Two state solution blocks Saudi-Israel peace deal, says Pompeo

It could be impossible to establish a Saudi Arabia-Israel peace deal if a prerequisite is the Palestinians receiving or accepting a Palestinian state, according to former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo helped orchestrate the Abraham Accords under former US president Donald Trump, which normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Bahrain.

Pompeo told The Jerusalem Post that it is impossible to imagine a two-state solution with the current Palestinian leadership who is underwriting terrorism, taking money from Iran, paying citizens to kill Israelis.

“It is very difficult to imagine how one would strike a deal with the very leaders that have rejected every reasonable offer with which they have been presented.”

Pompeo spoke to the Post the day after Saudi Arabia’s first ambassador to the Palestinian Authority, Nayef al-Sudairi, visited Ramallah. During his visit, al-Sudairi emphasized that creating a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital would be a fundamental cornerstone in any prospective agreement with Israel.

“The Arab Peace Initiative is the central point of any upcoming agreement,” al-Sudairi said.

Saudi Arabia Peace Initiative was initially ratified by the Arab League in 2002 and subsequently reaffirmed in 2007 and 2017. It requires a complete withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank and Golan Heights, establishing a Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee crisis.

In speaking about normalization with Saudi Arabia at the United Nations General Assembly last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We must not give the Palestinians a veto over new peace treaties with Arab states. The Palestinians could greatly benefit from a broader peace. They should be part of the process, but they should not have a veto over the process.”

Similarly, in an interview with Fox News, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did not mention a Palestinian state but only said that the Palestinian issue is very important. We need to solve that part.

He said, “We got to see where we go. We hope that we will reach a place that will ease the life of the Palestinians and get Israel as a player in the Middle East.”

Pompeo said every American president would support a normalization agreement – Democratic or Republican. He said it is in America’s interest to have security relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia and between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

He said peace would be more easily attainable with a Republican president, meaning one that understands the greatest threat to peace in the region is Iran.

He explained that the Abraham Accords advanced due to the Trump administration’s acknowledgment of Israel as America’s primary democratic ally in the region while identifying Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism and a significant threat to all other countries.

“When we isolate Iran, the region becomes more peaceful and prosperous,” Pompeo said.

 

Biden Climate Change Obsession Threatens US Security, says Pompeo

Lately, former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo said that President Joe Biden’s obsession to decarbonize the United States plays into the hands of adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), making them richer and more powerful while imposing costs on Americans and making them less safe.

In an op-ed published on December 05 in the Washington Examiner, Pompeo argued that the Biden administration’s focus on fighting climate change is misguided and will hurt US families while empowering the country’s adversaries.

He took aim at the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden recently described as the biggest, most important climate bill in the history of our country and which Pompeo said would make life more expensive for American families.

“The statement was telling, Americans were told its purpose was to reduce inflation, but in reality, it was a gas lighting Trojan horse,” Pompeo wrote in the op-ed, referring to Biden’s characterization of the Inflation Reduction Act, which the president made at a recent climate summit in Egypt.

Biden’s description of the measure perfectly encapsulated how climate change and green energy have skewed this administration’s priorities, Pompeo wrote.

When selling the Inflation Reduction Act to the American people, the Biden administration said it was meant to reduce inflation, which has been running close to a 40-year high.

Pompeo argued that in reality, it was a gas lighting Trojan horse meant to conceal the Biden administration’s real priority, which Pompeo said is to fight fossil fuels.

Pompeo also criticized US foreign policy under Biden as being so highly focused on fighting climate change that it diverts attention from the real threats posed by America’s adversaries on the world stage.

“Biden’s obsession to decarbonize America is guaranteed to enrich and empower the Chinese Communist Party,” he argued.

“A sizable portion of the law’s handout will go toward solar energy despite this administration being well aware that Chinese manufacturers dominate 80% of the market for solar panels and that many of them have ties to forced labor in Xinjiang,” he noted as an example.

When Pompeo served as Secretary of State under then President Donald Trump’s administration, he issued a determination that the CCP was guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity over its mistreatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Chinese officials have denied such allegations.

Congress later passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which banned the import of goods from Xinjiang and other regions with links to forced labor.

