ANALYSIS
The immediate goals of Hamas’ brutal assault on Israel over the weekend appear simple: Kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible, and spark chaos and fear among the “Zionist” regime that the terror group sees as its mortal enemy.
But there is already evidence that Hamas, with the support of its chief state sponsor, Iran, was playing a longer diplomatic game: To undercut the thawing of tensions between Jerusalem and the Arab world, and to completely derail the prospect of diplomatic normalization between Israel and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia.
That would mark a major diplomatic setback for the Biden administration, just when the long-cherished goal of getting the powerful Saudis to recognize the Jewish state after seven decades of icy hostility seemed to be within reach.
Beyond celebrating the attack itself, which left hundreds of Israelis dead, top Iranian officials also blasted the “farcical” idea that Israel would mend fences with Riyadh or other predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern nations given the plight of the stateless Palestinians.
Any such diplomatic normalization will now be undeniably more difficult amid a full-blown war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which already has claimed civilian lives on both sides of the border. Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan on Sunday condemned the targeting of civilians “in any way” amid the unfolding bloodbath, according to regional media, suggesting that Riyadh will look unfavorably on any Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed during Israel’s hard-hitting response to the unprecedented terror attack on its homeland.
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Saudi Arabia, in addition to demanding greater security guarantees from Washington as its price for recognizing Israel, has indicated the Israeli government must show some signs of accommodating Palestinian demands for greater economic and political control, concessions the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be highly unlikely to consider given the weekend’s events in Gaza.
Other media coverage throughout parts of the Muslim world on Sunday highlighted the Israeli response to the Hamas assault and the death toll on the Palestinian side. The notion of Arab governments striking new deals with Israel now seems exceedingly more difficult as images and video of Israeli-Palestinian violence take center stage on television and on social media.
Iran, clearly making the same calculation, stoked those flames Sunday.
“Muslim governments must enter the scene along with the Islamic community in supporting the Palestinian people. The Zionist enemy should also understand that the equation has changed; warmongering is detrimental to the Zionists,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said.
“The Palestinian people are victorious in this battle,” he said.
Derailing diplomacy
SEE ALSO: Blinken: U.S. citizens killed, possibly kidnapped by Hamas terror attacks against Israel
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday suggested the U.S. believes that destroying the fledgling diplomatic relationships between Israel and Arab powers was likely a key motivator for Hamas leadership and its hard-line allies in Tehran.
“It’s no surprise that those opposed to the efforts to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and more broadly to normalize Israel’s relations with countries throughout the region and beyond, who oppose it, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday.
“So, to the extent that this was designed to try to derail the efforts that were being made, that speaks volumes,” he told ABC’s “This Week” program. “Right now the focus is on dealing with this attack, dealing with Hamas. And we’ll come to the normalization efforts, which, by the way, are incredibly difficult when it comes to Saudi Arabia and Israel. Lots of hard issues to work through.”
Mr. Blinken pledged that the U.S. would keep pressing for diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East, but Sunday brought other troubling signs on that front. In Egypt, two Israeli tourists were reportedly shot dead in a possible sign of the anti-Israel violence that could erupt throughout the region in the coming days and weeks. The duo’s Egyptian tour guide was also reportedly killed.
For the Biden administration, the Israel-Hamas war puts in peril one of its major foreign policy objectives.
Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization would be the next step to follow the “Abraham Accords,” breakthrough deals that were brokered by former President Donald Trump. The Biden administration has cautiously embraced those accords — named after the prophet recognized by Judaism, Christianity and Islam — that saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan sign normalization agreements with Israel. The 2020 development marked the first official acknowledgment of Israel’s sovereignty by Arab nations since Egypt and Jordan broke from the rest of the Middle East to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1979 and 1994, respectively.
A similar agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the richest of the Gulf States and the home of some of the Muslim world’s holiest sites, would be a significant blow to Iran’s influence. As the region’s top Shiite Muslim nation, Iran’s competition and geopolitical rivalry with Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s leading Sunni Muslim power, has largely defined the region in the 21st century. The two sides have also been on opposing sides of proxy conflicts, most notably in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia backed Yemen’s government troops while Tehran supported the Houthi rebel force.
Iran has been pursuing its own rapprochement with the Saudis, agreeing in March to move to normalize ties in a negotiation hosted by China.
At the United Nations General Assembly last month, Mr. Netanyahu said “such a peace would go a long way for us to advance the end of the Arab Israeli conflict.” Officials from both Israel and Saudi Arabia also made historic visits to one another’s country in recent weeks. Those visits were widely viewed as signs that a major deal, perhaps even full diplomatic normalization, could be on the horizon.
‘Anything but normal’
With that hope now dimmed, Iranian officials on Sunday took a victory lap.
Gen. Mohammad Baqeri, chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said that the Hamas assault proves that some of Israel’s “desperate attempts,” such as “the farcical plan for normalization,” will not be able to slow down Israel’s downfall.
“The Palestinian nation, which has been suffering from imposed cruelty for decades, has now gained such great power with reliance on its young motivated generation and Islam that it has transfixed military analysts and strategists across the world,” the Iranian general said, according to Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency.
Undercutting the Arab-Israeli diplomatic thaw has been a long-running mission for the Iranian regime. At the United Nations meeting last month in New York, Mr. Raisi cast the Abraham Accords as little more than an American diplomatic con game that did little to change the broader dynamic in the Middle East.
“This was a job done by the Americans to take the hands of the Israelis and put them squarely in the hands of certain Arab countries. This doesn’t equal acceptance of those nations, of those people,” the Iranian president said. “This was only obtained under American pressure. The frame of thought of the Americans was they are somehow creating security for the Zionist regime, whereas normalization of [diplomatic relations with] certain countries with Israel does not buy security or bring about security for the Zionist regime.”
But Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations could also face newfound pressure to more forcefully condemn the inarguably brutal and barbaric tactics shown by Hamas over the weekend.
“To the nations of Qatar and Saudi Arabia: It is time to stop covering for Hamas and other terrorist organizations if you really want peace,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said in a post on social media on Saturday.
“Blaming Israel for today’s attack is anything but normal,” he said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.