Saudi Arabia could reduce valuable security and intelligence cooperation with longstanding ally Washington after a Congressional "stab in the back" allowing 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom, experts warn.
Cutting such cooperation is among the options available to Riyadh after Congress voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to override President Barack Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).
"I'm afraid that this bill will have dire strategic implications" for the United States, Salman al-Ansari, the president of the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), told AFP.
"This partnership has helped provide US authorities with accurate intelligence information" that helped stopped attacks, said Ansari, whose committee is a private initiative to strengthen Saudi-US ties.
JASTA allows attack survivors and relatives of terrorism victims to pursue cases against foreign governments in US federal court and to demand compensation if such governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on US soil.
Saudi Arabia was home to 15 of the 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States which killed nearly 3,000 people.
Riyadh denies any ties to the plotters.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have a decades-old relationship based on the exchange of American security for Saudi oil.
Ties between Riyadh and Washington became increasingly frayed under Obama, but analysts said security cooperation and intelligence sharing remained solid.
Whether that will continue, analysts said, is now a question.
"Saudi has been stabbed in the back by this unthoughtful and unrealistic bill," Ansari said. "How can you sue a country that is collaborating against the very same terrorism that they are baselessly being accused of?"
Mustafa Alani, a senior adviser to the Gulf Research Center, suggested a review of the Saudi-US alliance.
"Your financial investments have to be reduced in the US, your political and security cooperation has to be reduced," he said.