Even though Biden signed the UFLPA into law, Pompeo alleged that the current administration has displayed mixed feelings about enforcing the measure in its bid to win concessions from China on climate change.

John Kerry, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, faced allegations of lobbying against the UFLPA, which his spokesperson denied.

“This is false. Secretary Kerry has a thirty-seven-year record as a Senator and Secretary of State standing up for human rights and defending democracy,” a State Department spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon.

“As Secretary Kerry has said from the start, the United States and China have mutual interests in solving the climate crisis while there’s still time, even when we fundamentally disagree on other critical issues,” the spokesperson added.

Kerry also sidestepped a question during last year’s COP26 Climate Change Conference, saying the issue was not my lane.

He was responding to a question from a reporter if he had mentioned human rights issues, including forced labor in Xinjiang, in meetings with Chinese officials.

“Well, we’re honest. We’re honest about the differences, and we certainly know what they are and we’ve articulated them, but that’s not my lane here,” Kerry said in November 2021. “My job is to be the climate guy, and stay focused on trying to move the climate agenda forward.”

Pompeo recalled the controversy over Kerry’s remarks and called the climate czar’s comparison of the Biden administration’s climate diplomacy with China to former President Ronald Reagan’s arms reduction talks with the Soviet Union as foolish.

“Reagan was looking to make the world safer, while Biden is enabling genocide in exchange for making energy less affordable and reliable for Americans,” Pompeo said.

“And it is ironic, given the Chinese are building coal-fired power plants at a ridiculous rate and only making the problem worse,” he added.

Pompeo argued that by foolishly prioritizing climate change in its dealings with the CCP over gross human rights abuses, aggressive actions against US allies, and the CCP’s espionage activities in America, the Biden administration has empowered China.

 

United States backed militants looting 140,000 barrels per day of Syrian oil

Reportedly, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a militant group supported by the United States, is stealing around 140,000 barrels of crude oil on a daily basis from oil fields in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah.

Lately, Ghassan Halim Khalil, Governor of Hasakah, announced the grim news in an interview with the Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that Syrian oil is being plundered by the SDF militants in various ways, all with the participation and support of the US troops deployed in the region.

He stressed that precise intelligence collected and received show that the US-backed militants use tanker trucks from Taramish area in the vicinity of Tigris and in al-Malikiyah to smuggle the Syrian oil to neighboring Iraq.

Khalil further noted that many tanker trucks pass through the illegal al-Mahmoudiyah crossing into Iraq every day, adding that the SDF militants also regularly send stolen oil to their controlled areas in Syria.

The Syrian Governor also revealed that the US forces have ordered the SDF militants not to allow the Damascus-controlled areas receive oil.

Khalil added that while the Syrian people are suffering from the cold weather and hunger, these US-supported militants plunder Syria's national oil resources.

The US looting of Syrian oil was first confirmed during a Senate hearing exchange between South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo in July 2020.

During his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo confirmed for the first time that an American oil company would begin work in northeastern Syria, which is controlled by the SDF, which is an alliance of Kurdish militants operating against Damascus and currently controls areas in northern and eastern Syria.

The Syrian government denounced, in the strongest terms, the agreement inked to plunder the country's natural resources, including Syrian oil and gas under the sponsorship and support of the administration of former US President Donald Trump.

Since late October 2019, the US has been redeploying soldiers to the SDF-controlled oil fields in eastern Syria, in a reversal of Trump’s earlier order to withdraw all troops from the war-torn country.

The Pentagon claims that the move aims to protect the fields and facilities from possible attacks by the Daesh terrorists, while Trump openly said that the US seeks economic interests in controlling the oil fields.

A US-led military coalition has been pounding what it claimed was the positions of Daesh inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. The strikes have on many occasions resulted in civilian casualties and failed to fulfill their declared aim of countering terrorism.

The Pompeo ploy

In a sign of inability to prevent the incoming administration from rejoining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has resorted to what he took from the CIA archives to cook up a new story against Iran.

Lately, Pompeo participated in an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to level new accusations against Iran for its alleged links to the al-Qaeda (AQ) terrorist group. Pompeo claimed that Iran has become a “new Afghanistan” in terms of hosting al-Qaeda leaders.

