Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Saudi Arabia-iran diplomacy shakes region
Deal might be hurdle to Israel’s policy aims
News of the rapprochement between longtime regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran sent shock waves through the Middle East on Saturday and dealt a symbolic blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the threat posed by Tehran a public diplomacy priority.
The breakthrough was a culmination of more than a year of negotiations in Baghdad and more recent talks in China.
The agreement gives Iran — which has long vowed to destroy Israel — and Saudi Arabia two months to reopen their respective embassies and re-establish ties after seven years of rupture. It more broadly represents one of the most striking shifts in Middle Eastern diplomacy over recent years. In countries like Yemen and Syria, long caught between the Sunni kingdom and the Shiite powerhouse, the announcement stirred cautious optimism.
In Israel, it caused disappointment — with finger-pointing.
One of Netanyahu’s greatest foreign policy triumphs remains Israel’s U.s.-brokered normalization deals in 2020 with four Arab states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. They were part of a wider push to isolate and oppose Iran in the region.
He has portrayed himself as the only politician capable of protecting Israel from Tehran’s accelerating nuclear program and regional proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel and Iran have also waged a regional shadow war that has led to suspected Iranian drone strikes on Israelilinked ships ferrying goods in the Persian Gulf, among other attacks.
A normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and wealthy Arab state, would fulfill Netanyahu’s prized goal, reshaping the region and boosting Israel’s standing in historic ways.
But experts say the Saudi-iran deal announced Friday has thrown cold water on those ambitions. Saudi Arabia’s decision to engage with its regional rival has left Israel largely alone as it leads the charge for diplomatic isolation of Iran and threats of a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The UAE also resumed formal relations with Iran last year.
“It’s a blow to Israel’s notion and efforts in recent years to try to form an anti-iran bloc in the region,” said Yoel Guzansky, an expert on the Persian Gulf at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank. “If you see the Middle East as a zero-sum game, which Israel and Iran do, a diplomatic win for Iran is very bad news for Israel.”
Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she believed the deal was tied to a de-escalation in Yemen.
“It is difficult to imagine a Saudiiran agreement to resume diplomatic relations and reopen embassies within a two-month period without some assurances from Iran to more seriously support conflict resolution efforts in Yemen,” she said.
War-scarred Syria similarly welcomed the agreement as a move toward easing tensions that have exacerbated the country’s conflict. Iran has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, while Saudi Arabia has supported opposition fighters.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry called it an “important step that will lead to strengthening security and stability in the region.”
Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and head of Israel’s opposition, denounced the agreement between Riyadh and Tehran as “a full and dangerous failure of the Israeli government’s foreign policy.”
Netanyahu, on an official visit to Italy, declined a request for comment on the matter.