Barack Obama goes to Saudi Arabia at a time when relations between the two countries are at a low. A bill before Congress, if passed, would allow relatives of victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia directly for its complicity in the attack. Even before that, the Saudis were sore at the USA-Iran deal and Obama’s Middle East policies in general which focus more on eliminating ISIS than toppling Assad. And the USA have been critical of the Saudi’s destructive and non-productive war in the Yemen. All of this against a backdrop of Saudi Arabia for the first time facing an unfamiliar economic crisis.
In the past it’s been an important relationship, not the least because of oil and arms sales. The SArabia 1902 Sun Jupiter in Capricorn are conjunct the USA Pluto – so commercially an important connection. But the uncompromising SArabia Pluto in Gemini opposition Uranus sits very uncomfortably on top of the USA Mars in Gemini square Neptune in Virgo – so there were always undercurrents of animosity and divergent agendas which were kept under wraps.
As tr Saturn moves to hard aspect all these Mutable planets – SArabia’s Uranus Pluto and the USA’s Mars Neptune in 2017 the gulf will grow wider. So a replacement President won’t make much difference.
The USA/SArabia relationship chart has a gungho, adventurous, mutually supportive composite Sun Mars Jupiter conjunction; with en entrepreneurial Fire Grand Trine – so when all was going well, it went very well indeed. But there’s also a composite Moon Uranus with Moon square Saturn which points to an emotional disjunct of two very different cultures.
Tr Uranus has been hopping its way uncomfortably across the conjunction to the composite Pluto, Jupiter, Mars in the recent past and last/this year the composite Sun. Pressures on the relationship will increase in 2017/2018 with tr Pluto square the Sun. So whatever the relationship becomes in future it will differ greatly from the auld alliance.
This year as well tr Saturn will square the composite Moon Uranus; and tr Neptune will conjunct the Moon (depending on start times) and in 2017 conjunct Uranus – so all unstable, suspicious, and highly strung.