There are significant hurdles that will have to be crossed before any serious consideration of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia can be entertained. Five of these are listed by Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute in Washington as:
- The health and stability of U.S.-Saudi bilateral ties.
- The health and stability of U.S.-Israeli bilateral ties.
- The Palestinian factor.
- Regional and broader geopolitical conditions.
- America’s political divisions and election calendar.
The article below comes from the Next Century Foundation’s Senior Fellow, the Middle East analyst and consultant Dr. Neil Partrick. The article was originally published on Neil Partrick’s own blog and can be viewed here: neilpartrick.com/blog.
The China factor
The Chinese-backed Iranian-Saudi détente in March 2023 has encouraged US, Saudi and Israeli discussion – and widespread media reports – about what a full US security guarantee to Saudi Arabia and Israel would look like. The Saudis launched the recent round of semi-public discussion on this topic when they leaked their demands of the US for a Saudi peace deal with Israel a day before the Saudi rapprochement deal with Iran was signed. Nothing short of a full US security deal, including a full US commitment to the Saudis’ now explicit desire to have in-country uranium enrichment capacity, was MbS’ price for fully normalising with Israel. Interestingly, nobody, except Joe Biden, his apparatchiks, and Thomas Friedman takes the prospect of a Saudi-Israeli deal very seriously. However the Israelis are preoccupied with the Saudis’ demands of the USA for civil nuclear cooperation and well-connected Israeli analysts are, in that Iran-related context, thinking out loud about what a, at best, limited Iranian-USA nuclear understanding might mean for Israeli pre-emptive options against Iran’s growing nuclear capacity – including Iran’s ability to weaponize a deliverable nuclear warhead.
In theory expanded US security guarantees could make Israel more amenable to a compromise with the Palestinians that in turn would help facilitate a Saudi peace deal with Israel. However, who’s holding their breath, especially when Friedman’s intimate connection to all the rulers of the world is telling us that the Saudis’ (and presumably somehow the Palestinians) would settle for another Israeli promise not to annex the West Bank and, in addition, to give the Palestinian Authority (PA) some of ‘Area C’.
Just to clarify, that is Israel ‘giving’ the Palestinians territory in the West Bank that, under the terms of the never abrogated thirty year old ‘interim’ deal (AKA ‘the Oslo Accord’), is Israeli-controlled as opposed to the territory (‘A’) designated as fully Palestinian-administered. However, since 1993 ‘Area A’ has been periodically invaded by the Israelis with little global or regional objection (other than that of the PA itself). I am sure that Mr Friedman is right that the Israelis can make a rhetorical commitment re Area C, B, A, or indeed to whatever. The issue is whether the Saudis are as wilfully naïve as the Emiratis (who have much less Islamic skin in the game than Saudi Arabia) in wishing to settle for Israeli words and not action, or even settle for Israeli action that can be easily contravened due to reasons of ‘national security’. The Saudis’ announcement (August 16) of a non-resident consul-general in (eastern) Jerusalem/ambassador to Palestine, while merely a political gesture emphasised by it being a doubling-up of the Saudi ambassador to Jordan, was a clear message to Israel and fellow Arab states that the temporal political status of the third holiest site in Islam and the issue of a sovereign Palestinian state still matters to Riyadh but not at Jordan’s expense. For those who read this announcement as a gentle Saudi normalisation with Israel, the non-residence of the man deputed to Amman, and the effective acknowledgement that this represented of Jordan’s authority in Jerusalem, had obviously passed them by. In terms of the inter-related issue of Saudi-Israeli peace and an enhanced US commitment to Saudi Arabia, there’s the question of whether the Saudis think US words re America’s ‘cast iron commitment’ to Saudi security and its full nuclear power capability and related missile programme are (A) believable and indelible (including via irrevocable Congressional approval), and (B) needed.
It seems that the Saudis are interested in exploring how far the US would go in upholding Saudi security whilst they keenly follow what parallel US chats with Israel might bring in terms of a US security commitments to the Jewish state. Whether the Saudis would commit to full public peace with Israel even with (not on the table) major Israeli troop withdrawals in the West Bank coupled with an international enforcement mechanism (highly unlikely to ever be floated let alone agreed by Israel) is another matter.
