Farewell to the Abraham Accords - MBS’s White House visit marked a return to normalcy in the Middle East, and a U.S. pivot toward China

President Trump’s meeting with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was a success before the Saudi crown prince set foot in the White House. Despite calls for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords in exchange for selling them F-35 stealth fighters, Trump wisely saw that pressuring the Saudi prince into a deal whose time passed with the successful U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be harmful to both Israel and the Saudis.

But by pocketing what will be the first in a series of large checks for advanced American military equipment, Trump cut directly to the heart of the pact of mutual self-interest that has bound the United States and Saudi Arabia together since the Saudi king Abdulaziz met with FDR on the deck of the USS Quincy in 1945. In exchange for effective sovereignty over Saudi oil, the United States would protect the Saudi Kingdom’s territorial sovereignty with military force.

The Quincy Pact has lasted this long because it is clearly in the interest of both countries. Balance sheets don’t lie. The Saudis don’t need to field one of the world’s top battle-tested armies in a global trouble spot, or provide intelligence on terror threats that no other spy service can get, or pull off jaw-dropping covert ops like the beeper plot that detonated Hezbollah’s cadres, or invent life-saving medications, or fuel the world’s third-most inventive tech sector after Silicon Valley and Seoul. Those are the returns that Israel offers on the weapons that the United States sends as a strategic investment. All the Saudis need to do is sip coffee in the lobbies of foreign hotels while America pumps and protects their oil—and pay full sticker price for advanced fighter planes that will require equally expensive maintenance contracts to fly in the desert.

For his part, having resolved America’s concerns with Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities in June as he’s promised for more than two decades, the president wants to move on from the Middle East. It’s not as if he’s planning on rushing MBS out of the White House after their meeting; there’s a big black-tie dinner planned tonight with Elon Musk, Tiger Woods, and other luminaries on the guest list. There is also the matter of collecting those checks, which are worth tens of billions of dollars.

Trump’s problem is that his close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving to be a much more divisive issue inside his own movement than he expected. And, in turn, Iran—the original focus of the Abraham Accords—is just one part of the anti-U.S. axis led by China, which poses a global threat to U.S. interests.

But what about Saudi normalization with Israel? Wouldn’t it be nice to wrap up the Middle East part of his second term in a nice gold ribbon by bringing the Saudis into the Abraham Accords, Trump’s crowning first-term foreign-policy success, and add further luster to his reputation as a president capable of winning deals previously thought unimaginable?

Indeed, a normalization agreement between the guardian of Islam’s two major holy sites, in Mecca and Medina, and a Jewish state despised by Muslims worldwide would be a historic achievement for everyone, starting with Donald Trump. The catch is that the Saudis won’t budge unless the Israelis agree to a road map for a future Palestinian state. And while Israel seems enthusiastic about normalizing relations with the Saudis, it is unlikely to accommodate Riyadh on its big ask because the Israeli public is firmly against any further accommodations with an enclave run by terrorists who killed 1,200 people within Israel’s borders just two years ago and continue to wantonly maim and kill Israelis wherever they are within reach.

The first Trump administration put forth its own Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, spearheaded by Middle East envoy Jared Kushner. That plan was known as Peace to Prosperity and came with various bells and whistles about improving the Palestinian economy. But the real focus of the plan was on countering Iran. Trump withdrew from Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and then set about encircling Iran’s sphere of influence, what was formerly known as the Shiite Crescent, encompassing the clerical regime’s allies and proxies from the Persian Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean—including Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and Iraq’s Shiite militias and often the country’s Shiite-led government, as well as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

To outflank the Iranian axis, the Trump team knit together U.S. allies covering the same territory through a series of economic agreements. These were the Abraham Accords, struck between Israel and several Muslim-majority states, including Morocco, Bahrain and, most crucially, the United Arab Emirates. The accords highlighted America’s regional security architecture as well as Trump’s ability to make things happen. Rather than try to resolve the major issue that divided Israel from its neighbors, as past administrations had done to no effect, Trump pushed the Palestinian issue to one side and focused on what the parties had in common: their worries about Iran. And by striking deals with Israel, the Arabs tacitly acknowledged that it was the only regional state that was capable of solving their mutual problem through military means, whether acting with the United States or alone.

The Joe Biden administration avoided use of the term “Abraham Accords” not just because it didn’t want to credit Trump for his accomplishment, but also because it recognized that the agreements signaled an alliance against Iran, and the Democratic White House was eager to restore Obama’s pro-Iran policy. It’s in this context that the Biden administration’s efforts to normalize Saudi-Israeli relations should be understood.

The participation of Bahrain, effectively a Saudi satellite, in the first round of the Abraham Accords was enough to signal that Riyadh approved of the historic agreements. There was no need for the Trump team to bring the Saudis in directly, especially since that was likely to vitiate the purpose of the Abraham Accords, which was to unify U.S. allies against Iran while marginalizing the Palestinian issue. But since the Saudis are the standard-bearers of Islam, at least Sunni Islam, any engagement with Israel would have to entail a public position on the great Muslim and Arab cause, the Palestinians. And since the Palestinian file was controlled by the Iranians, through their Hamas proxies, bringing the Palestinians back into the mix meant giving the Iranians a seat at the table. That’s why the first Trump administration was happy to have the Saudis looking on from the outside. And it’s why the Biden team pushed for direct Saudi-Israel talks: to put the Palestinians, and therefore the Iranians, back on center stage.

