I would be happy to be a fly on the wall at the meeting of Mossad representatives with their colleagues in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. That meeting was forced by reality in order to find out what was behind the Saudi rapprochement with Iran and what summaries were reached in private rooms. That’s how it is in diplomacy. When your friend suddenly falls on the neck of your enemy, it is customary to ask him for details and secrets. The Mossad trusts the relationship with the Saudis, and therefore it is likely that its emissaries will make the inquiry. I don’t envy them. Not because they were not well received. vice versa. They got the respect they deserved. Because this time they came bent over.
For many years, Israel repeated and said that the military option is always on the table when it comes to the Iranians. so she said There was a time when the Saudis still believed that they had eliminated the Iranian nukes. So believe. Israel is an old friend, and indeed it owes nothing to Saudi Arabia, but the palace has to fend for itself in the surrounding sea of sharks. And after several years in which Nahal suffered disappointment at the hands of the Israelis, and was almost abandoned to his fate at the hands of the Americans, the Saudis did the required act. If they do not defeat the Iranians, at least they will reduce the distance from them.
On Friday a week ago, Riyadh and Tehran surprised the world with an announcement on their behalf about a breakthrough in the talks. Seven years of disconnection, since 2016, came to an end. Each side stated that it undertakes to cease interfering in the sovereignty of the other. Within two months at the most, embassies will be reopened in both capitals. Then multi-channel reconciliation talks will begin. The mediator, Chinese President Xi Jinping, shone as a father celebrating his firstborn.
It was a double win for Xi Jinping. The work of mediation during the difficult days of the negotiations was actually done by Iraq and the principalities of Oman, but the score was finally recorded in Beijing. This is also an achievement of firsts for the Chinese, who had never before served as mediators in a conflict in the Middle East. Now they have turned from an economic player into a political actor.
Acquaintances from the region reassured me this week and said that Saudi Arabia will not rush to fall into Iran’s arms. On the way they also calmed themselves down. There is a chasm between the two, and to bridge it, trust needs to be restored in a process that takes years. These are open wounds, and the gaps touch core issues. Among them the Iranian nuclear. The leader of the Sunni world will find it difficult to live next to a nuclear neighbor and maintain normal relations with her as if nothing had happened. The Iranians will probably refuse to part with the luxury toy, which will always leave some level of tension between them.
The Saudis have repeatedly tried to reduce their nuclear arsenal with the help of the White House. For several years they have been asking Washington to grant them a nuclear package. This package includes knowledge to establish a nuclear reactor for energy production, as well as a green light for the project, which will give it international kosher. The fact that the Saudis chose the Americans first is a compliment to Washington, but the begging hand was politely declined. The White House, especially in the Biden era, does not trust Saudi Arabia. She has a past as a slanderer and Jihad is to her detriment. Joe Biden and his people fear that with the knowledge they will receive for peace purposes, Saudi Arabia will do over the years what Iran did to it.
Bin Salman let Israel understand that he is ready to break forward for peace even without extreme demands on the Palestinian issue, but he was waiting for good news from Washington. This was the proposed deal: normalization with Israel in exchange for a nuke. He and his people hoped that Jerusalem would serve as an example of honesty in their case. As an insurance policy, check the pulse with the Iranians in the meantime. But the White House delayed, and progress was made with the Iranians. Peace with Israel has moved away, and only history will be able to judge whether we lost. It is possible that the disgraced American president has stopped a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. A Saudi nuke would have created a similar need for the Turks, Egyptians, Jordanians and others.
Many of those involved in Gulf politics believe that Biden is still able to bring Saudi Arabia back into America’s bosom, if he gives in to its demands. The Saudis have not closed the door, and in their hearts they long for an American hug even now. They did not voluntarily choose their new friends, but were pushed to them.
The Israeli angle
And Iran? Walking from success to success. After dismantling the restrictive nuclear agreement, it is racing towards the bomb, and it was recently learned that it enriched uranium by 84%. In the east, it managed to tighten its commercial and political relations with China, and in the west it upgraded its relations with Moscow. In the last year, it has been providing the Russian army with vital weapons in its war in Ukraine. And here she also managed to neutralize, at least in the minds of the masses, her sworn enemy Saudi Arabia. Today’s Iran is indeed struggling with an unstable economy and international sanctions and is in an acute internal crisis, but its international status has been significantly upgraded. Another moment and “Aviv Tehran” will be announced there.
Bell was inclined to think that the move towards rapprochement, as far as Saudi Arabia was concerned, was entirely due to disappointment regarding the nuclear. Saudi Arabia is in a tremendous development boom, especially in the field of tourism. Just this week the Crown Prince announced the establishment of a new airline, “Riyadh Air”. The company will fly to a hundred destinations and will employ 200,000 workers at its peak. Mohammed bin Salman will not only bring millions of tourists a year to the new kingdom that will flourish, but will also fly them on the wings of his eagles. At the same time, he establishes new cities, develops wonderful attractions in the desert, and recruits historians and archaeologists to formulate a new national narrative, which will be based on evidence and findings. To implement his bombastic vision, bin Salman needs hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Ali Khamenei (Photo: Reuters)
He finds these billions in the treasury of the kingdom. This coffers are as full as ever, but in the last decade, a lot of capital has flowed out of it, which was wasted on financing the war in Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran are not fighting head-on. They make the yards of others deserted. In Yemen, the Iranians funded loyalist militias, and the Saudis sent their air force to massacre them. In Syria, the Saudis worked to finance rebel factions in order to overthrow Assad and weaken the Iranian camp. In Iraq they support the Sunni tribes, who are working to curb the Shiite influence. And in Lebanon they give a warm shoulder to the Sunni community and the national army.
Peace is infinitely cheaper than war, and therefore reconciliation is the right thing for both. If it goes well, the palace will be able to direct the billions to economic development. So is Iran. The fight against the Saudis and their brothers has cost her a huge fortune over the years, but unlike them, she needs this money as oxygen. From the reconciliation she may gain sevenfold. Friendship with Saudi Arabia will bring it closer to the Arab world. It has the power to create a wide crack in the international sanctions imposed on it by the West. Reconciliation will politically weaken its enemies, Israel, the USA and the powers of the European Union. And who knows where it will end up.
“There will be no great love there, these will be business relations, if at all,” an Arab businessman who lives in one of the capitals of the Gulf ruled in my ears. He is pessimistic about the success of reconciliation, and therefore is not worried about us, the Israelis. The hostility between Riyadh and Tehran is also deeply rooted in history. These are not just rival countries, but two civilizations, Arabs and Persians, who have been fighting each other since before the advent of Christianity. After the split in Islam in the seventh century, which gave birth to the Shia, a sectarian dimension was added to the hostility. Both oil powers that used to compete with each other (until Iran got involved in sanctions) and also two centers of religious power. For the Shiites, Najaf and Karbala are no less important than Mecca and Medina.
Reconciliation is only in its beginnings and it is too early to predict where it will end, but we can already learn from it a lesson that repeats itself among our neighbors, especially the tribesmen. Hate is not eternal. Whatever the circumstances, they will never close the gate to the other. It will always be possible to develop them, even if many years have passed, and even if rivers of blood have been spilled.
The writer is the commentator on Arab affairs of Gali IDF