Last week, the Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported that the Biden Administration was “wrestling with whether to pursue the possibility of a U.S.-Saudi mutual security pact that would involve Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel.” The pact, Friedman wrote, would entail Israeli “concessions to the Palestinians that would preserve the possibility of a two-state solution.” At first glance, the prospect appears unlikely: American-Saudi relations have been frosty since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018, and since the departure of the Trump Administration; Israel currently has the most right-wing government in its history; and President Biden has spoken out against that government’s push to restrict the power of the country’s judiciary, which Biden believes puts Israeli democracy at risk. Still, on Saturday, the Times’ newsroom reported that Biden “sees serious prospects of an accord.”
I recently spoke by phone with Friedman to talk about the shape such a deal could take and what the major players involved might be thinking. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed whether the deal would make sense for the United States, how to view the current Saudi leadership, and why Israel is unlikely to try to make peace with the Palestinians.
What exactly are the contours of this deal likely to be, and what do you think all three parties gain from it?
I believe this started with parallel discussions between Saudi Arabia and the United States, and Saudi Arabia and Israel, covertly. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman basically broached the idea with the United States of a whole new security relationship. He’s looking for a NATO-level mutual-security treaty with the United States. He’s looking for a civilian nuclear program where the Saudis would have their own reactor under some kind of I.A.E.A. and American supervision, and access to the most advanced U.S. weapons.
At the same time, in the wake of the Abraham Accords, he was talking to the Israelis secretly about terms and conditions for Saudi-Israeli normalization. Remember, Saudi Arabia is very competitive with the U.A.E. and didn’t want to see it get ahead, both in access to Israeli intelligence, security support against Iran, and investment opportunities in the high-tech area.
At some point, and I can’t tell you where, these two things fused into the notion of a kind of three-way deal. This was being discussed on a low burn for, say, six months or so. And when I interviewed President Biden, I simply asked where it stood. It was very clear that the President was struggling with whether to go ahead with this. He has a complicated relationship with Saudi Arabia, given M.B.S.’s involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And so he was obviously wrestling with it. Then he decided to send Jake Sullivan and the diplomat Brett McGurk to Riyadh. At a fund-raiser on Friday, he said, Hey, this might happen. That’s where we stand right now. [Mohammad bin Salman has previously denied any involvement with Khashoggi’s murder.]
What’s in it for the Saudis is obviously access to something very few countries have: an American security umbrella, primarily vis-à-vis Iran. What’s in it for the United States is less immediately consequential. From the point of view of American arms industries, you would obviously have a big market in Saudi Arabia. Part of the American conditions would be that Saudi Arabia would curtail its growing ties with China, including the prospect of Saudi Arabia buying Chinese oil in renminbi, which is a threat to the U.S. dollar as the world’s primary global reserve currency.
And, as part of the deal, Saudi Arabia would normalize its relations with Israel, which would then lay the foundation for a kind of American security architecture in the region. The advantage for the U.S. there is we don’t really want to be in that part of the world in the way we’ve been since the start of the Cold War. So this is a framework for much more offshore balancing by the United States through allies in the region.
There is a moral case against the U.S. being so close to Saudi Arabia, given the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, its war in Yemen, its human-rights record. There’s also a more practical question, which has come up especially since 9/11, of whether our relationship with Saudi Arabia is even helpful for us in terms of pure national interest. It’s not clear to me how this deal would lead us to take a step back in the region. It seems like it would draw us closer. How is that in the American interest?
Well, I’m not sure it is. I’m approaching this more as an analyst and a reporter, trying to understand what the contours of this would be, and I need to see all the elements of it. But I think there’s a dimension of this that involves M.B.S. Everyone knows about the Iranian Revolution. Very few people know about the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Imagine that Christian radicals took over the Vatican in Rome and held it for almost a month. The equivalent happened in Saudi Arabia in 1979. Saudi Arabia’s ruling family said, That’s not going to happen again. And they took Saudi Arabia on a giant right turn, basically religifying Saudi society even more, giving much more authority to puritanical preachers and then allowing them to export the most puritanical version of Islam to the entire Arab Muslim world. It was one of the biggest events shaping the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The reason I was interested in M.B.S. when he took power was because he was clearly out to reverse 1979. It’s hard to imagine something more geopolitically important to both the Middle East and the West. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy. It has nothing to do with that. But it does have to do with fundamentally reshaping what is broadcast and exported from the keeper of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina. It is hugely important, and in my view that was why we had to try to nurture it and encourage him in this direction. And then Jamal Khashoggi is killed, and that suddenly clouds the whole picture and makes the whole thing that much more difficult. We simply must never forget or stop talking about what this guy’s government did to Jamal Khashoggi. And we must never, ever forget and stop talking about the importance of reversing 1979. Guess what? It’s really complicated.
In addition to Khashoggi, and since M.B.S. took de-facto control of the country, the war in Yemen was ramped up. There was a weird quasi-coup in Lebanon organized by Saudi Arabia. There was a blockade of Qatar. There are all kinds of heightened tensions—which have now been lowered, thanks in part maybe to Chinese mediation—with Iran. I understand your point, but it also seems that he has been very aggressive in the region generally, correct?
Yeah, it’s absolutely correct. Which is why we need to look at all the details of this agreement and why it’s going to have a very difficult time getting through any kind of Senate ratification. You’re going to have to pose that question to the Administration. I’m going to have to pose that question to the Administration. I’m just watching all of this, and I’m bringing in this 1979 element, because it’s also hugely important.
In the piece, you write, “But if Biden decides to try for it and the U.S. could put on the table a deal that is hugely in America’s strategic interest, hugely in Israel’s strategic interest, hugely in Saudi Arabia’s strategic interest (admitting it into a very exclusive club of countries with a U.S. security umbrella) and revive Palestinian hopes for a two-state solution, that would be a very, very big deal.” You’re not saying that that deal is on the table currently, though?
Exactly. It would have to do with all the conditionality on all the issues you just outlined. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near knowing that yet.