[The Chinese-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to
restore relations has the potential to shake up regional and global
politics for the Palestinians benefit.]
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WHAT THE SAUDI-IRAN DEAL MEANS FOR PALESTINE, ISRAEL, THE U.S., AND
THE MIDEAST  
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Mitchell Plitnick
March 18, 2023
Mondoweiss
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_ The Chinese-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore
relations has the potential to shake up regional and global politics
for the Palestinians' benefit. _

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and Chinese President
Xi Jinping at the Arab-China Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Dec. 9,
2022. , KSAmofaEN/Twitter

 

In a surprising development last weekend, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed
to restore normal relations
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reopen embassies in each other’s country, and reactivate security
and trade agreements that have lain dormant.  The agreement has the
potential to shake up both regional and global politics, but could
also mean a lot less than it initially seems.

It must be emphasized that this agreement, while certainly important,
is not a cure-all for the Iranian-Saudi rivalry that has had such
devastating effects across the region. That competition will still
exist, as it existed before Saudi Arabia cut off relations with Iran
in 2016 in the wake of protests that attacked Saudi missions in Iran
after Saudi Arabia executed Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shi’ite cleric
and vocal critic of the Saudi government. 

Even if the agreement, brokered by China after years of negotiations
mediated by Iraq, holds, the competition for regional dominance
between the two major oil exporters, who also are each seen as
leaders, or at least prominent hubs, of different denominations of
Islam, will still be there. Some territorial disputes will remain, as
will regional conflicts in places like Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon where
the two countries often back opposing forces. 

Nonetheless, the agreement brings significant potential for the
region. The disputes can potentially be addressed diplomatically
rather than through conflict and each side will have strong incentives
to do so. 

THE CHANCE OF REGIONAL WAR IS DIMINISHED

Since the United States senselessly shattered the Iran nuclear deal,
the possibility of a regional war has been heating up. As the U.S.
tightened sanctions, Iran responded by exceeding the boundaries of
that agreement, chiefly by enriching uranium more and more, gradually
approaching weapons-grade levels. The United States responded with
more sanctions and Israel with more threats to attack Iran, which were
not so subtly backed
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in turn, by the Biden administration.

While the temperature between Iran and Saudi Arabia had already
lessened because the truce, brokered by the United Nations, is holding
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this new agreement provides a much stronger incentive for Saudi Arabia
to avoid war. The agreement also reinforces the abject failure of
Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, a policy
which Joe Biden has embraced and enhanced. 

Israel will have a hard time attacking Iran if the Saudis object.
Israel will find it difficult, amid Saudi opposition to an attack, to
find a good route to Iran for its planes. More importantly, Saudi
opposition will have real sway throughout the region and, crucially,
in Washington and Brussels. On top of all of that, a détente between
Iran and Saudi Arabia allows Riyadh to more actively work to dissuade
Iran from any plans to acquire a nuclear weapon (an accusation which
remains unsubstantiated, despite U.S. and Israeli insistence to the
contrary), and to work with other Gulf states that have relations with
Iran such as Oman and Qatar to convince Iran to avoid even the
perception of trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. 

Saudi Arabia always stood to lose a lot in a regional war; that’s
why, even at the lowest points of relations with Iran, they were
unenthusiastic about the prospect. If the two countries can find even
a cold peace that at least mostly holds to the security agreement they
signed in 2001 and have now agreed to revive, Saudi Arabia has every
reason to do all it can to avert an attack on Iran that could spark a
regional war. And it can do plenty.

THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS ARE DEALT A CRIPPLING BLOW

It is telling that the only country to react with anger, outrage and
vehement opposition to the Iran-Saudi agreement is Israel. Immediately
after the announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
opposition leader Yair Lapid were hurling accusations, blaming each
other for this failure in “allowing” this to happen.

In truth, there was very little Israel could have done to prevent it.
Any interference would have only provided more impetus for the deal to
be struck. What we’re seeing, however, is frustration across the
Israeli political spectrum because this agreement undermines the most
basic rationale for the Abraham Accords. Israelis and Americans can
talk all they want about the Accords being peace
agreements—they’re nothing of the kind—or about the economic
benefits they can bring which, though exaggerated, are real enough.
But the fundamental rationale behind the Accords was increased access
to U.S. arms and coordination for the Arab states and an Israeli-Arab
alliance against Iran. 

For Israel, that framework offered the path it had been seeking for
decades: normalization with the Arab world without granting
Palestinians their rights and freedoms. While the Saudi-Iranian deal
doesn’t completely erase that line of thinking, it widens the
diplomatic path for Gulf Arab states, as well as their allies in the
wider Arab world, for dealing with Iran. As the agreement includes
security arrangements designed to avoid confrontation and trade deals
that Iran desperately needs, there’s reason to believe that this
represents a sharp, lasting turn away from a catastrophic war in the
Gulf. As a result, the incentive for expanding normalization with
Israel is significantly diminished.

