Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, will travel to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week for talks in a tense area following the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
A senior administration official said Sunday that Kushner is scheduled to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Saudi city of Nyom and the Emir of Qatar in the coming days. Kushner was accompanied by Middle Eastern envoys vi v. Berkowitz and Brian Hook and U.S. The chief executive of the International Development Finance Corporation will join.
Kushner and his team have been helping to negotiate a normalization deal between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan since August. The official said he wanted to push for more such agreements before handing over power to Biden if Donald Trump is elected president on January 20.
U.S. officials believe that luring Saudi Arabia into a deal with Israel will prompt other Arab countries to follow suit. But the Saudis do not seem to be on the verge of reaching such a landmark deal, and in recent weeks officials have been focusing on other countries, with concerns about the factor uniting Iran’s regional influence.
Kushner’s visit comes after Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by unknown assailants in Tehran on Friday. Western and Israeli governments believe Fakhrizadeh was the architect of the secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.
A few days before the assassination, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Saudi Arabia and met with Prince Mohammed, an Israeli official said. Israeli media said he was joined by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The historic meeting demonstrated how Tehran’s opposition would bring about a strategic re-establishment of Middle Eastern countries. Prince Mohammed and Netanyahu fear that Biden will adopt policies on Iran adopted during Barack Obama’s presidency that strained Washington’s relations with its traditional regional allies. Biden has said he will rejoin the international nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018 – and will work with allies to strengthen its terms if Tehran resumes strict adherence.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to give further details about Kushner’s trip for security reasons.
Kushner met with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah at the White House last week, the official said. Kuwait is considered critical in any attempt to resolve the three-year-old dispute between Qatar and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which include the GCC, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017 and boycotted Qatar over allegations that it supported terrorism, an allegation it denies.
