Israeli Official Meets Saudis For Talks On Iran

A “senior Israeli official” has visited Saudi Arabia for talks focused on regional security issues and, especially, on threats posed by Iran. The talks were held before Biden’s upcoming visit to the Middle East, where he will be meeting in June with Israeli officials and, it is being reported, with the Saudis as well. A report on the latest signs of rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia is here.

A senior Israeli official reportedly visited Saudi Arabia very recently amid growing speculation that Jerusalem and Riyadh are readying small steps toward normalizing relations.

Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman has been pushing for closer ties to Israel for several years.. He has become at the same time increasingly exasperated with the Palestinians, telling a complaining Mahmoud Abbas in 2018 to “just take whatever deal the Americans offer you.” He knows how valuable Israel has been as a security partner with the Kingdom against their mutual enemy Iran. Israel supplies Riyadh with intelligence on the Islamic Republic from its network of Mossad agents. MbS has also been impressed by Israel’s ability to wreak havoc with Iran’s nuclear program, from its Stuxnet computer worm in 2010, to its targeted assassinations of five top nuclear scientists, to its sabotage of centrifuge plants at Natanz and Fordow, and its continuing campaign of “mysterious explosions” set off at chemical and electrical plants around Iran that have so rattled the regime. The two latest Israeli exploits against Iran have only deepened MbS’s admiration. First, the Mossad managed to assassinate, in broad daylight, right outside his house on a street bristling with Iranian security men, the IRGC deputy commander Hassan Sayyad Khodayari. Khodayari headed Unit 840; among his other tasks, Khodayari was in charge of planning attacks on Israelis around the world. Second, the Parchin military complex was attacked in late May by a suicide drone that had been launched, incredibly, from inside Iran itself. The Crown Prince is known to favor Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, but his father, King Salman, has insisted that won’t happen until after the Palestinians achieve their state. The King, however, is 86, and in poor health. MbS likely does not have long to wait before he can normalize the Kingdom’s ties with Israel.

The official was warmly hosted at a Riyadh palace for talks on various aspects of security and other coordination, Israel’s Channel 12 reported Friday, without citing a source.

The network said the sides discussed regional security interests that have further aligned in recent years over common threats posed by Iran.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have been pushed ever closer together because of their shared alarm over the Bidenites’ appeasement of Iran at the Vienna negotiations, and the failure of the Americans to “lengthen and strengthen,” as once they promised, the original J.C.P.O.A. treaty, so that it would cover not just Iran’s nuclear program, but also its regional aggression, and its ballistic missile program. For now, it looks as if the refusal of the Americans to lift the terrorism designation from the IRGC, as Iran demands, may sink the whole deal, which would be an outcome both surprising and most welcome. But that won’t be certain until the American delegates, headed by that disconsolate appeaser Robert Malley, finally turn out the lights in Vienna and head home to Washington.

The Yedioth Ahronoth daily also reported meetings between figures from both countries, without providing any further information.

The more officials who were involved in these Saudi-Israeli meetings, the more likely the talks were serious and substantive. These were not meetings held for a smiling photo op, but likely held to prepare a united front in urging the Americans to hold firm, and not to make a “bad, very bad, worst” deal with Iran.

The reported interaction between two countries that have no formal relations came as the US has pushed for cooperation between its allies in the region, and ahead of a Middle East visit by US President Joe Biden; the president will be going to both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The US National Security Council Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, and State Department energy envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this week, reportedly in an effort to finalize an agreement on the transfer of the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

The Americans want to remove any possible sources of friction among its allies in the region – hence their desire to see the transfer of the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir, for which the Saudis have already paid $25 billion to Egypt, be completed without a hitch.

That deal requires Israeli approval because of the multinational observer force that has been deployed on the islands since the Jewish state’s peace deal with Egypt. As a result, the US and Israel are reportedly pushing Riyadh to take a series of small steps toward full normalization with Jerusalem.

Israel has to approve the deal, because it had been assured, in the peace treaty with Egypt, that a multinational observer force would remain deployed on the islands to make sure there would be no military buildup. Now, with Saudi ownership of the islands, the Israelis would like to be reassured that their ties with the Kingdom will continue to improve, and that they need not worry about that observer force being removed from the Red Sea islands.

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