“Usually the Saudis will not make any decision against U.S. advice or interests. I think we’re past this stage. If it isn’t in our interests, we feel no necessity to bow to their wishes,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi analyst at the Gulf Research Centre in Jeddah with close ties to the Saudi security establishment.

Alani recited a litany of Saudi complaints, from Obama’s failure to press Israel to end settlement building in the West Bank to his support for Arab Spring revolutions that toppled Egyptian and Tunisian autocrats who had supported U.S. policy.

But, like many prominent Saudis, he was most concerned by Obama’s approach to the crisis in Syria, a conflict viewed in the kingdom as a defining battle for Middle East supremacy between pro-Western leaders and non-Arab Iran.

For more than a year, Saudi officials have pleaded with Washington to enter the conflict, either with direct air strikes or the imposition of a no-fly zone, or by giving significant military aid to the mainly Sunni rebels.

When hundreds of civilians died in a chemical weapons attack in August, the Saudis were convinced this breach of a “red line” Obama had set last year would, finally, force tough U.S. action…

They also fear Tehran is taking direct action against the kingdom itself: fomenting unrest among its Shi’ite minority; plotting to assassinate its envoy in Washington; and planting a spy ring in the country. Tehran has denied all those claims.

“If the U.S. is really soft on Iran and letting Iran’s friends win in Syria, what conclusions will Gulf governments draw?” one senior diplomat in the Gulf said some weeks ago.