The US, which established diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia back in 1947, has always considered the survival of the kingdom one of the highest priorities of American foreign policy. The two primary reasons are oil and weapons - and they mix pretty well in the volatile Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has proven oil reserves totaling over 260 billion barrels - enough to last the next 85 years. Last year Saudi Arabia was the second largest supplier of oil and oil products to the US, ranking behind Canada but ahead of Venezuela and Mexico. The Saudis have always been bending over backwards to please the US by its moderating influence in the 11-nation Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and keeping prices low in order to preserve American life styles so heavily dependent on cheap gas prices at the pump.

The US military umbrella over vast Saudi oil fields has ensured the survival of a family-run, autocratic regime that is the very antithesis of the multi-party democracy that the US preaches to the outside world. Saudi Arabia's strategic importance was proved beyond any doubt when the US committed over 100,000 troops to defend the kingdom following Iraq's invasion of neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990. An equally important factor in the bilateral relationship is the Saudi hunger for American weapons systems which has resulted in a veritable Saudi subsidy to the US arms industry.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations, the US has supplied a whopping $72 billion in weapons and military services to Saudi Arabia, according to State Department figures. The Saudis are armed with some of the most sophisticated weapons in the American arsenal, including F-15 fighter planes, Airborne Early Warning Control System (AWACS) aircraft, Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, AMRAAM, Sidewinder, Harpoon, Hellfire, Patriot and Singer missiles, and Abrams battle tanks. The only other country in the Middle East to be armed with such state-of-the-art American weapons is Israel, ranking ahead of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

But since the September 11 terrorist attacks, Saudi Arabia has remained under a political cloud. The story of Saudi-American relations is a tale of how the high and the mighty can fall from grace in a country where the blind pursuit of terrorists is straining long-standing friendships.

Since 15 of the 19 hijackers who led the terrorist attacks on the US in September last year were from Saudi Arabia, the longtime American ally has been under fire by conservative right-wing Republicans. And the situation took a turn for the worse last week when US newspapers played up a story about Prince Haifa al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi Ambassador in the US, who provided monthly charitable donations to two indigent Saudi families living in California. The money, unbeknownst to her, may have been diverted to individuals with remote links to the September 11 hijackers.

The ambassador's wife has strongly denied charges of funding terrorists, but the media apparently have launched a right wing campaign to discredit her - and her home country. Despite the fact that President George W. Bush has publicly reaffirmed the longstanding US friendship with Saudi Arabia, an influential wing of the Republican Party with ties to the Likud Party in Israel is out to discredit the Arab kingdom. The campaign is also being perceived as an insidious attempt at blackmailing Saudi Arabia for its opposition to a planned American military attack on Iraq and its refusal to provide bases and refuelling facilities to American military forces. The move to discredit Saudi Arabia comes at a time when hate crimes against Muslims and Middle Easterners in the US have risen from just 28 in 2000 to 481 last year: an increase of 1,600 percent. An email message currently in circulation best illustrates how the American media have joined this campaign of vilification. In one of New York's parks, so the story goes, a young boy was being attacked by a savage dog. A passerby comes to his rescue and strangles the dog. A reporter for a New York newspaper interviews the good Samaritan and tells him that his heroic feat will be a front page story under the headline: "Brave New Yorker rescues boy". But the man says he is not a New Yorker.

In that case, says the reporter, the headline would probably be changed to read "Brave American rescues boy from savage dog". But the man insists he is neither a New Yorker nor an American but only a Pakistani.

The next day the headline on the story reads: "Muslim Fundamentalist Strangles Dog in New York park: FBI Investigating Possible Link to Al-Qaeda " The story may be apocryphal but it reflects the political paranoia not only among rightwingers but also among the media.

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