Report: Top US Official Broached Israel Normalization With Saudi Crown Prince
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan raised the issue of normalizing relations with Israel during a meeting last month with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Axios first reported on Wednesday, citing three unnamed US and Arab sources. And bin Salman did not reject the idea out of hand, the report also said.
Rather, the crown prince suggested that several steps would have to be taken to lead the Saudis to sign on to the Abraham Accords, which so far has seen four Arab or Arab majority countries agree to normalize relations with Israel. Among those steps is for an improvement in relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States, which have cooled under the Biden administration over the country’s poor human rights record and the murder of Washington Post journalist James Khashoggi, in which the crown prince is said to have played a part. US President Joe Biden has refused to engage directly with bin Salman, the defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia, who also is known as MBS. Any such agreement would also likely require movement by Israel toward a Palestinian state.
The Trump administration spent much of its tenure working to convince Saudi Arabia to sign a normalization agreement with Israel. King Salman, father of MBS, reportedly stood firm on the Israel-Palestinian issue, however.
