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As the UAE and Bahrain prepared to sign an agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel this summer, Saudi Arabia, the heavyweight in the region, quietly urged them.
For several months before the deals were signed at the White House, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been laying out his reasons for a pact that would overturn regional policies toward a long-term enemy.
They offered state-of-the-art fighter jets, political favors with Washington to win, and greater and better access to Donald Trump’s America, with all the connections a clearly transactional president saw fit to muster.
There was also another lure: if Saudi Arabia’s allies reached a deal with Israel first, it would give the Kingdom cover to follow. Such a move would mark a sea change in the geopolitics of the region, easily overshadowing the Israeli agreements with Egypt in 1978 and with Jordan 17 years later.
While a pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia is looming, Prince Mohammed is unlikely to give Trump what would be his greatest foreign policy achievement before the US election, according to three sources close to the royal court.
Instead, the Kingdom is likely to continue its role of urging regional allies to cross the line, effectively on its behalf. Sudan and Oman are firm favorites to reach an agreement before the year is out. But the region’s old guard, Riyadh and Kuwait, are likely biding their time and hoping for bigger prizes.
Both countries are ruled by long-term monarchs, who are now over 80 years old and sick, and both continue to bet on long-term formulas for Arab-Israeli peace, which have been shattered by the region’s younger leaders, like Prince Mohammed.
Addressing the United Nations general assembly on Wednesday, the Saudi monarch, King Salman, stuck to the script of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative sponsored by Saudi Arabia, which had been seen as a model until recent years.
“The initiative provides the basis for a comprehensive and just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that ensures that the brotherly Palestinian people obtain their legitimate rights,” said King Salman. “At the forefront is the establishment of its independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The heir to the Saudi throne views the region through a different lens than his predecessors, and sees Iranian expansionism as a greater threat to stability than the seven-decade failure to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. According to two sources familiar with Prince Mohammed’s thinking, their views have been heavily influenced by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, since they met in 2017.
“Kushner was just as transactional as his father-in-law,” said a Saudi source. “It was about user payments; If you support a cause or a person, that person should support it. It was a language that MBS understood and wasted little time applying it to the new Saudi positions in Palestine and Lebanon, which had become a never-ending burden. “
Later that year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was summoned by Prince Mohammed to Riyadh and given a version of what a new Palestine approved by Saudi Arabia would look like.
Abbas has never spoken publicly about the meeting and has not returned to Saudi Arabia since. But Palestinian officials, who insisted on anonymity, like everyone else contacted by The Guardian for this story, said that the plan presented to the veteran Palestinian leader closely resembled the Jared Kushner model of the peace deal, which was unveiled earlier. this year with little fanfare. .
“The crown prince told him that Palestine could be Gaza and part of the Sinai, with a land bridge to what was left of the West Bank,” the official said. “The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, was obviously involved in this. It was not the prerogative of the Saudi royals to give up part of Egypt without consent. “
The connection between Kushner and Prince Mohammed has remained strong during his turbulent three years as the effective leader of the kingdom. The stain of the state-sanctioned murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Prince Mohammed’s aides and guards barely reached the gates of the White House.
Instead, the Trump administration’s combination of transactional power politics, business ventures, and a narrow range of global interests, securing Israel’s fate and making Iran first among them, has been consolidated with the crown prince and the system. Saudi who knows how to deal. with regional political families, and now has a replica in the US.
A former Western intelligence official said the model was a factor in getting things done. “We go to see them in a nice new suit, we sit in their palaces, we briefly feel empowered and real,” officials said. “Then we flew home and took the tube to a shared flat at Elephant and Castle. People on our side are seduced by access, no matter how hard they try not to be. For their part, they often find the interactions picturesque. “
The Kushner-MBS bond remains so strong that the latter has advocated for Lebanon to demarcate its maritime border with Israel, a central topic of conversation for the United States, in part aimed at securing Lebanese rights to a shared underwater gas field. but also to castrate Hezbollah, which holds a fortress in southern Lebanon.
As the Trump administration moves toward November 3, it is stepping up its policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran. Lebanon is seen as a key arena to try to dilute Iranian influence, and Prince Mohammed strongly agrees.
“Everything is going in the right direction,” the Saudi official said. “When do you pull the trigger on this deal is a very important question. For now, it is too early. “
