Saudi Arabia, the host of President-elect Donald Trump’s first trip abroad during his first four years in office, is emerging as once again the linchpin of Mr. Trump’s ambitious and potentially history-making Middle East strategy as his second White House term looms.
But if they seek a transformative diplomatic deal to reshape the region, Mr. Trump and his team will face an even steeper climb than they did eight years ago. And they’ll need to deal with an Islamic Republic of Iran that is more motivated — and perhaps better positioned — than ever before to poison the U.S.-Saudi relationship and in the process keep America’s key regional ally, Israel, mostly isolated in the Mideast.
Analysts say Iran and its politically cunning leaders are keenly aware that Mr. Trump may resume his quest for a so-called “grand bargain.” Such a deal could bring about formal diplomatic normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia in exchange for Israel’s commitment to an eventual Palestinian state, and security guarantees to Riyadh from the powerful U.S. military.
It also could require Saudi Arabia to take steps to loosen economic ties with China, which is becoming something of a Middle East power player in its own right after bringing Saudi and Iranian diplomats to the table last year and ending a longstanding diplomatic freeze between those two traditional rivals.
Since then, Saudi officials have at times been in lockstep with their Iranian counterparts. Both countries have blasted Israel for how it has handled its war against Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip and against Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, both components of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance.”
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaigns, specialists say, have made the prospects for Israel-Saudi normalization much, much dimmer than they otherwise would have been. Saudi leaders now say a political solution to the plight of the Palestinians — unlikely given the current government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — must take precedence over any major diplomatic initiatives.
But that’s not to say all hope is lost. The recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which will at least temporarily halt the fierce fighting in southern Lebanon, offers a glimmer of hope that the Trump administration could capitalize on whatever small bit of momentum exists and pursue a more ambitious diplomatic deal.
Undercutting that initiative will be job No. 1 for the regime in Tehran.
“Washington needs a policy to offset not just Iran’s armed export of its revolution in the Middle East and the creation of the Axis of Resistance, but also Tehran’s diplomatic ground game in the region,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies who closely tracks the region and Iranian politics and diplomacy.
“Tehran is currently trying to rope-a-dope U.S. partners and allies in the Middle East. Following years of a knife in the back, Tehran is now extending its hand,” he told The Washington Times. “Even if Saudi Arabia normalization is only skin-deep, the fact that Riyadh went from talking about cutting the head of the snake to calling for investment in Iran … is sufficient measure of success for Tehran. On balance, the regime is trying to foster a policy of accommodation out of U.S. partners and status quo actors in the region who will be extorted over time.”
For Mr. Trump, there are numerous motivations to pursue a major Israel-Saudi Arabia diplomatic deal. Such a pact would build on the president-elect’s previous record of success in the Middle East, which includes the historic 2020 Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
The deal could also create an economic windfall for the U.S., especially if American companies aid Riyadh in the creation of nuclear energy infrastructure.
Perhaps most importantly, the deal would isolate and weaken Iran. While Tehran surely would applaud any movement toward the creation of a Palestinian state, a U.S.-Israel-Saudi regional partnership would undercut Iran’s military, diplomatic and economic power in the region.
Still, some analysts say the assumed benefits of such a theoretical agreement are wildly overstated.
“It all sounds too good to be true, and that’s because it is,” said William Walldorf, a senior fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities and a political and international affairs professor at Wake Forest University. “Advocates of the grand bargain have it all wrong. The deal will be no bargain at all for the United States, but will instead turn into a major drain on U.S. security. In essence, high costs and no gain,”
In a recent analysis, Mr. Walldord said grand-bargain proponents were operating under “several faulty assumptions.”
“First, they overestimate Chinese interests and power, Saudi capacity to leave the U.S.-led regional order, and the added security benefits of Saudi-Israeli normalization. In short, China won’t and can’t supplant the United States in the Middle East, the Saudis can’t leave the U.S.-led order, and Saudi-Israeli cooperation against Iran is already robust.”
A new day in Riyadh
More critically, specialists say that Riyadh’s calculus is much different now than it was during Mr. Trump’s first term.
At that time, Saudi Arabia was deeply involved in a war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Riyadh has subsequently walked away from that conflict, and ironically, now the U.S. is leading a bombing campaign against the Houthis after the rebel group began firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea in what it called a show of support for Hamas against Israel.
Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon have also changed the equation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently called Israel’s campaign in Gaza a “collective genocide” against the Palestinians, echoing comments from Iran and from other nations in the region over the past year.
And it goes far beyond rhetoric. The past several years have seen the evolution of a cost-benefit analysis in both Riyadh and in Abu Dhabi, with both nations making a conscious decision to step away from outright hostility with Iran.
Now, for example, there seems to be direct dialogue between the Saudi and Iranian militaries, with the head of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces visiting Tehran in November.
That appears to be just one example of what specialists believe was a deliberate change in strategy, or at least a hedging of bets by Saudi leaders.
“There was a decision made in the Gulf five years ago … that they wanted to reduce tensions in the region, they wanted to get away from the threat of a hot war with Iran, understanding that if war did break out, they were the No. 1 target, they were ground zero for Iranian retaliation. They didn’t want that,” Gerald Feierstein, a longtime U.S. diplomat who served in Saudi Arabia, told The Times’ Threat Status Weekly Podcast recently.
“One of the things we’ve seen over these past four or five years is increasing confidence in Riyadh and in Abu Dhabi to challenge U.S. leadership in the region if it means they are going to pursue what they consider to be their national priorities, their national interests,” said
Mr. Feierstein, now a senior fellow on diplomacy at the Middle East Institute, added, “And that means the nature of the relationship between Washington and these Gulf capitals is going to be quite different than it was in 2016 or 2017.”
Other analysts agree. They contend that the Saudi government appears much more invested in economic growth, moving beyond the purely oil-based economy, and modest societal reforms than they are in preparing themselves for potential war with Iran, regardless of what the incoming Trump administration might want.
“The Saudis are determined to prevent the distractions of their dangerous neighborhood from getting in the way of Vision 2030. Hence their U-turn on Iran, a long-time rival with which they restored ties last year,” Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a recent analysis after a trip to Saudi Arabia, referring to Riyadh’s sweeping modernization plan pushed strongly by Crown Prince Mohammed.
“The normalization of relations with Tehran, as superficial as it might be, takes one potential distraction off the front burner,” he wrote.
“When pressed on whether Saudi Arabia would support Trump’s ’maximum pressure’ strategy toward Iran, one of our interlocutors noted that the Saudis would have to live with Trump for only four years but with Iran for 1,000 years.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.