After the Oct. 7 attack, regional analysts contended that Iran engineered the massacre because it couldn’t bear the prospect of a Jerusalem-Riyadh agreement that would stabilize the region and leave it out in the cold. But that assessment couldn’t be further from the truth: Oct. 7 was the logical result of the regional dynamics that the Abraham Accords were designed to contain: If you give Iran room, it will cause trouble, because trouble is its business. By reintroducing the Palestinians, Biden effectively gave the terror regime a vote on regional stability, which it used to start a war unlike anything the Middle East has seen since 1973.

In the aftermath of the attack, the Saudis resolved to take over the Palestinian file themselves. They reasoned that the only way to stabilize the new Middle East was to cut out extremists, like Iran and its proxies, and empower moderates like MBS. That was true. But there was another reason for Saudi’s gambit, one less flattering to Riyadh’s self-image.

By using Qatar as an interlocutor with Hamas, the Biden administration, and then the Trump team, boosted the prestige of Saudi Arabia’s chief foe. Despite the kingdom’s regular pronouncements of its brotherly affection for Qatar, the two Gulf powers have despised each other for decades or more. During the first Trump term, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed a four-year blockade on Qatar because of its efforts to destabilize the region. Riyadh wants the Palestinian file because it doesn’t want Qatar to have it.

Even assuming the Saudis have the best of intentions—that is, they’re not simply using the White House to get a leg up on their Gulf rival—the problem is that the Palestinian file can’t be wrested from regional troublemakers since it was designed by bad actors to be used for bad purposes. The Saudis understand this in part: For instance, they don’t want Gazan refugees because the Palestinians have brought chaos and violence to every state they’ve inhabited (Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, as well as Gaza and the West Bank), and a Palestinian presence in Saudi Arabia would therefore destabilize the kingdom and spell the end of the reform program of the 40-year-old crown prince. But Riyadh seems not to have gamed out other imminent risks.

Let’s say, for instance, that the Israelis did accommodate Saudi Arabia’s demands, even though there’s no good practical reason for Netanyahu to pursue a normalization agreement with the Saudis; the prospects of him winning a Nobel Peace Prize are slim, whereas detonating his own domestic political coalition in the effort is a certainty. But suppose that, for sentimental reasons, Jerusalem wanted to pocket Riyadh’s promises to use its wealth and global influence to nurture a more moderate Islam and embrace the Jews as part of the Abrahamic covenant. Some Israelis might like the sound of that, however meaningless those pledges might be in reality. Still, those empty phrases would immediately supply the pretext for the next Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood information operation targeting the Saudi kingdom and the crown prince who, in Qatar’s telling, betrayed the Palestinians to the Zionists.

For Israel, a normalization deal with Saudi is worth little more than the paper it’s written on. For Saudi Arabia, especially if it gets Israel to agree to a two-state framework, a normalization agreement could cause large and unforeseeable dangers. The Palestinian file has proven itself to be a curse to those who wield it, like the Soviet Union, Nasser’s Egypt, the Assads’ Syria, and Saddam’s Iraq, all of which have faded from history even as the Islamic Republic of Iran now teeters on the abyss.

As for Trump, he’s already had his big Middle East victory—a win much more significant and durable than a normalization agreement. Not only did he, in partnership with Netanyahu, eliminate the Iranian threat, but also he revived the U.S.-led regional order that is crucial to American peace and prosperity. Israel is America’s regional enforcer, and a good destination for tech investors. The Saudis pump cheap oil to stabilize global energy markets, buy U.S. arms systems, and invest in U.S. industry. That’s a regional order that works well for everyone—starting with the United States. Now it’s time to get the Middle East and the black hole in the middle of it, the Palestinians, off the front page and turn to the bigger issue on which Trump’s historical legacy will rest: China.

As crazy as it sounds, you don’t want
“peace” in the Middle East.

Not if it involves 7x360 Jewish Years

Now that hasn’t been discussed yet

That I’m aware of...

But it IS going to happen 😞

The catch is that the Saudis won’t budge unless the Israelis agree to a road map for a future Palestinian state.

In other words, the Saudis want to keep a major thorn in Israel's side. One that the Saudis themselves every now and then like to push on.

A left wing website running an article with several of the usual pro- terrorist mischaracterizations and distortions. But it gets a couple things right. First, the Saudi dictators have out- bargained us. Second, they they’ve posted the same old, very tired card of queering any peace by simply reiterating their proven instant deal- killer card, a Fakestinian state on Israeli land/- that will never happen and which Saudi itself doesn’t really want to happen — anywhere. But if there’s one thing the saudi dictatorship family does want is the continued ability to buy, sell, and utterly manipulate the west. Which ability they’ve kept intact through all the worthless bullsheit in washedUpDC. Forget about Saudi ever giving anything for peace. They don’t want peace. They’ve already got everything they want from Israeli intelligence and defense cooperation to American weapons. Retaining their dictatorship is game one for them. They’ve got and continue to get everything they need to do this. Abraham accords? Not useful for them. Sending an ambassador to Jerusalem? Why bother? I they’re in daily communications with the top tier of both israrli sbd American governments. And the rest don’t matter much to Saudi anyway

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