Some US critics saw this as an attempt by the Saudi royal family to placate the kingdom's Islamist radicals. That same year Saudi and U.S. government officials agreed to the withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Saudi soil. After ascending the throne, King Abdullah () followed a more activist foreign policy and continued to push-back on US policies which were unpopular in Saudi Arabia (for example, refusing to provide material assistance to support the new Iraqi government). However, increasingly, in common with the US, fear and mistrust of Iran became a significant factor in Saudi policy. In 2010 the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks disclosed various confidential documents revealing that King Abdullah had urged the U.S. to attack Iran in order to "cut off the head of the snake". Saudi Arabia has long since used its alliance with the United States as a counterbalance to Iran's influence in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf have looked to the United States for protection against Iran. Relations with the US and other Western countries became further strained by the fact that Saudi Arabia has been a source of Islamist terrorist activity world-wide. Osama bin Laden and 15 out of the 19 September 11 attacks hijackers were Saudi nationals, though some officials argue that bin Laden planned this deliberately in an attempt to strain U.S.-Saudi relations, and former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey described Saudi Arabian Wahhabism as "the soil in which al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing". Some in the U.S. Government also believe that the royal family, through its long and close relations with Wahhabi clerics, had laid the groundwork for the growth of militant groups like al-Qaeda ,and that after the attacks had done little to help track the militants or prevent future atrocities. As announced at the 2009 Arab League summit, Saudi Arabia had intended to participate in the Arab Customs Union to be established in 2015 and in an Arab common market to be established by 2020. Following the wave of early-2011 protests and revolutions affecting the Arab world, Saudi Arabia offered asylum to deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, and King Abdullah telephoned President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (prior to Mubarak's deposition) to offer his support. Saudi military forces and their allies became involved in conflict in Yemen (on Saudi Arabia's southern borders) from