“Al-Qaeda has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, bin Laden’s wicked creation is poised to gain strength and capabilities. We ignore this Iran-al-Qaeda nexus at our own peril. We need to acknowledge it. We must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it,” the hawkish top US diplomat claimed.

Pompeo pointed out that the United States has taken drastic measures against al-Qaeda since the 9/11 attacks. These measures, Pompeo claimed, have pushed the al-Qaeda members to search for a new haven.

“That effort drove al-Qaeda to search for a safer haven, and they found one. The Islamic Republic of Iran was the perfect choice,” he claimed. The outgoing US secretary of state went to say that Iran still has links to al-Qaeda.

Pompeo did not present any evidence to support his allegations, and, in fact, some of these allegations are nothing new. However, they elicited a strong response from Iran and Russia.

Iran termed Pompeo’s claims as “warmongering lies.”

“From designating Cuba to fictitious Iran 'declassifications' and AQ claims, 'we lie, cheat, steal' is pathetically ending his disastrous career with more warmongering lies. No one is fooled. All 9/11 terrorists came from @SecPompeo's favorite ME destinations; NONE from Iran,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted in response to Pompeo’s remarks.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry also rejected the allegations as “baseless,” calling on Pompeo to “die of anger.”

“Resorting to such ploys and threadbare and baseless claims can, by no means, help the terrorist US regime correct its path, which is full of mistakes, and restore the unjustifiable image of the officials of this regime,” Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. “As martyr Beheshti aptly put it, Mr. Pompeo! Be angry and die of this anger,” the spokesman continued.

Pompeo accused Iran of supporting al-Qaeda while ignoring his predecessor’s admission that it was the US that “created” and “funded” al-Qaeda. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said many times that the US has created and funded al-Qaeda to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan.

“Let’s remember here that people we are fighting today, we funded 20 years ago. And we did it because we were locked in the struggle with the Soviet Union; they invaded Afghanistan. And we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work. And it was President Reagan in partnership with the Congress led by Democrats, who said you know what? Sounds like a pretty good idea. Let’s deal with the ISIS and the Pakistani military, and let's go recruit these mujahidin. And great, let's get some to come from Saudi Arabia and other places, importing their Wahhabi brand of Islam, so that we can go beat the Soviet Union. And guess what? They retreated. They lost billions of dollars, and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Clinton infamously said testifying before a Congressional committee.

But why does Pompeo ignore these facts? The question is simple, because he hates the 2015 Iran nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – and wants to make sure that the incoming Biden administration would not be able to return to it.

This was on full display during his Tuesday speech. Pompeo sought to use the alleged links between Iran and al-Qaeda to warn against reviving the JCPOA. He claimed that before 2015, Iranian authorities had strictly restricted the movement of al-Qaeda members living inside of Iran, “putting them under virtual house arrest.”

“But I have to say today that is not the situation. Indeed, everything changed in 2015 – the same year that the Obama administration and the E3 – France, Germany, and Britain – were in the middle of finalizing the JCPOA,” Pompeo noted.

He then tried to imply that Iran may use its links to al-Qaeda to put pressure on JCPOA signatories to revive the nuclear deal.

“Imagine that al-Qaeda starts carrying out attacks at Iran’s behest, even if the control is not perfect.  Who is to say that this isn’t the next form of blackmail to pressure countries back into a nuclear deal?” Pompeo asked.

Pompeo is clearly trying to torpedo any future effort to revive the JCPOA. Over the past few years, he has taken many measures to ensure that the nuclear deal will not be revived. Pompeo led the Trump administration’s efforts to change the logic of sanctions and, in some cases, reimpose previously imposed sanctions under non-nuclear-related authorities, including the U.S.’s counterterrorism sanctions authority. The main purpose of these measures was to create what pro-Trump experts call a “wall of sanctions,” a strategy that aims to make it harder for the Biden administration to lift sanctions against Iran.

Establishing links between Iran and al-Qaeda may be intended to make it even more difficult for the incoming US administration to lift sanctions that were re-imposed under United States counterterrorism sanctions authority.  Pompeo may have succeeded in doing so.

