A Riyadh-Jerusalem Entente

A Riyadh-Jerusalem Entente
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702303670804579234080961357104
By Walter Russell Mead
Updated Dec. 6, 2013 10:36 a.m. ET

Could the Saudis and Israelis be cooking up a little diplomatic revolution of their own to offset the shift in American policy toward Iran?

The temporary nuclear agreement between Iran and the world's major powers has this pair of America's oldest and closest Middle East allies deeply worried. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a bevy of Saudi officials attacking the deal, Jerusalem and Riyadh are torn between rage and fear.

The question is whether this matters. The U.S. is the world's only superpower, and its security guarantees have been the pillar of Israeli and Saudi defense thinking for a very long time. As long as U.S. domestic politics give President Obama the leeway he needs in the Middle East, U.S. officials and commentators appear to believe that the Saudis and Israelis will have to live with whatever Washington does.

Perhaps. The Saudis and Israelis are status-quo, stability-seeking powers. Maybe they will stand by and watch while a U.S. president they neither trust nor respect remakes the region.

But maybe not. The two countries could instead forge an entente, informal or formal. Just as Saudi support for the coup in Egypt thwarted two years of painstaking if farcical American efforts to promote "a transition to democracy" in the land of the Nile, so the Saudis and Israelis could throw some serious wrenches in the Obama administration's Iran strategy.

Riyadh and Jerusalem have common interests that are not limited to preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Saudis believe Iran is leading Shiites in a religious conflict with Sunnis now engulfing the Fertile Crescent. They fear that the Islamic Republic, nuclear or not, poses an existential threat to their security as the Shiite tide rises.

Israel is less concerned about the Sunni-Shiite war, but the prospect of a Hezbollah-Tehran-Syria axis along its northern frontier is more than troubling. Both countries think that a naive Mr. Obama's unicorn hunt for nuclear disarmament is leading him to sacrifice vital geopolitical interests in the hope of what will turn out to be a very bad nuclear deal with Iran.

Riyadh and Jerusalem also want Hamas crushed. They worry about Turkey's increasingly unhinged and unpredictable diplomacy as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan follows his wandering star. They rejoice that the Muslim Brotherhood was driven from power in Egypt, and they want Egypt's army to succeed as it tries to pacify the country and stabilize the Sinai. They want to protect the status quo in Jordan and Iranian power contested in Iraq.

One suspects that both the Israelis and the Saudis are also looking at Kurdish aspirations with more favorable eyes. Playing the Kurdish card against Shiites in Baghdad and Tehran is looking more interesting every day.

Arguably, the two countries now have more in common with each other than either has with the Obama administration. The question is whether this common interest is enough to make both countries swallow their visceral dislike of one another and work together. Most commentators seem to think not; the champion of Wahhabi Islam cannot stand with the Jewish state.

Yet necessity has made stranger diplomatic bedfellows. From the Saudi point of view, times are grim. The Sunni Arab world is in a fight for survival against the Shiites, but without Israeli help the weak and divided Sunnis may not stand.

There has already been some discussion, public and private, about a relatively weak form of Saudi-Israeli collaboration against Iran. In this scenario, Israeli jets would overfly Saudi territory as part of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Saudi sources hint that the Israeli air force would encounter no Saudi resistance. The obstacles against a successful attack on Iran may be too great even using Saudi airspace. But an agreement that let Israel use Saudi bases for takeoff and refueling could tip the military balance enough to make a difference.

This could not be kept secret, but the Saudis could contain the consequences. Islamic history, including the life of the Prophet Muhammad, offers many examples of unlikely truces and temporary alliances. Saudi Arabia is as rich in Islamic legal scholars as it is in oil, and no doubt there are precedents that could legitimize such an arrangement.

Paradoxically, Mr. Netanyahu might pay a higher price in settlement restrictions in the West Bank and commitments about the long-term status of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem to the Saudis than he would to Secretary of State John Kerry. If the Saudis offer concrete assistance in handling what Israel sees as its gravest security threat since 1967, Mr. Netanyahu could justify his concessions as the price of national safety. One suspects that if enough Iranian nuclear facilities went up in smoke, most of the settler lobby would give him a pass.

For the Saudis, getting a better deal for the Palestinians, even a temporary one, than the U.S. has ever managed to get would do much to repair any reputational damage from temporary cooperation with the Jewish state against Iran. The Saudis are not the only Sunnis watching in fear and horror as the Shiites march from victory to victory across the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the two temporary allies could settle a few other scores. They could work jointly against Hezbollah and Hamas, perhaps with Egyptian help returning Fatah to power in Gaza. From Syria to Iran, the Kurds might suddenly find they've got more money and that their relations with their Sunni Arab neighbors might improve.

Those who think the Israelis and Saudis will have to accept whatever treatment the Americans dish out may be right. But if access to Saudi facilities changes the calculations about what Israeli strikes against Iran can accomplish, the two countries have some careful thinking to do. It would be an error for American policy makers to assume that allies who feel jilted will sit quietly.

Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest.