Iran deal may reignite the peace process
SAUDI ARABIA’S reaction to the nuclear deal between its arch-rival Iran and the international community has been ambiguous.
King Salman and his foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir, cautiously endorsed it, but with reservations about its effectiveness in preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb.
But the best way to gauge what the Saudi royal court is thinking about this (or any other) foreign policy issue is to bin the press releases and read the commentary in the vast Saudi media empire. Classified Saudi cables recently released by Wikileaks confirmed that such political columnists are given strict guidelines on what angle they should take.
Since the Iranian deal was announced, they have been so splenetic in their criticism that they make the Israeli government reaction seem tempered by comparison.
Typical was a column in the influential Saudi-owned, pan-Arab daily written by the newspaper’s former editor Abdul- rahman Al-Rashid — widely seen as King Salman’s most trusted Saudi media servant.
The Iranian regime, he wrote, “is like a monster that was tied to a tree and has finally been set loose in our region”, and Saudi Arabia therefore has been left with no choice but to mobilise for a possible war.
For Mr Al-Rashid, this means continued support for Iran’s enemies in the proxy wars engulfing Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan.
Hamas was added to his list of the kingdom’s Iran-aligned enemies, but — in deference to his Saudi paymasters — he failed to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
What effect will the Iran deal have on Saudi-Israel ties in the wake of reported secret meetings between the two countries to discuss their response to a re-emergent Iran? Are they moving closer to open military collaboration? And how does this relate to renewed contacts between the Al-Saud and Hamas?
The issue has become more pressing, and complicated, by the advance of Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s other common enemy, which also happens to be one of Iran’s foes:
Saudi troops stand ready to fire live projectile rounds into Yemen from positions inside Saudi territory Daesh. The latter has never shied from calling for the overthrow of the Al-Saud, but has recently upped its anti-Israeli rhetoric and vowed to replace Hamas in Gaza.
Of course, none of this has been lost on Hamas-sponsor Iran, whose clerics are now referring to Saudi Arabia and Israel as “allies”. In so doing, they — like Daesh— hope to turn the anti-Israel Saudi masses against their royal family.
Fear of such an eventuality will ensure any Saudi-Israel military cooperation remains secret. However, it could also push both countries to redouble efforts to rekindle the peace process with the Palestinians.
Hence recent calls by senior Israeli officials to engage with Hamas, and the latter last week sending a delegation for talks with the Saudi king for the first time in years.
Both Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to understand that if a nucleararmed Iran is their biggest nightmare, a viable peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians is the last thing Iran or Daesh want to see.
Hamas sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia for the first time in years
John R Bradley is the author of four books on the Middle East