In his recent interview with the website of the Leader’s office, Zarif said that a US return to the JCPOA will not be enough anymore because the US has imposed pre-JCPOA sanctions and changed their logic to terrorism-related authorities, which made the lifting of sanctions even more difficult.

According to Zarif, when the JCPOA was negotiated there was a different kind of sanctions imposed on Iran and the JCPOA has outlined how these sanctions would be lifted but the situation has changed after the Trump administration pulled out of the JCPOA.

“Over the past four years, Trump worked to hollow out the JCPOA and impose sanctions that even if the U.S. returns to the JCPOA, they will remain in place. For example, they (the Trump administration) removed nuclear-related sanctions on our Central Bank and Petroleum Ministry and imposed sanctions on them under counterterrorism authority. They basically changed the logic of sanctions,” Zarif said.

Biden appeasing Iran would be bad for US security, says Mike Pompeo

Lifting sanctions on Iran while it maintains its nuclear aspirations will endanger America and the world, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in an interview for The Jerusalem Post-Khaleej Times conference.

“If we appease Iran, if we underwrite Iran, if we allow Europeans to reenter [Iran] and create wealth for the kleptocrats at the head of this theocracy, that would be a bad thing for the region’s security, for Europe’s security and for American security,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo expressed hope that President-elect Joe Biden’s administration “will recognize that this is not 2015…The whole world can recognize that Iran is the destabilizing influence in the whole Middle East.”

The Trump administration left the 2015 Iran deal in 2018, and has maintained a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against the Islamic Republic. Biden has said he intends to bring the US back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran deal’s official name, along with an Iranian return to compliance.

Iran has repeatedly violated the agreement, most recently declaring last week that it would enrich uranium up to 20% in the underground Fordow facility.

As a result of the “maximum pressure,” Pompeo said “it’s very clear that Iran is more isolated than it has ever been.”

“Our decision to abandon the ridiculous thing called the JCPOA, which enabled, armed and provided resources and money to the largest state sponsor of terror in the world…put Iran in a place where it had to make hard decisions about its own economy, whether to feed its own people or fund Shi’a militias in Iraq and Syria,” he said.

Should Iran change its ways, the US can engage with its regime, Pompeo said, but “if they don’t, the US has to make sure it is part of a coalition that works alongside each other to promote stability in the Middle East.”

Building that coalition was one of the major factors in launching the Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates established diplomatic relations with Israel in August, followed by Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

“One of the things that enabled the Abraham Accords was America’s recognition that the most important players in this effort [against Iran] were the countries in the region, Gulf states, Israel – all those players were truly impacted,” Pompeo said.

Still, Pompeo said those countries did not just normalize ties with Israel because of the US; “it happened because it was the right thing to do.”

“Those sovereign nations came to the Abraham Accords…because it was the right thing for their own people,” he said. “These commercial, security and diplomatic relationships will continue to grow, and I hope the US will be an encouragement for that.”

The Abraham Accords has allowed the countries to partner with Israel to be “safer, more prosperous and more secure,” Pompeo said.

Normalization with Israel is “the right direction of travel for the entire region,” he added.

Asked if the rioting at the US Capitol last week was an obstacle to more countries establishing relations with Israel in the final days of US President Donald Trump’s term, Pompeo said he saw no correlation whatsoever.

“It’s not binary, normalizing or not. We see lots of countries moving in the right direction even if they have not formally signed the Abraham Accords,” he said.

Pompeo projected that Muslim-majority nations in Asia and Africa will likely be next to have open ties with Israel.

“It truly augurs well for security in the region,” he said.

Asked about the Pompeo Doctrine, his declaration that the State Department no longer sees settlements as illegal per se, he said: “We knew we had to recognize reality", adding that the US recognition does not undermine security for any country in the region. 

Similarly, Pompeo said that Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people and Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights are “just reality, and we recognized it.”

“We were told if we recognize those things all hecks would break loose and that didn't materialize,” he added.

At the same time, Pompeo said that the Trump administration worked to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling its peace plan “a real, true pathway for better existence for the Palestinian people.”

