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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top White House aide Jared Kushner and his team head to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week for talks in a region simmering with tension following the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. .
A senior administration official said Sunday that Kushner will meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Saudi city of Neom and the Emir of Qatar there in the coming days. Kushner will be joined by Middle East envoys Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook and Adam Boehler, CEO of the US International Development Finance Corporation.
Kushner and his team have helped negotiate normalization agreements between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan since August. The official said they would like to promote more such deals before President Donald Trump hands over power to President-elect Joe Biden on January 20.
US officials believe that luring Saudi Arabia into a deal with Israel would prompt other Arab nations to follow suit. But the Saudis do not appear to be on the verge of reaching such a historic deal and officials in recent weeks have focused on other countries, with concerns about Iran’s regional influence as a unifying factor.
Kushner’s trip comes after the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Tehran on Friday by unidentified assailants. The Western and Israeli governments believe that Fakhrizadeh was the architect of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Days before the assassination, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Saudi Arabia and met with bin Salman, an Israeli official said, in what was the first publicly confirmed visit by an Israeli leader. Israeli media said they were joined by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The historic meeting underscored how opposition to Tehran is causing a strategic realignment of the Middle Eastern countries. Bin Salman and Netanyahu fear that Biden will adopt policies on Iran similar to those adopted during the US presidency of Barack Obama, straining Washington’s ties with its traditional regional allies. Biden has said he will join the international nuclear pact with Iran that Trump resigned in 2018, and will work with allies to strengthen its terms, if Tehran first resumes strict compliance.
The senior administration official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, declined to elaborate on Kushner’s trip for security reasons.
The official said Kushner met at the White House last week with Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah. Kuwait is seen as central to any effort to resolve a three-year divide between Qatar and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which make up the GCC, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017 and imposed a boycott over allegations that Qatar supported terrorism, a charge it denies.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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