The implications of a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia could be massive for the Middle East.
Tom Friedman has the scoop on President Biden’s renewed push for a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The New York Times columnist revealed yesterday that the president’s top national-security advisers, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, have been sent to Saudi Arabia this week for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Israel’s leadership views a deal as possible, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying, “It could be very close, if the Saudis want it,” during an interview with Fox this week.
That’s what the Biden team is trying to determine, though, as they engineer a potential policy shift. The very pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization makes for a remarkable pivot by an administration that initially declined to even call the Abraham Accords by their name.
While the final six months of the Trump administration saw a series of historic diplomatic breakthroughs inked between Israel and Arab countries, the Biden administration had initially elevated priorities other than expanding the agreements to Saudi Arabia: holding Bin Salman accountable for the kingdom’s human-rights abuses, including the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pivoting U.S. military assets away from the region, and seeking a revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.
But that agenda has stalled in the first half of Biden’s term, as his team has realized that icing out the Saudis came with other consequences — including higher oil prices and the loss of U.S. influence in the region to China. What followed, famously, was an embarrassing climbdown last summer, culminating in a Biden-MBS fist bump followed breathlessly around the world. And returning to the Iran nuclear deal was thwarted by the Iranian regime’s intransigence, then mass protests that put a fine point on the cynicism of inking a pact that would send billions of dollars to a regime that mows down protesters in the streets and funds anti-U.S. terrorist forces abroad. Far from Team Biden’s triumphal declarations that Washington would achieve a “longer and stronger” agreement, officials now say that their indirect talks with the regime are all about reaching an “understanding” . . . and the top official formerly tasked with leading the U.S. negotiators, Rob Malley, has been sidelined, amid an investigation into his security clearance.
It’s in this context that Sullivan, McGurk, and, according to other reports, top Biden diplomatic fixer Amos Hochstein, have flown out to the kingdom to gauge the regime’s interest in a normalization deal with Israel. According to Friedman, “the president still has not made up his mind whether to proceed, but he gave a green light for his team to probe with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to see if some kind of deal is possible and at what price.”
That deal might come at a significant price, Friedman reports:
The Saudis are seeking three main things from Washington: a NATO-level mutual security treaty that would enjoin the United States to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense if it is attacked (most likely by Iran); a civilian nuclear program, monitored by the United States; and the ability to purchase more advanced U.S. weapons, like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antiballistic missile defense system, which are particularly helpful to the Saudis against Iran’s growing mid- and long-range missile arsenal.
The first two items are likely to be the heaviest lift, with a mutual-defense treaty requiring senate approval. Both that and U.S. support of a Saudi nuclear program would likely inspire a significant dose of bipartisan opposition. The transfer of THAAD and other U.S. systems should be a far easier thing to do — but defense hawks and Washington’s China hawks might sound the alarm about how that would potentially hold back efforts to arm Taiwan and other U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S., per Friedman, wants three things from the kingdom: an end to the war in Yemen, a Saudi agreement to provide aid to Palestinian organizations in the West Bank, and the reversal of Saudi efforts to forge a closer relationship with Beijing.
The biggest U.S. obstacle might come in the form of Democratic lawmakers who oppose a potential normalization agreement on grounds that it does not sufficiently assist the Palestinian cause, Senator Chris Van Hollen told Friedman: “I can assure you that there will be a strong core of Democratic opposition to any proposal that does not include meaningful, clearly defined and enforceable provisions to preserve the option of a two-state solution and to meet President Biden’s own demand that Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of freedom and dignity.” That opposition would make for a concerted effort to undermine the logic behind the Abraham Accords: that the fastest route to peace is for normalization between Israel and Arab states, bypassing the intractable status quo of the Israeli–Palestinian dispute. And it might undermine the prospects that any new deal will even emerge in the first place.
After Sullivan’s meeting with bin Salman yesterday, the White House issued a statement heavily stressing the normalization talks, saying that the parties discussed “bilateral and regional matters, including initiatives to advance a common vision for a more peaceful, secure, prosperous, and stable Middle East region interconnected with the world.”
An agreement could easily get stuck on some combination of the demands that Saudi officials have articulated and congressional skepticism. But if one were to take shape, the implications could be massive. “Obviously, if we had peace with Saudi Arabia, I think it would be a pivot of history,” Netanyahu told Fox, adding that he believes it will “effectively end the Arab-Israeli conflict” and bring peace to the region.