Israel will certainly continue to press for expanding the Accords,
probably leaning more on increasing trade, especially in the tech
sector, as well as dangling the prospect of greater access to U.S.
weapons. But clandestine trade between Israel and Arab states has been
an unspoken reality for many years, and the deals that have already
been struck with the UAE and Bahrain mean those countries can serve as
middlemen for Israel to trade with states that don’t have normal
relations yet. 

The big prize for Israel, of course, is Saudi Arabia, and that seems a
good deal less likely now. The day before the agreement with Iran was
announced, Saudi Arabia presented the U.S. with its price for entering
the Abraham Accords. While some observers saw the demands as an
opening volley in negotiations, the fact that a deal with Iran was
announced the next day suggests that the Saudis are content to put
off, perhaps for years, any agreement with Israel, and might even wish
to hold on to the idea of winning, if not the full terms of the Arab
Peace Initiative, at least some significant concessions for the
Palestinians in exchange for normalizing with Israel. 

The Saudis’ asking price for entry into the Accords was a security
guarantee from the United States and U.S. assistance in developing its
ostensibly civilian nuclear program, including the ability to
independently enrich uranium in Saudi Arabia. The United States is
still reeling, both domestically and internationally, from its
involvement in Saudi Arabia’s massive onslaught in Yemen and the
catastrophe that resulted in that country. There is little trust in
Washington that extending greater commitments to Saudi Arabian
“security” will not drag the U.S. into more Mideast conflicts.

And, while Saudi Arabia has the right to enrich uranium for civilian
use under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. has, wisely,
been loathe to enhance their ability to do so due to concerns about
the potential for developing a nuclear weapon, and fueling a regional
nuclear arms race, considering that Saudi Arabia has not adopted the
protocols that would allow for International Atomic Energy Agency
monitoring. 

The Saudis are floating the possibility of agreeing
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to those additional protocols now. It’s worth noting that not only
has Iran adopted those protocols, under the now-dead nuclear deal,
they agreed to far more intrusive inspections. But even if that issue
is resolved, the negative view of Saudi Arabia among ordinary
Americans and Congress is likely to render concessions on expanding
arms sales over their already high levels and a greater security
commitment politically distasteful for Biden. 

IMPACT ON THE PALESTINIANS OF THE SAUDI-IRAN DEAL

It is crucial for Palestinians that the Abraham Accords be stopped in
their tracks, and rolled back if possible. There is exceedingly little
pressure on Israel as it is. The more Arab states that normalize
relations with Israel, the more that incentive to change policy toward
the Palestinians and the occupation diminishes even further. But
Israel and the United States are pushing hard to expand them. The
Biden administration has been passionate about bringing more states
into the Accords, and Congress is pushing bipartisan legislation
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to create a special envoy to promote the Accords. 

Dan Shapiro, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel said
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“Normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, facilitated by the
United States, is in all three parties’ interests.” But is that
really true? The benefits for Israel are obvious. But the Saudis are
already coordinating with Israel on defense matters, and they have
been cooperating on many levels for decades. For the most part, Saudi
Arabia is already getting what it wants from Israel. 

And the benefits to the United States are nil. Again, the U.S.’
major interest is that Saudi Arabia and Israel work together on
military matters, and they are already doing so. The U.S. already
enjoys full trading partnerships with both countries. The only prize
is political points for Democrats from Israel’s supporters in the
United States. 

Notably, Shapiro doesn’t even pretend that the Abraham Accords are
in any way good for the Palestinians. 

But pushing back on the Abraham Accords is not the only way this deal
helps Palestinians. The fact that the deal was largely brokered by
Iraq, with China coming in at the end to broker the final agreement,
was a direct rebuke to American diplomacy in the Middle East. The
U.S.’ diplomatic tactics—which depend heavily on security
assistance and arms sales and usually see the United States taking the
side of one of the conflicting parties—have repeatedly failed,
whether in Yemen, the Saudi-Qatari dispute, the Saudi-Iran conflict,
or Israel and Palestine. 

China, which engages in considerable trade with Iran and Saudi Arabia
and whose interests are best served by a stable and positive
relationship between the two oil-rich icons, acted instead as a
neutral broker. Whatever benefits it might get for itself or be able
to offer the parties in the wake of the agreement were kept separate
from the talks, enabling China to act as the honest broker the United
States cannot. 

The agreement is also part and parcel of a Saudi shift toward a
foreign and security policy that is less dependent on the United
States. That the Saudis are particularly unhappy with the Biden
administration is hardly a secret, but even the warm relationship they
had with Donald Trump did not lead the U.S. to retaliate when Houthi
missiles attacked Saudi Arabian oil fields in 2019
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The Saudis have indicated that they are eager to invest heavily in
Iran, and Iranian statements in the wake of the deal reflect a
determination between the two countries that they expect and will
resist efforts by Israel to undermine their new rapprochement. All of
this is leading toward a diminished regional role for the U.S. which
can only be a positive for the Palestinians, as well as raising the
possibility that the Saudis see significant value in holding out for
major progress for Palestinian freedom, at least, before they will
normalize relations with Israel. 

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* Iran/Saudi Arabia Deal; Abraham Accords; US/Israeli Policy;
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