US Push for a Saudi-Israel Deal Is All About China
Washington will have to give many concessions to buy Riyadh's cooperation, including a strong security pact, but who knows if MBS will stay bought.
Still bros?
Source: Saudi Press Agency
President Joe Biden’s great Middle Eastern gambit is all about China: The administration is trying to broker better relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, largely as a way of containing Beijing’s influence in a vital region. This undertaking shows how much the US is willing to pay to prevent the Saudis from falling into China’s orbit. Talk of a US shift to Asia notwithstanding, it also demonstrates how central the Middle East remains to geopolitics.
The administration has been quietly exploring Saudi-Israel normalization for months; speculation intensified in late July, following Biden’s interview with Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times. Nominally, the deal is meant to promote Middle East peace; in truth, Israel and Saudi Arabia are already tacit allies against Iran. Strategically speaking, the core of the deal is in the side payments these countries — Saudi Arabia especially — will demand from Washington and the pledges the US will seek in return.