The Obama administration have refused to publicly condemn the execution of a dissident cleric who challenged the Saudi royal family, amid fears that speaking out could damage U.S.-Saudi relations. When pressed to condemn al-Nimr’s execution, officials at the White House only went as far as to say they wished “calm on all sides“. Irishtimes.com reports: The United States has usually looked the other way or issued carefully calibrated warnings in human rights reports as the Saudi royal family cracked down on dissent and free speech and allowed its elite to fund Islamic extremists. In return, Saudi Arabia became America’s most dependable filling station, a regular supplier of intelligence, and a valuable counterweight toIran. For years it was oil that provided the glue for a relationship between two nations that share few common values. Today, with US oil production surging and the Saudi leadership fractured, the mutual dependency that goes back to the early 1930s, with the first US investment in the kingdom’s oil fields, no longer binds the nations as it once did. But the political upheaval in the Middle East, and the US perception that the Saudis are critical to stability in the region, continues to hold together an increasingly [...]