Saudi Arabia, the host of President Trump’s first trip abroad during his first four years in office, is emerging as the linchpin of his ambitious and potentially history-making Middle East strategy for his second White House term.
For a transformative diplomatic deal to reshape the region, Mr. Trump and his team will face an even steeper climb than they did eight years ago. They must deal with Iran, which is more motivated and perhaps better positioned than ever before to poison the U.S.-Saudi relationship and, in the process, keep Israel primarily isolated in the Middle East.
Analysts say Iran’s politically cunning leaders are keenly aware that Mr. Trump may resume his quest for a grand bargain to bring about formal diplomatic normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In exchange, Israel would commit to an eventual Palestinian state and the U.S. would give Riyadh security guarantees from its powerful military.
It could also require Saudi Arabia to loosen its economic ties with China, which is becoming a Middle East power player in its own right. Beijing brought Saudi and Iranian diplomats to the table last year to end a long-standing diplomatic freeze between the two regional rivals.
Saudi and Iranian officials have blasted Israel for the handling of its war against Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip and against the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah are components of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaigns have dimmed the prospects for Israeli-Saudi normalization, specialists say. Saudi leaders now say a political solution to the plight of the Palestinians, which is unlikely under the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, must take precedence over any major diplomatic initiatives.
The recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah, which will at least temporarily halt the fierce fighting in southern Lebanon, offers a glimmer of hope. The Trump administration could capitalize on the momentum and pursue a more ambitious diplomatic deal.
Undercutting that initiative will be job No. 1 for the regime in Tehran.
“Washington needs a policy to offset not just Iran’s armed export of its revolution in the Middle East and the creation of the Axis of Resistance, but also Tehran’s diplomatic ground game in the region,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies who closely tracks the region and Iranian politics and diplomacy.
“Tehran is currently trying to rope-a-dope U.S. partners and allies in the Middle East. Following years of a knife in the back, Tehran is now extending its hand,” he told The Washington Times. “Even if Saudi Arabia normalization is only skin-deep, the fact that Riyadh went from talking about cutting the head of the snake to calling for investment in Iran … is sufficient measure of success for Tehran. On balance, the regime is trying to foster a policy of accommodation out of U.S. partners and status quo actors in the region who will be extorted over time.”
Mr. Trump has numerous motivations to pursue an Israeli-Saudi diplomatic deal. Such a pact would build on his record of success in the Middle East, which includes the historic 2020 Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
The deal could also create an economic windfall for the U.S., especially if American companies help Riyadh build nuclear energy infrastructure.
Perhaps most important, the deal would isolate and weaken Iran. Although Tehran surely would applaud any movement toward the creation of a Palestinian state, a U.S.-Israeli-Saudi regional partnership would undercut Iran’s military, diplomatic and economic power in the region.
Some analysts say the assumed benefits of such a theoretical agreement are wildly overstated.
“It all sounds too good to be true, and that’s because it is,” said William Walldorf, a senior fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities and a political and international affairs professor at Wake Forest University. “Advocates of the grand bargain have it all wrong. The deal will be no bargain at all for the United States but will instead turn into a major drain on U.S. security. In essence, high costs and no gain.”
In a recent analysis, Mr. Walldorf said grand-bargain proponents were operating under “several faulty assumptions.”
“First, they overestimate Chinese interests and power, Saudi capacity to leave the U.S.-led regional order and the added security benefits of Saudi-Israeli normalization. In short, China won’t and can’t supplant the United States in the Middle East, the Saudis can’t leave the U.S.-led order, and Saudi-Israeli cooperation against Iran is already robust.”
A new day in Riyadh
Specialists say Riyadh’s calculus has changed since Mr. Trump’s first term.
At that time, Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in a war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Riyadh has subsequently walked away from that conflict. Ironically, the U.S. is now leading a bombing campaign against the Houthis after the rebel group began firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea in what it called a show of support for Hamas against Israel.
Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon have also changed the equation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently called Israel’s campaign in Gaza a “collective genocide” against the Palestinians, echoing comments from Iran and other nations in the region.
It goes far beyond rhetoric. During the evolution of a cost-benefit analysis over the past several years, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi consciously decided to move away from outright hostility toward Iran.
The Saudi and Iranian militaries now appear to have a direct dialogue. Saudi Arabia’s armed forces visited Iran last month, which experts say was a deliberate change in strategy or at least a hedging of bets.
“There was a decision made in the Gulf five years ago … that they wanted to reduce tensions in the region, they wanted to get away from the threat of a hot war with Iran, understanding that if war did break out, they were the No. 1 target, they were ground zero for Iranian retaliation. They didn’t want that,” Gerald Feierstein, a longtime U.S. diplomat who served in Saudi Arabia, told The Times’ “Threat Status Weekly” podcast recently.
“One of the things we’ve seen over these past four or five years is increasing confidence in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to challenge U.S. leadership in the region if it means they are going to pursue what they consider to be their national priorities, their national interests,” he said.
Mr. Feierstein, now a senior fellow on diplomacy at the Middle East Institute, added, “And that means the nature of the relationship between Washington and these Gulf capitals is going to be quite different than it was in 2016 or 2017.”
Other analysts say the Saudi government appears much more invested in economic growth beyond the oil-based economy and modest societal reforms than in preparing for war with Iran, regardless of what the incoming Trump administration might want.
“The Saudis are determined to prevent the distractions of their dangerous neighborhood from getting in the way of Vision 2030. Hence their U-turn on Iran, a long-time rival with which they restored ties last year,” Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a recent analysis after a trip to Saudi Arabia. He was referring to Riyadh’s sweeping modernization plan pushed firmly by Crown Prince Mohammed.
“The normalization of relations with Tehran, as superficial as it might be, takes one potential distraction off the front burner,” he wrote.
“When pressed on whether Saudi Arabia would support Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ strategy toward Iran, one of our interlocutors noted that the Saudis would have to live with Trump for only four years but with Iran for 1,000 years.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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