The fullest public US commitment to both Saudi and Israeli security is arguably regularly expressed and practised. A US commitment to military support to either of its two leading Middle Eastern allies in all circumstances cannot plausibly be on offer even if a so-called ‘NATO style’ defence commitment is. A clearly defined US defence commitment though might seem like so much American rhetoric to the Saudis even if MbS finds flirtation with Israel, and exploration of what peace might actually feel like but no actual consummation, attractive. For Israel a new US public underpinning of Israeli security – arguably already proven and routinely presidentially-expressed – could potentially constrain Israeli military pre-emptive options against Iran even if such pre-emption is still hard to conceive of without US participation (currently unlikely but possible under Trump2). For Netanyahu the question is whether the undoubted domestic and international prize of peace with the Land of the Two Holy Places is worth overthrowing his ultra-rightist government and forging a national unity government in order to get its terms through the Knesset. He’s proven willing to sign up to superficial ideological ‘no-nos’ before for the sake of political convenience – witness the 1996 Hebron Accord with the PA. However, if Netanyahu collapses his current government then he will have to jettison a proposed narrowing of political power that was partly designed to get him off a corruption rap.
Perhaps the Saudis will simply wait and see what another Trump presidency could offer and what it is prepared to oblige Israel to concede to the Palestinians in terms of substantive action not just words. There is of course always the possibility of the halfway house of the Qatari and Omani 1990s precedent of an only partial diplomatic relationship with Israel, expressed in their case at consular commercial level.
Since their March 2023 deal the Saudis have been exploring what détente with Iran adds or potentially subtracts from their security and how it can be leveraged with both Israel and the US. The US is partly interested in the otherwise dead-end discussion of Saudi-Israeli public peace because the Saudi-USA aspect of such a tandem deal would apparently include the Saudis going soft on their bromance with China and guaranteeing no Chinese military bases in Saudi and ending talk of Renembi-denominated oil sales. You might reasonably ask how deep this bromance currently is though.
After all, the Saudis have recently been given ‘dialogue status’ in the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCC), but the SCC can’t offer anything other than dialogue anyway, including for the Iranians who have been upgraded to full membership. SCC members and affiliates get to gather together under a Chinese umbrella to discuss counter-terror, drugs and other apparent mutual security threats in an essentially Asian talking shop. In fact it was originally no more than a post-Soviet boost for Russia, taking in the then new Russian Federation and four of the USSR’s five former Central Asian affiliates: energy-rich and highly strategic neighbouring countries that China obviously wanted to deepen its relationship with too. This Chinese talking shop now includes India and Iran along with other ‘dialogue partners’ Egypt, Qatar and, of late, Saudi. It’s been conjectured that the SCC ‘regime’ can provide a safe space for Saudi and Iran to deepen their still tentative affair. As yet, the Saudis and Iranians still haven’t established ambassador to ambassador level diplomatic relations on the ground. They can though pick up the phone more easily these days, and presumably have been doing so in relation to the limited but useful Saudi-Houthi dialogue on their border security arrangements. Whether Saudi and Iran really need a fairly rare gathering in China in the media spotlight to talk about bilateral affairs seems doubtful.
China apologists believe that the PRC is able to encourage countries like Saudi and Iran to maintain peaceful relations because of the supposed healing balm of trade unleashed by China’s ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ (B&RI). The possibility (only that) of the Chinese being able to operate a full-time functioning naval base out of Abu Dhabi is for some testament to the Chinese being trusted to keep the peace and to not over-militarise the area. If China isn’t currently “over-militarising” the ‘Persian’ Gulf it’s because it sees no reason to try to muscle-in on naval security work in Persian Gulf sea-lanes that the US, with UK assistance, does perfectly well already. Fearful of the implications of a growing multi-polar reality for its current Gulf hegemony, in the last few weeks the US has been stepping up its pro-active presence in Gulf security and even suggesting that it might go beyond the limited US reflagging exercise seen in the 1980s. This looks like blatant advertising of what the extant US security commitment to its Gulf Arab allies looks like. The target audience is as much Saudi Arabia as Iran. From Riyadh’s perspective the US’ current heavy-handed Gulf policing looks a little overdone and overly focused on the US’ paranoid competition with China.