“The Palestinian leadership must get on board,” he said.

Will Saudi-Israel relations normalize after Joe Biden takes oath?

The Jerusalem Post has disclosed, there are expectations that there will be normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia by the end 2021. There is high confidence among some that normalization will not come before the Trump administration exits nor in the early stages of the Biden administration, but certain trends will be evident in their own ways.

The assertions come following a series of sometimes complementary and sometimes seemingly contradictory statements by top Israeli officials in recent months as the normalization trend lurched forward. Confronted with the assertions, the Foreign Ministry had no official comment.

Last week, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said that a deal could come with the Saudis in the next few years, but not before 20th January 2021 – nor did he publicly specify by the end of 2021.

This came following Cohen’s statement on 2nd November 2020 that a deal with the Saudis could be close, though he qualified his prediction in light of uncertainty at the time about who would win the US election as well as future Iran policy.

On 23rd November it was widely reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as part of a joint visit to the Kingdom along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

A flood of confirmations and denials – Netanyahu himself publicly refused to comment - appeared to make it clear that the visit had happened and was viewed as a sign of relations moving forward, but was supposed to have been kept secret.

Incidentally, the Post has learned before that MBS has previously secretly visited Israel.

Back on 25th October 25021 Channel 12 had reported that Mossad Director Yossi Cohen had privately said to those around him that the Saudis were waiting until after the US election, but that they could potentially announce normalization as a “gift” to the winner.

The implication from the report was that such an announcement could even come almost immediately after the election.

However, the Post reported later that the Channel 12 report either misunderstood or did not fully flesh out what the Mossad’s Director had said. In actuality, Cohen’s comments in closed conversations in October had been more nuanced.

Speaking a week before the US election, the Post learned that the spymaster had said that if US President Donald Trump won, there could be an almost immediate announcement.

Yet – if as the polls correctly predicted – now President-elect Joe Biden won the election, although the Saudis would still want a normalization deal with Israel, there would not necessarily be a clear timeline.

Cohen had emphasized that the Saudis did not want to give a gift to Trump and then get nothing for it upon a Biden administration taking over the reins.

Rather, Cohen understood at the time that a Biden administration may want to link normalization with the Saudis to progress with negotiations with the Palestinians.

This was the opposite tactic of the Trump administration, which was trying to pressure the Palestinians to show flexibility in negotiations with Israel by moving ahead with normalization deals without them.

What is interesting about the latest information learned by the Post is that now, almost two months after the US election, there is once again higher confidence that there will be a deal with the Saudis by the end of 2021.

If before November 3, there was far more uncertainty from both Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen and Mossad Director Yossi Cohen about how the Saudis would conduct themselves with Biden, now there are top officials who have greater confidence on the issue.

Though some of this could be from informal signals sent between Israeli officials and Biden transition figures, some of the confidence may come from a renewed understanding of the Saudis’ intentions regardless of how exactly they are treated by the incoming administration.

Mossad chief Cohen first suggested the possibility of official ties with the Saudis in a rare on-record interview with Channel 12 in mid-September and has been secretly visiting there for years.

Former IDF chief Lt. Gen. (ret.) Gadi Eisenkot in 2017 publicly announced that Israel was sharing intelligence with the Saudis as the countries grew closer. 

Netanyahu trip to Saudi Arabia signifies importance of ties between two countries

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad chief Yossi Cohen met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in Neom, Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Israeli sources confirmed. Netanyahu used a private plane belonging to businessman Udi Angel, which he has used for past diplomatic trips. The plane left Israel at 5.00 pm on Sunday and returned after midnight.

The trip was kept tightly under wraps, with Netanyahu not informing Defense Minister Benny Gantz or Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi before it took place. "Gantz is doing politics while the prime minister is making peace," Netanyahu's social media adviser tweeted as reports of the visit came out.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also met with Netanyahu and MBS in Neom, a new city in northern Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea meant to show of the Kingdoms’ technological advancement.

A trip by Netanyahu to Saudi Arabia showcased the importance of Israel-Saudi Arabia ties in the last months of the Trump administration. This is important for numerous reasons, including regional alliances and security and economic ties that are flowering between Israel the Gulf States after the Abraham Accords.

