US avoids discussing potential Saudi-Israel deal ahead of 2024 election.
Saudi Arabia’s Diplomatic Relations with Israel: A Long Road Ahead
Saudi Arabia will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel in the near future, according to senior U.S. officials who sought to temper expectations amid an Israeli push for a regional security pact in the Middle East.
“We’ve had productive conversations,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters. “We’ve made progress on a number of issues. I’m not going to get into what the progress is, but it is still a long road to go with an uncertain future.”
Saudi Arabia has tantalized U.S. and Israeli officials with the hope of joining the Abraham Accords, a potential strategic triumph that has arisen on the diplomatic horizon despite President Joe Biden’s fraught relationship with the Saudi royals. The oil-rich monarchy recently unveiled an analogous deal with Iran under China’s auspices, but Israeli officials remain eager to formalize a developing relationship with the leading Gulf Arab state.
“Securing an alliance with Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be merely another diplomatic achievement; it would form the foundation upon which true regional harmony can be built,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen wrote in a Tuesday column for the Wall Street Journal. “Such a partnership might inspire other nations to pursue enduring peace.”
Those talks have been haunted by tensions between President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom he called a “pariah” following the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s power-sharing agreement with far-right Israeli lawmakers. Yet Cohen put a spotlight on Saudi “demands of the U.S.,” which he offered as a sign that U.S.-anchored security arrangement, “comparable [to the] American defense pledge” that has guarded South Korea from North Korea’s nuclear-armed regime, could lead to a breakthrough in the Gulf.
“Most of [the Saudi] requests concern Iranian aggression and the kingdom’s ability to defend itself against this threat,” Cohen wrote. “This underscores Saudi Arabia’s perspective: The primary challenge isn’t Israel but Iran, which is intent on spreading its Shiite Islamic revolution throughout the region by means of violence, terrorism and nuclear-weapons development.”
Cohen’s appeal coincided with a report in the same publication that Washington and Riyadh “have agreed on the broad contours of a deal” to join the Abraham Accords that could be finalized “in the next nine to 12 months.” That time frame would position Biden to unveil a major diplomatic achievement during an election year, just as then-President Donald Trump managed to unveil the original Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September 2020.
“We continue to discuss the possibility of normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia with Saudi Arabia, with Israel,” Miller said. “We will continue to work towards that aim, recognizing that it’s a difficult — it is a long and difficult process. But I think the reports that we have reached some sort of agreement vastly overstate where things stand.”
White House’s Perspective
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with the Saudi crown prince late last month in service of “a common vision for a more peaceful, secure, prosperous, and stable Middle East region interconnected with the world,” as a readout of their conversation put it. Yet his team rejected the idea that the end is in sight.
“Just to be blunt here, I think the reporting has left some people with the impression that discussions are farther along and closer to some sense of certainty than they actually are,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. “There’s still a lot of conversations that have to occur before we get there. So, the bottom line is: There is no agreed-to set of negotiations. There’s no agreed-to framework to codify normalization — or any of the other security considerations that we, and our friends, have in the region.”
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