ANALYSIS:
The immediate goals of Hamas’ brutal assault on Israel over the weekend appear simple: to kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible and spark chaos and fear among the “Zionist” regime that the terrorist group considers its mortal enemy.
Yet Hamas, with the support of its chief state sponsor, Iran, indicated that it was playing a longer diplomatic game: to undercut the thawing relations between Israel and the Arab world and to derail the prospect of diplomatic normalization between the Jewish state and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia.
That would mark a devastating diplomatic setback for the Biden administration, just when the long-cherished goal of persuading the Saudis to recognize Israel after seven decades of icy hostility seemed to be within reach.
Beyond celebrating the attack, which left hundreds of Israelis dead, top Iranian officials blasted the “farcical” idea that Israel would mend fences with Riyadh or other predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern nations given the plight of the stateless Palestinians.
Any such diplomatic normalization will now be undeniably more complicated amid a full-blown war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that has claimed civilian lives on both sides of the border. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on Sunday condemned the targeting of civilians “in any way,” according to regional media. His remarks suggested that Riyadh would look unfavorably on any Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed during Israel’s hard-hitting response to the unprecedented terrorist attack on its homeland.
In addition to demanding stronger security guarantees from Washington as its price for recognizing Israel, Saudi Arabia has indicated that the Israeli government must show signs of accommodating Palestinian demands for greater economic and political control. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have little prospect of considering such concessions given the weekend’s events.
SEE ALSO: ‘Squad’ urges Israel to show restraint, adds to political pressure on Biden
Other media coverage throughout parts of the Muslim world on Sunday highlighted the Israeli response to the Hamas assault and the death toll of Palestinians. Striking deals between Arab governments and Israel seems exceedingly more difficult as images and videos of Israeli-Palestinian violence take center stage on television and social media.
Iran, clearly making the same calculation, stoked those flames Sunday.
“Muslim governments must enter the scene along with the Islamic community in supporting the Palestinian people. The Zionist enemy should also understand that the equation has changed; warmongering is detrimental to the Zionists,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said.
“The Palestinian people are victorious in this battle,” he said.
Derailing diplomacy
Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested Sunday that destroying the fledgling diplomatic relationships between Israel and Arab powers was likely a key motivator for Hamas leadership and its hard-line allies in Tehran.
SEE ALSO: Blinken: U.S. citizens killed, possibly kidnapped by Hamas
“It’s no surprise that those opposed to the efforts to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and more broadly to normalize Israel’s relations with countries throughout the region and beyond, who oppose it, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran,” Mr. Blinken said.
“So, to the extent that this was designed to try to derail the efforts that were being made, that speaks volumes,” he told ABC’s “This Week” program. “Right now, the focus is on dealing with this attack, dealing with Hamas. And we’ll come to the normalization efforts, which, by the way, are incredibly difficult when it comes to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Lots of hard issues to work through.”
Mr. Blinken pledged that the U.S. would keep pressing for diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East, but other troubling signs emerged Sunday. In Egypt, two Israeli tourists were reportedly shot dead. It was a sign of the anti-Israel violence that could erupt throughout the region in the coming days and weeks. The Israelis’ Egyptian tour guide was also reportedly killed.
For the Biden administration, the Israel-Hamas war imperils one of its primary foreign policy objectives.
Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization would be the next step to follow the Abraham Accords, breakthrough deals that President Trump brokered. The Biden administration has cautiously embraced those accords — named after the prophet recognized by Judaism, Christianity and Islam — which resulted in normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. The 2020 development marked Arab nations’ first official acknowledgment of Israel’s sovereignty since Egypt and Jordan broke from the rest of the Middle East to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1979 and 1994, respectively.
A similar agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest of the Gulf States and the home of some of the Muslim world’s holiest sites, would significantly damage Iran’s influence. The competition and geopolitical rivalry between Iran, the region’s top Shiite Muslim nation, and Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s leading Sunni Muslim power, have broadly defined the region in the 21st century. The two sides have also been on opposing sides of proxy conflicts, most notably in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia backed Yemen’s government troops while Tehran supported the Houthi rebel forces.
Iran has been pursuing rapprochement with the Saudis and agreed in March to move toward normalize ties in a negotiation hosted by China.
At the United Nations General Assembly last month, Mr. Netanyahu said “such a peace would go a long way for us to advance the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Officials from Israel and Saudi Arabia also made historic visits to each other’s countries in recent weeks. Those visits were widely viewed as signs that a significant deal, perhaps even full diplomatic normalization, could be on the horizon.
‘Anything but normal’
With that hope dimmed, Iranian officials took a victory lap Sunday.
Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said the Hamas assault proves that some of Israel’s “desperate attempts,” such as “the farcical plan for normalization,” will not slow Israel’s downfall.
“The Palestinian nation, which has been suffering from imposed cruelty for decades, has now gained such great power with reliance on its young, motivated generation and Islam that it has transfixed military analysts and strategists across the world,” the Iranian general said, according to Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency.
Undercutting the Arab-Israeli diplomatic thaw has been a long-running mission for the Iranian regime. At the United Nations meeting last month in New York, Mr. Raisi cast the Abraham Accords as little more than an American diplomatic con game that did little to change the broader dynamic in the Middle East.
“This was a job done by the Americans to take the hands of the Israelis and put them squarely in the hands of certain Arab countries. This doesn’t equal acceptance of those nations, of those people,” the Iranian president said. “This was only obtained under American pressure. The frame of thought of the Americans was they are somehow creating security for the Zionist regime, whereas normalization of [diplomatic relations with] certain countries with Israel does not buy security or bring about security for the Zionist regime.”
Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations also could face pressure to more forcefully condemn Hamas’ inarguably brutal and barbaric tactics over the weekend.
“To the nations of Qatar and Saudi Arabia: It is time to stop covering for Hamas and other terrorist organizations if you really want peace,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said in a post on social media on Saturday.
“Blaming Israel for today’s attack is anything but normal,” he said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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