As November elections near in the US, Saudi Arabia works to finalize defense treaty

The Biden administration is close to finalizing a mutual security pact with Saudi Arabia. Under the treaty, the US would commit to defending Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is attacked, and Saudi Arabia would allow the US to use Saudi territory and airspace to protect its interests.

The draft treaty, which is modelled loosely on the US-Japan mutual security pact, is part of a larger package that also includes a civil nuclear pact and a weapons sales deal that would grant Riyadh access to US-made weapons and technology.

The security deal would prohibit China from building military bases in Saudi Arabia, a move that is meant to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s ties to the US. 

If the treaty is signed and passed through Congress, Saudi Arabia will become the only Arab state with a formal US defense treaty. 

Expectations for the deal to be reached 

The deal is not expected to receive the two-thirds Senate majority it would need to be ratified unless it includes a plan for normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

Saudi Arabia has refused to recognize Israel as a state since the country’s founding in 1948. While cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia has slowly increased, Riyadh has said that it will recognize the state of Israel only once an independent Palestinian state is recognized. Saudi Arabia has also been publicly critical of Israel’s war effort.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that the establishment of a Palestinian state is not currently on the table and that Israel will stop the war only after achieving total victory. Israeli opposition to a two-state solution could jeopardize the possibility of a normalization deal, potentially stymieing President Joe Biden’s plans. 

“Biden’s administration is trying to push Israel to be on board, but it is not an easy task for Netanyahu,” Marshall J. Breger, professor at Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and former Heritage Foundation senior fellow, told The Media Line: “He has always opposed a Palestinian state and has to deal with a lot of pressure from ultra-right-wing nationalists.”

The stakes are high for Israel, Breger said, since the deal would represent an agreement with the country at “the core of the Sunni world.”

Joshua Teitelbaum, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Bar-Ilan University and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told The Media Line that Biden is hoping to achieve Saudi-Israeli normalization to score political points before November’s election. 

President Donald Trump normalized ties between Israel and four Arab states through the 2020 Abraham Accords. Teitelbaum said Biden intends to show that he, too, can bring stability to the Middle East through diplomacy. 

“The US president is deciding to apply pressure on Netanyahu,” he said, noting that Biden pushed war cabinet member Benny Gantz to resign from Netanyahu’s cabinet. In an attempt to widen his coalition, Netanyahu might be forced to begin discussing Palestinian statehood, Teitelbaum said.

Breger was doubtful that Gantz’s resignation would do much to change the political equation. 

“Gantz has always been seen as the adult in the room by the States, and he is the one who has always been supportive of the cease-fire plans presented by Biden,” Breger said. “But his resignation won’t affect that much since Netanyahu’s government is safe, and nothing is going to change until the November elections at least.”

As part of the larger set of agreements with Saudi Arabia, the Biden administration is expected to lift a ban on offensive weapons sales to the kingdom. In 2021, the US froze weapons sales to Saudi Arabia after Riyadh’s military offensive against the Houthis inflicted heavy civilian casualties in Yemen.

Amid recent Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea, the Biden administration reversed its decision and marked the first steps toward the current deal.

“These strategic maneuvers are clearly showing the effort of the US to protect their alliance with Saudi Arabia,” Jean-Loup Samaan, senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and non-resident expert for the Montaigne Institute, told The Media Line. 

Cooperating on a civil nuclear program will strengthen US influence over Saudi Arabia, Samaan said. The kingdom had previously sought to work with China to build nuclear power plants. 

Despite Biden’s efforts, the normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia may not be ready by the November elections. 

“Saudi Arabia is not fully interested in normalization, but in order to get a defense treaty, it may accept it. But it is very unlikely that this process will happen soon since interim steps must be taken,” Teitelbaum explained. “For example, Saudi Arabia must educate its population about Jewish history and acceptance of Israel, as the UAE did. Furthermore, it has to deal with strong domestic support for the Palestinian cause.”

Samaan said that Saudi Arabia may not want to rush into normalized relations with Israel since the terms of any deal might change if Biden is not reelected. 

“Saudi Arabia has to think a lot before strengthening relations with Israel since this may backfire without the Palestinian issue on the table,” he said. 

Even if Trump keeps the terms of the deal the same, he may have less of a chance of passing the deal through Congress if Biden doesn’t manage to do so in time. Breger said that some anti-Saudi Democrats would hold their noses and vote for the deal under Biden but wouldn’t do so under Trump. 

“This is the best time to finalize this, before the elections, because the majority of both Democrats and Republicans are going to vote in favor,” Breger said. “It is up to Netanyahu to find a language that both he and the Saudis may agree on. The founders of the state would have dreamed of this, but the prime minister has to decide whether to be integrated into the region and normalized or the entirety of Israel’s biblical territory.”