If the latest idea out of the White House works, it could bring the foreign policy of US President Joe Biden full circle in less than a year, with an ironic twist. The US and Saudi Arabia are once again getting close to a historic pact, Bloomberg News has reported. However, whereas its first iteration was intended as a three-way deal with Israel to isolate Iran, this version would aim just as much to pressure Israel.
Here is the design of the entente on which the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel were converging before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7: Saudi Arabia would make peace with Israel and forswear closer ties to China. In return, Washington would offer Riyadh security guarantees, more weapons and civilian nuclear technology. Israel only had to promise vaguely that it would improve the lot of Palestinians. All three would benefit, not least by isolating and containing their common adversary, Iran.
The trilateral agreement would have reshaped the region’s power geometry so fundamentally that disrupting it was one of the motivations for Hamas, which has close ties with Iran, to commit its gruesome atrocities when it did. Whether or not the mullahs in Tehran were informed in advance, Oct. 7 certainly seemed to bury the pact with Riyadh.
In the aftermath, the plight of the Palestinians again took priority in regional and world politics, as in Biden’s foreign policy. The military response ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, which Biden has called “indiscriminate,” has cost or ruined so many lives in the Gaza Strip that Saudi Arabian rapprochement with Israel again became hard to imagine.
Iran, for its part, enjoyed watching world opinion turn against Israel, and by extension the US. Biden has looked increasingly feckless as he has tried and failed to restrain Netanyahu’s bombing.
In about a week, ships sailing from Cyprus would start unloading some food and medicine on a new US-built pier on the Gaza coastline — that dock risks symbolizing the superpower’s inadequate response relative to the scale of the suffering. Again and again, Netanyahu has snubbed Biden, making the president look weak just as he is trying to get re-elected.
Meanwhile, the mullahs have allowed their proxies, from Yemen to Lebanon and Iraq, to take the military equivalent of potshots at US targets in the region. Iran even fired its first direct barrage of missiles and drones at Israel.
Tehran has so far shrunk from provoking a head-on confrontation with Biden. Israel and the US already seemed to be losing global credibility, even as China and Russia were lining up behind Iran — what is not to like?
Here, then, comes Biden’s answer, or the attempt at one. It would resurrect the pact between Washington and Riyadh. The US would still give Saudi Arabia security guarantees, weapons and more, while Saudi Arabia would in turn distance itself economically and technologically from China, and together they would again isolate and contain Iran.
What is different this time is the role of Israel. Instead of including it from the get-go, Biden and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, also known as MBS, would first seal their own deal, and then invite Netanyahu to join — or not. To say yes, Netanyahu would have to end the war in Gaza and commit to a two-state solution for the Palestinians, which his cabinet opposes. In return, MBS would recognize and make peace with Israel, giving Netanyahu something to boast about.
That would still be a hard sell in Israel. Even as a long-delayed deal with Hamas to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire seems tantalizingly near, Netanyahu has instead warned that he would order an invasion of Rafah, where more than 1 million Gazan refugees are huddled, regardless. Biden had previously called such an attack on Rafah a red line. One of Netanyahu’s far-right ministers, Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, has even called for the “total destruction” of Rafah and other cities, insisting that “there are no half-jobs.”
Any number of other things could derail Biden’s master plan. The Iranian mullahs could panic and start a regional war, or the US Senate could balk at signing off on security guarantees to Riyadh.
The prospect of a US-Saudi Arabia pact would apply a powerful strategic vice to Netanyahu or any Israeli leader: Stay out of the entente — by invading Rafah and rejecting a two-state solution — and Israel would be isolated, while Washington and its Arab allies refocus their combined energies against Iran. Join the deal, and Israel would become part of a new regional architecture that would contain Iran, while also building a Palestinian state and genuine security for Israel. Biden and MBS should press on with their plan; and Bibi should be grateful.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for The Economist. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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