As Trump touts $$ & peace deals on Arab tour, Israel feels left behind
As US President Trump announces investment deals and efforts to forge peace deals on his trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates this week, Israel feels left behind.
Blindsided by the Trump administration cutting a deal directly with Hamas for the release of the last living American hostage held by Hamas, Edan Alexander; threatening to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza indefinitely; and opposed to an obtainable nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not find himself having much to offer Trump, who seems far more interested this term in forging peace deals and trade deals than in expensive and uncertain military conflicts.
Trump, in a lengthy speech in the Saudi capital today, and in a pre-trip press conference yesterday, never uttered “Israel” once, though he had reportedly spoken with Netanyahu yesterday morning.
“I want to make a deal with Iran,” Trump told an audience of Saudi and American officials and businesspeople in Riyadh today. “If I can make a deal with Iran, I'll be very happy if we're going to make your region and the world a safer place.”
“But if Iran's leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors, then we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero like I did before,” he said.
“I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very profound, which obviously they are in the case of Iran,” Trump also said.
“I have never believed in having permanent enemies,” he said.
‘Lost opportunity for Israel’
“I was listening to President Trump’s speech, and I couldn’t help but feel that this is a tremendous lost opportunity for Israel, given the strong desire by Trump to have made progress on [Israel-Saudi] normalization by now, if not concluded it,” Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, said in an interview.
With Netanyahu reluctant to end the war in Gaza in order to preserve his right-wing political coalition, much less countenance any steps that would advance Palestinian statehood aspirations after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks that killed over 1,200 Israelis, the prospects for Saudi-Israel normalization in the near term seem frozen. Meantime, Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states have restored relations with Iran and now prefer that Washington and Tehran reach a negotiated deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program rather than face the prospect of another destabilizing conflict in the region.
“Saudi Arabia and the GCC have figured out that President Trump is interested in political wins and positive headlines, and so they are more than happy to give him a lot of that on his current tour, which I call the trillion dollar tour,” Maksad said.
“And the fact that Israeli PM Netanyahu either does not seem to understand or was incapable of delivering on this for Trump only feeds into this growing gap between the two allies,” the US and Israel, Maksad said. “It is one that is not only on normalization, but certainly also on Yemen, and most importantly, perhaps, Iran. And here we see the Gulf States, again, breaking with Israel and winning Trump over, on pushing for a negotiated outcome, rather than conflict over Iran's nuclear program.”
The Persian Gulf nation of Oman has been mediating four rounds of US-Iran talks held to date with the Trump administration, and helped mediate a ceasefire between the US and Yemen’s Houthi rebels that Trump announced last week. Qatar as well as Egypt have been hosting Gaza hostage release and ceasefire talks.
Saudi Arabia has also sought to play a role to possibly help facilitate an American/Iranian deal that prevents conflict, as they have hosted Trump administration meetings with Russia and Ukraine.
“And so the GCC right now on the Iran issue is on the opposite side of things than the Israelis, and Trump seems more inclined to go with the route of diplomacy rather than the route of conflict,” Maksad said.
‘Innovative ideas’ emerged at latest Iran deal talks
The last round of US-Iran nuclear talk that Oman hosted on Sunday, between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, made progress, both the US and Iran have said.
“In the short run, first they had to get over key obstacles in terms of end game objectives of both sides,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, told me. Some issues had “bogged them down, until the last round.”
“Some innovative ideas came to the fore, and that could be the subject of conversation in the next few rounds,” Vaez said.
“What happened in this round was reconfirmation that the US is not boxed into a maximalist demand that would just be unworkable for the other side,” Vaez said.
Witkoff is getting more expert level support from long time US government nuclear and Iran experts, including Jon Kreykes, a veteran nonproliferation expert with the Department of Energy, and others, Diplomatic understands.
Turkey to host further diplomacy this week
Meantime, Iran is expected to meet with the E3—Britain, France, and Germany—at the deputy level in Istanbul on Friday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other US officials are also expected to go later this week to Turkey, which is hosting meetings on NATO, Syria, and possibly high level Ukraine-Russia talks.
Trump in Saudi Arabia today said he had ordered the cessation of US sanctions on Syria, following the fall of dictator Bashar Assad last fall; and would send Rubio to meet the Syrian foreign minister in Istanbul later this week.
In recent Saudi preparations for the Trump trip, “Syria was very high on the agenda,” the Eurasia Group’s Maksad said. “The Saudis are concerned that if Syria goes sideways, Iran would be able to take advantage, and make inroads again. They also want to ensure an Arab role in Syria amidst rising Turkish and Israeli rivalry.
As to reported Iranian discussion of a possible regional nuclear fuel bank to supply fuel to civil nuclear power programs in the Gulf, Maksad said he tended to doubt the Saudis would be extremely interested in that.
“However,” he added, “it was noteworthy for me that a deal on civil nuclear power was missing,” from Trump’s speech today in Riyadh, he said. “It may not be ready yet. … I wonder whether that is pending which way the negotiations with Iran will go, and whether Iran would be allowed some enrichment…Obviously, this is an ongoing debate in the administration. So that might be the reason why we didn’t see an otherwise expected announcement on a joint venture between the US and Saudi Arabia on civil nuclear energy.”
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