Just Say No to the Saudis' 'Plan B'

It is clearly a bad, one-sided deal that creates new obligations for the U.S. that we can’t afford.

The Guardian reports that the Saudis are looking to make a separate deal with the U.S. in which Washington gives them everything they want in exchange for nothing:

All three parts of the draft deal involve the US giving vital strategic assistance to Saudi security. In place of progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Saudi monarchy is presenting a purely bilateral deal as a US win in its efforts to contain Iranian expansionism and in Washington’s “great-power competition”, particularly with China.

This “less for less” agreement is no better for the U.S. than one that also involves Israel. In both arrangements, the U.S. is expected to hand out major favors and commitments and gets nothing for its trouble except extra burdens in the future. The Saudis don’t want the free giveaway to be put at risk by tying it to an agreement with Israel, and they are naturally still happy to accept the bribe that Biden was going to give them for normalization. It is clearly a bad, one-sided deal that creates new obligations for the U.S. that we can’t afford.

The Saudi government can see how desperate the Biden administration is to secure any deal that they can tout as a foreign policy success, and they are exploiting that desperation to extract huge concessions. No doubt Riyadh is telling the administration that it is a “win” for the U.S. to give them more gifts, but why is anyone in Washington buying into this? It is not in the American interest to fight any more wars in the Middle East, and this deal would trap the U.S. into doing just that. The current level of support for Saudi Arabia has already encouraged aggression against their neighbors, and a formal defense agreement would likely make things even worse.

Leave aside for the moment that the Saudi government is one of the worst in the world. What does the U.S. possibly gain by adding to its long list of formal security commitments with a Saudi pact? The Saudis have proven in Yemen that they are a huge liability and a menace to regional stability. Their foreign policy since at least 2015 has been a disaster for everyone involved. Their own “efforts to contain Iranian expansionism” caused one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises at the same time that it strengthened Iran’s ties to the Houthis.

Any halfway competent administration would never have pursued the foolish normalization scheme in the first place. Now that the Saudis are proposing their “plan B” that doesn’t include normalization, it is time for the Biden administration to admit failure and walk away from the table. The failure of the administration’s only major diplomatic initiative in the region will be embarrassing for them, but it will cost the U.S. far less than a disastrous giveaway to Mohammed bin Salman.