Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Recently, the two co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs, titled, “The Case Against Israeli-Saudi Normalization: A Deal Won’t Forge a Two-State Solution or Push China Out of the Middle East.” Diwan interviewed them in early October to get their perspective on why they adopted a position that runs against the mainstream thinking in Washington, which strongly favors such an agreement.
Michael Young: You both recently wrote an article for Foreign Affairs in which you took a position that challenges that of the Biden administration, saying the United States should not seek to advance Saudi-Israeli normalization. What is your argument?
Jennifer Kavanagh: We argue that the administration’s proposed Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement is a bad deal for American interests in the region, because it forces the United States to give up too much and take on too many costs and risks, with little upside. The deal’s proponents argue that the accord would advance U.S. interests in three ways: by ending the war in Gaza and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; by blocking Beijing’s inroads into the Middle East with restrictions on China’s security ties in the kingdom; and by countering Iran and its militant proxies. In reality, it would accomplish none of these aims but would further enmesh the United States in a region that successive presidents have tried to pivot away from, with a security guarantee that commits Washington to defend a deeply repressive and unreliable Arab state. This would be a liability and would deepen U.S. entanglement in the region’s security issues at exactly the time when an already overstretched U.S. military needs to focus its attention elsewhere.
Instead of the United States persisting with its single-minded pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization, we recommend that it refocus on helping regional partners take on the more serious causes of instability in the region. A grand bargain between Saudi Arabia and Israel, brokered by an outside power, cannot address these challenges, and trying to achieve it will leave the United States and the region worse off. Instead, true stability gains in the region will require active engagement and commitment from the region’s own people and governments.
MY: If the ongoing war in Gaza has underlined one thing, it is that previous Arab-Israeli agreements, collectively known as the Abraham Accords, have neither managed to circumvent the Palestinian-Israeli conflict nor have brought Palestinians closer to statehood. Amid clear signs Israel rejects the very idea of a Palestinian state, aren’t such agreements, including a potential Saudi-Israeli deal, just ways of killing the Palestinian cause, meaning they will lack legitimacy in much of the Arab world?
Fred Wehrey: In effect, yes. The Biden administration failed to learn the lessons of the previous accords, which, by design, evaded the tough U.S. policy choices needed to directly address the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Saudi-Israeli normalization push repeated that flawed regionalization template. Administration officials believed that somehow the Saudi deal would be different, insofar as it hoped that the Saudis would bring a fresh proposal to the table and that the prospect of normalization with this Arab heavyweight—and its expected economic and symbolic benefits—would be enough of an incentive to moderate the Israeli position toward Palestinian statehood.
MY: As you noted, such an agreement would entangle the United States more in a region from which it would do better to pivot away. Could you clarify how the agreement would do so, and does your reasoning suggest you favor a reduction in U.S. ties with its traditional allies in the region—above all Saudi Arabia and Israel?
JK: The agreement would provide Saudi Arabia with a U.S. security guarantee that would commit the United States to defend the kingdom in the event of an external attack. To support this guarantee and make its commitment credible, Washington would likely need to keep additional U.S. forces deployed forward, inside Saudi Arabia and nearby, deepening the already extensive American military presence and role in the region. If an attack were to occur, the United States would then be dragged into a costly war, even where it has few interests at stake.
Saudi Arabia has already proven itself to be a high-risk ally. Armed with a U.S. security guarantee, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler, may be willing to make ill-advised and provocative moves against adversaries such as Iran or Ansar Allah, more commonly referred to as the Houthis, in Yemen. As a result, the normalization agreement could also end up increasing the risks of conflict in the Middle East, with the United States shouldering a large portion of the burden.
With its military under strain, the U.S. military cannot afford to allocate more resources to the Middle East, but must instead prioritize security challenges elsewhere, especially in East Asia. Pivoting U.S. military power away from the Middle East to Asia would alter the relationship between the United States and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, especially in the military domain, where these allies would need to take on greater responsibility for their own defense and regional security issues, without relying on a U.S. backstop. But it would not necessarily mean weakened ties generally. The United States could retain and even increase economic or diplomatic engagement in the region.
MY: The main target of such a deal would be, implicitly, Iran, which Saudi Arabia regards as its main regional challenge, despite improved Saudi-Iranian ties in the past year. At least, could you say a Saudi-Israeli deal backed by the United States would provide Saudi Arabia with protection against any Iranian moves?
FW: The U.S. already provides an extraordinary amount of military assistance to Saudi Arabia, particularly in the areas of air defense systems against Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, as well as maritime and coastal protection capabilities such as anti-ship missiles. This aid is in addition to the significant U.S. military presence in the Gulf, which is focused regionwide but benefits Saudi Arabia. The hardware available from all this is more than enough to defend the kingdom’s territory against an Iranian attack.
What we critique in the article is the broader, open-ended security guarantee, which would commit U.S. soldiers and materiel to defend Saudi Arabia from external aggression—a pledge that might disincentivize Riyadh from pursuing conciliatory diplomacy with its neighbors while emboldening it to embark on riskier adventures, based on assurance that it can count on U.S. backing.
We also argue that the American security guarantee included in the proposed deal is ill-suited for tackling a specific Iranian threat that may concern the Saudis as much as, or even more than, the danger of an Iranian attack against their territory. By this we mean the threat of subversion and meddling by Iranian proxies across the Arab world, as well as Iranian influence more broadly.
MY: Can you explain in more detail why a Saudi-Israeli agreement would not restrict Chinese influence in the Middle East.
JK: Under the terms of the proposed normalization deal, Saudi Arabia would bar China from building military bases in the kingdom, freeze weapons procurement and co-production with Beijing, and end security cooperation between the two countries, including joint military training and domestic security activities and technology sharing. The accord would also limit some types of security-related Chinese investment inside Saudi Arabia.
This sounds like a significant set of restrictions, but their effect would be limited at best. China does not gain its influence in Saudi Arabia, or in the Middle East, from its military activities or presence. It has no current or planned military bases in Saudia Arabia. Chinese weapons make up only a tiny fraction of Saudi arms purchases, and the two countries rarely conduct military exercises together. Beijing would lose Riyadh as a buyer for its domestic surveillance technology, but the normalization agreement would leave most Chinese economic investments in Saudi Arabia untouched, including China’s extensive role in Saudi infrastructure and ports, and its energy sector. As a result, China’s influence in the kingdom would likely remain largely undisturbed, even if Saudi leaders agree to and enforce the deal’s prohibitions to the letter.
MY: What does Washington’s pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization tell us about U.S. thinking on the region?
FW: The relentless push toward this deal reflects a rather two-dimensional reading of the region’s myriad problems and challenges, and the mistaken belief that these can be addressed through grand diplomatic agreements among elites. There’s no doubt that normalization is a good thing and can help lower tensions, but not at any cost. The Biden administration attached too many unrealistic expectations to this deal—containment of China, isolation of Iran, a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—which all point to a misunderstanding of how the Middle East works, as well as a neglect of history.
We argue in our piece that the opportunity costs of Biden’s preoccupation with the deal have been tremendous, even if the agreement remains unrealized. It has distracted Washington from tackling other, more important, drivers of conflict in the Middle East, including authoritarianism, corruption, human rights abuses, the lack of economic opportunities for young people, climate change, and, most importantly at the current moment, addressing the Gaza war on its own terms, through greater and more direct U.S. pressure on Israel. This is what it should be focusing on rather than using the misplaced “carrot” of normalization with Saudi Arabia to manufacture a resolution.