China is already a player in Red Sea multinational security and this overlaps with the real estate and military options the Emiratis are acquiring in east Africa and proximate to the Bab Al-Mandab. It is unlikely that the Saudis, Emiratis or the Iranians are so naïve as to see the Chinese as mere dispassionate, disinterested actors in global or regional security. A possible Chinese naval base in Abu Dhabi, were it to ever happen, would be a downpayment for China to secure its grand design of trading and investment outposts running through Asia to Europe and Africa. It is widely understood that the economic assets that China wants to guard aren’t that generous either. The East India Company effectively had its own British military to guard its trading empire; China seems to be stealthily seeking to militarily secure its burgeoning global assets too.
China played a good game with its Covid generosity in the Developing World and there seems to be an inordinate amount of anti-western sentiment – including from direct beneficiaries of western alliances – that feed a positive view of China in the Middle East. China’s unwillingness to allow much diplomatic wriggle room between it and Russia over Ukraine hasn’t yet weakened the perverse ‘my enemy’s enemy’ (il)logic of US allies admiring a US enemy out of self-loathing for their own US dependence. It’s also about the Saudi and their Gulfie allies following perceived self-interest in terms of oil production levels, and advertising that lack of subservience to the US for political reasons too, even in the face of naked Russian aggression. What price the Arabs’ and China’s professed belief in ‘non-interference’ in national sovereignty especially when Russia’s egregious attempted cancelling of Ukrainian national sovereignty is compounded by Iranian-supplied drones and the high risk of Russian arming of Iran in return? This situation hasn’t yet altered the Gulf Arabs’ calculus and seemingly hasn’t made them doubt their burgeoning China friendship either.
It isn’t clear what the Saudis or Iranians think that China can bring to the diplomatic party other than it being useful in global strategic terms to let Beijing take the credit for a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement long in gestation and long involving more proximate powers than Beijing. Perhaps China’s utility is as a country whose reputation is attached to the hoped for success of this latest détente. They are ‘invested in it’, as the modern ungrammatical idiom has it. It’s arguable that China has leverage over Iran, especially as China is one of Iran’s few outlets economically, aside from the US’ periodic willingness to loosen the sanctions constraints on Iran such as recently with Iraqi money owed Iran for energy supplies and, announced August 11, the US unfreezing $6bn of Iranian frozen assets for carefully monitored humanitarian use from of a Qatari-held fund. So, an Iran that desperately needs to be able to sell to a China that is actually buying less Iranian oil due to cheap Russian oil, can perhaps be subject to Chinese political influence. But maybe this will be less than expected in light of these piecemeal but sizeable US-Iran financial deals that in their latest iteration will soon include the long-mooted prisoner swap.
In terms of the numerous Middle Eastern countries that Saudi and Iran contest authority over, China can’t do much to move the dial. That message was made plain by Saudi foreign minister (and junior royal) Faisal bin Farhan to the Lebanese the day after the China deal. Bin Farhan reportedly told the Lebanese that the China deal doesn’t get you off the hook from making the tough decisions on a compromise new president etc. Nearly five months on from that Saudi message the Lebanese are still waiting for a now 10 month old presidential vacancy to be filled.
Talk of grand designs and ground-breaking peace deals apart, much looks the same in the Gulf and wider Middle East. The US is still the hegemon overstating its assumed indispensability. Its deep allies continue to bad mouth it, and in the Arabs’ case flirt with US rivals. The Palestinians remain a flag of inconvenience for whoever wants to make a deal with Israel. Saudi and Iran are now talking, and the US and Iran are cutting limited deals via third parties. However this is unlikely to do much more than smooth the rough edges of essentially irreconcilable Saudi-Iranian interests that are currently being played out via an over-eager US Gulf Arab protector.
This article was updated on August 25 2023 to reflect the Saudis’ announced non-resident diplomat in Jerusalem/to Palestine four days after this blog was originally published.
