Blinken cautions Israel-Saudi normalization won’t be quick

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said the U.S. is deeply invested in normalizing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but he cautioned against a timeline that would see a breakthrough in relations “quickly or easily.”

The secretary will raise the issue of normalization between Jerusalem and Riyadh during a trip to Saudi Arabia this week, he said in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy summit in Washington, D.C. 

“The United States has a real national security interest in promoting normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. We believe that we can, and indeed we must, play an integral role in advancing it,” Blinken said. 

“Now, we have no illusions that this can be done quickly or easily. But we remain committed to working toward that outcome,” he added.

The secretary’s remarks downplay earlier reports that the White House was looking to establish an agreement by the end of the year and before the 2024 campaign season begins in earnest. 

Saudi Arabia has held back from bringing quiet security ties with Israel out into the open in the absence of specific U.S. commitments to Riyadh — in particular, calls for a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense pact, help building a civilian nuclear program and weapons sales largely safeguarded from partisan criticisms on Capitol Hill. 

Establishing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a major win for the Biden administration. It would build on the Trump administration’s initial brokering of the Abraham Accords, the name for the 2020 agreement that established ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. 

Having public diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel is viewed as the apex of shifting power dynamics in the Middle East and Gulf, in particular countering Iran’s influence in the region and growing security and economic opportunities between Israel, its Arab and Gulf neighbors and the U.S.