Biden administration taking a shot at Saudi-Israel deal
3 leaders have own reasons and demands
WASHINGTON — Shortly after his plane took off earlier this month from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he had held a lengthy meeting with that country’s crown prince, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called a different Middle East leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Over 40 minutes, Blinken gave Netanyahu a briefing about the significant demands the young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was making for his nation to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. Netanyahu had an update on his own demands.
The phone call — described by two US officials — was a turn in the Biden administration’s long-shot bid to broker a landmark diplomatic deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, two historical adversaries that in recent years have been engaged in a discreet courtship in part over their shared distrust of archrival Iran.
The White House, which for more than two years has largely been content to sit out the poker game of Middle East diplomacy, has decided to make a bet and push some of its chips in. The United States is now in the midst of complex negotiations among three leaders who have their own reasons for a deal but are making demands that might prove to be too costly. And they simply do not much like or trust each other.
Several senior American officials said the chances of a deal could be less than 50 percent, and Blinken said he had “no illusions” the path to a deal would be quick. Still, a normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be one of the most dramatic events in a continued realignment of the Middle East, and could reap benefits for leaders of both countries, as well as President Biden, who faces reelection next year.
It would also make explicit what has been true for a long time: that the government of one of the Arab world’s most influential countries has effectively made its support for a Palestinian independent state a lower priority.
For Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia’s recognition of Israel would be a significant political victory for the embattled leader, whose hard-right coalition government faces fierce domestic opposition.
For his part, the crown prince is seeking a strengthened security relationship with the United States, access to more American weapons, and US consent for the kingdom to enrich uranium as part of a civilian nuclear program — something that Washington has long resisted.
For Biden, drawing closer to Saudi Arabia carries political risks — he once pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” — but a diplomatic pact in the Middle East could be a boon before the 2024 election. US officials also see strategic importance in bolstering ties with Saudi Arabia: as a way to keep Saudi Arabia from gravitating further toward China, with which it has engaged in an increasingly warm embrace.
Working against the prospects of a deal is the fact that all sides would have to reverse course on at least one long-held position: for Israel, that the country would never allow nuclear enrichment in the Saudi kingdom; for Saudi Arabia, that peace with Israel can only come after an established state for the Palestinian people; and for Biden, cementing a closer alliance with Saudi Arabia would force him to make a public case for why he changed his position on the crown prince.
Several US officials described the current push by the Biden administration, and the chances for success, on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. They said they believe a confluence of factors has created a window of time — perhaps before next year when the American election cycle intensifies — to pull together a possible accord. One of the factors is that a Democratic president might have a better chance than a Republican president of selling the deal to party members and bringing some in the political opposition along.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has accelerated the cadence of top officials traveling to Riyadh and Tel Aviv to meet with the crown prince and Netanyahu.
This past week, just days after Blinken’s visit, Brett McGurk, the top White House official handling Middle East policy, led a delegation on an unpublicized trip to continue the negotiations, according to two US officials. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, traveled to Saudi Arabia in May.
“Biden has decided to go for it, and everyone in the administration now understands that the president wants this,” said Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel, who adds that a committed US president has long been essential for diplomatic breakthroughs between Israel and Arab nations. “When you’re talking about Middle East peace, it takes three to tango.”
A new defense pact or nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia would face another hurdle: getting approval from a sharply divided Congress in which some prominent members of Biden’s party would probably vote against it. But odd political alliances have also formed, with one prominent Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, quietly assisting the White House’s negotiations.
The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for the National Security Council said the Biden administration’s Middle East policy “includes efforts to expand and strengthen the Abraham Accords,” as well as efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu has made no secret of his hope to seal a deal with the Saudis.
The prospect of a formal rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia has percolated for years, but both sides have seen too many obstacles to make the idea a reality. When former president Donald Trump in September 2020 presided over the signing of the Abraham Accords — diplomatic agreements between Israel and two Gulf Arab nations — the Saudis were not ready to join the pact.
Although Biden took a frosty attitude toward the crown prince, known as MBS, in part over the killing of journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, he reluctantly visited the kingdom in July. Relations between the two countries hit a nadir in October, when the Saudis announced they were cutting oil production, a move that blindsided US officials.
The two governments made quiet efforts to repair relations over the winter. Then, in May, when Sullivan, the national security adviser, visited Riyadh, the crown prince indicated a greater willingness to normalize relations with Israel. He agreed with Sullivan that this year might be the time to do it — but for the right price, said two people familiar with what transpired on the trip. This message, which Sullivan conveyed to Biden, seems to have swayed Biden to make a push on a deal.
This led to the visits to Riyadh this month of Blinken and McGurk.
For Saudi Arabia, normalization with Israel is less about Israel and more about what it can get out of the United States, its historical security guarantor. Given how unpopular Israel remains among Saudi citizens, normalizing relations with the country would cost the crown prince political capital with his own people, Saudi officials say. To justify that, they say, he would need to secure significant concessions from the United
‘When you’re talking about Middle East peace, it takes three to tango.’ MARTIN INDYK, a former US ambassador to Israel
States, with an eye toward deterring Iran.
But the crown prince’s initial demands were steep: US guarantees to defend Saudi Arabia from military attack, a Saudi-American partnership to enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear program, and fewer restrictions on US arms sales to the kingdom.
Richard Goldberg, a White House official during the Trump administration and now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for greater security for Israel, met with senior Saudi officials last month. In an interview, he said officials talk about uranium mining and enrichment for export revenue, but he believes that glosses over the real purpose: to have the means to build up a nuclear arsenal if Iran does the same.
“The open question — the big question mark — is this: Is the uranium enrichment a red line, as MBS says, or is it an opening position?” said Goldberg, who is opposed to Iranian enrichment and has “strong discomfort” over the prospect of Saudi enrichment. “Whether it’s a bargaining position or truly a red line is not really known.”