Topaz Luk, Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister tweeted about Netanyahu “doing peace.” KAN correspondent Amichai Stein tweeted that the Prime Minister traveled to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo tweeted about his “Constructive visit with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Neom. The United States and Saudi Arabia have come a long way since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz Al Saud first laid the foundation for our ties 75 years ago.”

The meeting came as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels fired ballistic missiles at an Aramco installation in Jeddah, which is far south of Neom, where the apparent meeting took place. Boris Johnson had noted during the recent G20, hosted by Saudi Arabia, that he wished he could have visited.

In this sense the center of the story is also about Saudi Arabia’s future. Riyadh has been talking more about climate change and trying to showcase the city of the future, the planned city of Neom which will cost hundreds of billions to build but will show what Saudi Arabia’s future can be.

While Riyadh has suffered diplomatic setbacks on the world stage in recent years, it has been trying to shore up support. Working with the current US administration and supporting peaceful outreach from Bahrain and the UAE to Israel have been part of that.

Saudi Arabia was the main engine behind the Arab peace initiative of 2002 and supported the concept of peace and normalization with Israel, with a Palestinian state being created. It doesn’t want to go back on that promise.

The UAE has posited that peace has helped stop Israeli annexation. Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US and Hend al-Otaiba, the spokesperson at the Foreign Ministry who recently penned an op-ed in Tablet, have stressed this point.

The Emirates and Bahrain are deeply investing in coexistence and interfaith initiatives, and Israelis are running to embrace them. Saudi Arabia, the larger of the countries and a global power in the Muslim world, has been more cautious, but has the same overall agenda as it speaks about reform and change.

However, Saudi Arabia has challenges abroad. It has been critiqued for human rights abuses in recent years, especially in the wake of breaking relations with Qatar in 2017.

Qatar and Turkey have mobilized state media and allies in Western governments, academia and media to portray Saudi Arabia as a human rights violator. The truth is more complex. Riyadh has been a monarchy for the last century and has had the same human rights issues in the 1990s as it has today.

The sudden daylight in relations that Riyadh feels from Western powers is about more than just an objective view of the situation in the kingdom, it is about some agendas being pushed by those in the West who seek a redress to decades of the West being close to Middle East Gulf countries. There are also claims that those who are more close to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood have driven this narrative, trying to portray Riyadh more negatively than Qatar and Turkey.  

The result  has been much closer visible work between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as between the UAE, Bahrain, India, Jordan, Greece and Egypt and Israel. This system of countries is juxtaposed with the Iranian alliance that includes its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and the Turkey-Qatar alliance that includes Hamas.

These countries work on opposite sides in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon. Riyadh is a supporter of Sunnis in Lebanon and Iraq, for instance, but must seek to fight for their hearts and minds against Turkey. This is a global struggle that also involves Pakistan and Malaysia. And it also involves Israel.

That is why the Pompeo visit, fresh from meeting the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Saudi hosting of the G20, the Houthi missile fire and reports of Netanyahu’s trip are all part of the same story. Saudi Arabia appeared to be moving toward peace with Israel. That would open many doors. But there are questions in Riyadh about what will change next year under President-elect Joe Biden.

Biden has been critical of Saudi Arabia and also of Turkey. US commentators critique the Riyadh-led war against the Houthis in Yemen. Major think tanks, some of which are warmer toward Iran or Qatar, seek to tarnish Saudi Arabia’s image. But at the G20 meeting Riyadh and Ankara appeared to be getting along better.

Many wonder what comes next. Closer Saudi-Israeli ties could be on the list. Riyadh has been flexible about flights and more openly supportive of the Abraham Accords. There is a role that Israel could play in the Saudi economy and cities like Neom if there were normalization. It could also mean a re-alignment of other issues from Iraq to Lebanon.

Clearly the willingness to be more open about these types of meetings is part and parcel of a movement in a direction that has been paved by Abu Dhabi and its innovative approach to rapidly expanding ties. Flights begin on 26th November to Dubai, for instance. That is symbolic, as symbolic as the business jet that left Israel at five in the afternoon yesterday and appeared headed to Neom.