A steep price for the Saudi-Israel deal
A potential deal is underway that would result in Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel, but the United States would have to agree to protect the despotic state.
Summary: A potential U.S.-brokered deal for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel would have clear benefits, but the United States would be compromising its democratic values by agreeing to protect a despotic state and taking a national security risk.
A potential deal under the Biden administration is emerging that could reshape the Middle East in a big way: A U.S.-brokered agreement that would result in normalized relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Under the agreement, Saudi Arabia would for the first time officially recognize Israel as a nation. The proposal, in that regard, is similar to the agreements made in the final months of the Trump administration, when other countries like the United Arab Emirates and Morocco afforded the same recognition.
One major component under the current proposed deal, however, is the United States would agree to come to the defense of Saudi Arabia militarily in the event the nation came under attack. As initially reported, that would be similar to other unilateral agreements the United States currently has with Japan and South Korea. More recent reporting from Reuters indicates the deal would fall short of a NATO-style guarantee, but the United States would still provide a degree of defense for the Saudis and potentially designate them as a “major non-NATO ally.”
A deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, in many ways, would be a boon to the United States after our prestige and influence in the region has lost its glimmer. It was China, not us, that brokered the peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have been rivals in the region and had been feuding in a proxy war in Yemen with U.S. backing for the Saudis. The United States couldn't have brokered such an agreement because of our decades-long adversarial relationship with Iran.
Saudi Arabia has also pivoted away from the United States, joining the list of new BRICS nations opposed to the U.S.-led global order, and restricted oil production despite pleas from President Biden to help energy-starved nations during the Ukraine crisis.
But a key portion of the deal would intricate the United States with the government of Saudi Arabia in a serious way that raises questions about our commitment to democracy. By committing to defend the Saudi government militarily if it were under attack, the United States will be putting its weight behind a despotic leadership notorious for human rights abuses and poor treatment of women and sexual minorities.
Heretofore, the United States has guaranteed defense in the event of attack generally to counties that have adopted democratic values, especially nations like South Korea and Japan surrounded by autocratic adversaries. Are we really going to afford the same dignity to a Saudi government with a crown prince who ordered the death of columnist Jamal Khashoggi? Apparently so.
When that murder occurred during the Trump administration, it woke up the world to the Saudi's record on human rights and the U.S. relationship to the country. That seems all but forgotten now that Biden is in charge. A potential deal to protect Saudi Arabia is strange for Biden given his comments as a 2020 presidential candidate to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" state.
One other key aspect of the deal, as reported by the New York Times, is the green light for Saudi Arabia to begin uranium enrichment for the stated purpose of complementing its energy resources. I really don't think giving the Saudis the right to build an essential part of a nuclear weapon would be a good idea.
Does the country with some of the greatest petroleum resources on the planet have such an energy deficit it requires the development of nuclear power? Countries like North Korea and Iran engaged in uranium enrichment with the stated purpose of seeking new energy supplies, but as the process went on ended up on the path to securing nuclear weapons. We don't need to add to the mix another despotic country with the ability to initiate Armageddon.
Finally, leaders in Palestine pushing against the land claims by Israel are fearful the deal would compromise their position. They're demanding any sort of deal uphold the principle of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and include concessions from Israel on land claims. The Palestinian Authority wants a cash boost of hundreds of millions of dollars and more control of land in the occupied West Bank, according to a report in the BBC.
It remains to be seen whether anything like that will be part of the deal. The Saudis appear ready to accept a deal even without consent from the Palestinians, according to exclusive reporting in Reuters and the Jerusalem Post. But if Palestine feels ignored and believes the Saudis threw them under the bus, it would completely undermine the basic purpose of the agreement to grant Israel more legitimacy in the Muslim world.
The normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia has benefits and such a deal would have clear winners. Among them is Benjamin Netanyahu, who would get the boon of the Saudis recognizing Israel while leaving the heavy lifting to the United States.
But for the United States, the deal would represent an institutional decline. A vow to protect a despotic state for the sake of expediency would compromise our national values as a good place that seeks to protect democracy and freedom.
During the Obama administration, critics of the Iran nuclear agreement said it came at the expense of undermining U.S. values and could result in more national security risks than it intended to solve. The deal, these critics charged, was simply about securing a deal — any kind of deal — so President Obama could claim a win before he left office.
We may be seeing the same thing happening here. The potential downsides of the United States agreeing to back Saudi Arabia shouldn't be ignored — and may even be cause to abandon such an agreement altogether.