Iran-Saudi pact resounds across Mideast
JERUSALEM — News of the rapprochement between long-time regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran sent shock waves Saturday through the Middle East and dealt a symbolic blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the threat posed by Tehran a public diplomacy priority and personal crusade.
The breakthrough — a culmination of more than a year of negotiations in Baghdad and more recent talks in China — also became ensnared in Israel’s internal politics, reflecting the country’s divisions at a moment of national turmoil.
The agreement, which gives Iran and Saudi Arabia two months to reopen their respective embassies and re-establish ties after seven years of rupture, more broadly represents one of the most striking shifts in Middle Eastern diplomacy over recent years. In countries such as Yemen and Syria, long caught between the Sunni kingdom and the Shiite powerhouse, the announcement stirred cautious optimism.
In Israel, it caused disappointment — along 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.
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. Even as backdoor relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have grown, the kingdom has said it won’t officially recognize Israel before a resolution to the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since returning to office late last year, Netanyahu and his allies have hinted that a deal with the kingdom could be approaching. But experts say the Saudi-Iran deal that 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.
In Yemen, where the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has played out with the most destructive consequences, both warring parties were guarded, but hopeful. The Houthi rebels welcomed the agreement as a modest but positive step.
“The region needs the return of normal relations between its countries, through which the Islamic society can regain security lost from foreign interventions,” said Houthi spokesman Mohamed Abdulsalam.
The Saudi-backed Yemeni government expressed some optimism — and caveats.
“The Yemeni government’s position depends on actions and practices not words and claims,” it said, adding it would proceed cautiously “until observing a true change in [Iranian] behavior.”
Analysts did not expect an immediate settlement to the conflict, but said direct talks and better relations could create momentum for a separate agreement that may offer both countries an exit from a disastrous war.
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 trying to remove him from power.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry called it an “important step that will lead to strengthening security and stability in the region.”
In Israel, bitterly divided and gripped by mass protests over plans by Netanyahu’s far-right government to overhaul the judiciary, politicians seized on the rapprochement between the kingdom and Israel’s archenemy as an opportunity to criticize Netanyahu, accusing him of focusing on his personal agenda at the expense of Israel’s international relations.
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.”
“This is what happens when you deal with legal madness all day instead of doing the job with Iran and strengthening relations with the U.S.,” he wrote on Twitter.
Netanyahu, on an official visit to Italy, declined a request for comment and issued no statement on the matter. But quotes to Israeli media by an anonymous senior official in the delegation sought to put blame on the previous government that ruled for a year and a half before Netanyahu returned to office.
“It happened because of the impression that Israel and the U.S. were weak,” said the senior official, according to the Haaretz daily.
Despite the fallout for Netanyahu’s reputation, experts doubted a detente would harm Israel.