoy — meaning steadfastness in Arabic — decided to fall back near Misrata, about 200 km east of Tripoli, after being stopped by the eastern authorities

TUNIS: Pro-Palestinian activists on a march aiming to break Israel’s Gaza blockade have retreated to the Misrata region of western Libya after being blocked by the authorities in the country’s east, organizers said on Sunday.

The “Soumoud” convoy — meaning steadfastness in Arabic — decided to fall back near Misrata, about 200 km east of Tripoli, after being stopped by the eastern authorities.

Misrata is administered by the UN-recognized Government of National Unity based in Tripoli, while military commander Khalifa Haftar controls the east.

The convoy of more than 1,000 people from Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and Tunisia had been under a “military blockade” since Friday at the entrance to Sirte, a Haftar-controlled area.

Organizers said they were subjected to a “systematic siege,” with no access to food, water, or medicine, and communications severely disrupted.

They also denounced the arrest of several convoy members, including at least three bloggers who had been documenting its journey since its departure from Tunisia on June 9.

In a statement cited by Tunisia’s La Presse newspaper, the Joint Action Coordination Committee for Palestine — the group behind the convoy — demanded the immediate release of 13 participants still held by eastern Libyan authorities.

In an accompanying video, it reaffirmed its intention to continue the mission to Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, with the aim of “breaking the blockade and ending the genocide of the Palestinian people resisting in Gaza.”

In Egypt, a separate initiative — the Global March to Gaza, intended to bring together participants from 80 countries — was halted on Friday by authorities en route to the city of Ismailia, east of Cairo.

Dozens of activists were intercepted, reportedly beaten, had passports confiscated, and were forcibly loaded onto buses by police at multiple checkpoints, according to videos shared on social media and with AFP.