Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly brokered a secret meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday. Netanyahu and Yossi Cohen, the Director of Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, traveled to Neom, Saudi Arabia for the historic talks.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Netanyahu left Israel on a civilian plane at 7 pm on Sunday and returned just after midnight.

Netanyahu and Cohen were met by Pompeo at the Neom airport and the three attended the meeting. According to the Post, they “reportedly discussed efforts to counter threats from Iran.”

This meeting comes after Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan, have each normalized ties with Israel. A similar peace deal with Saudi Arabia is a bit more complicated, but not out of reach. Though an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia would certainly benefit both nations, the challenge lies in the fact that “King Salmon supports the Palestinians in their efforts to secure an independent state.”

According to Fox News, “analysts and insiders suggest his 35-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, likely is more open to the idea of normalizing relations without major progress in the moribund peace process.”

In a sign that not all Saudis are in favor of a deal with Israel, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan denied that this event took place.

Nevertheless, Fox reports that “Israel has long had clandestine ties to Gulf Arab states that have strengthened in recent years as they have confronted a shared threat in Iran.”

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister is denying that the meeting with Netanyahu ever occurred, and says that only American and Saudi officials were present.

I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by @SecPompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi.

— فيصل بن فرحان (@FaisalbinFarhan) November 23, 2020

Prior to the election, former Vice President Joe Biden called Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal “reckless.”

In a September op-ed, Biden wrote: “He [Trump] recklessly tossed away a policy that was working to keep America safe and replaced it with one that has worsened the threat. There is a smart way to be tough on Iran, and there is Trump’s way. He ignored our closest allies and walked away — alone, without a plan — from a deal that put the world’s eyes and ears inside Iran’s nuclear program and was verifiably blocking Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.”

Biden refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Iran nuclear deal accomplished none of those goals. Moreover, he has signaled that a Biden/Harris Administration would resurrect that deal.

The Daily Wire reminds us of just how unpopular the Iran deal was. They published an excerpt from a 2015 open letter to Congress signed by over 214 former generals and admirals “warning that the deal could bring war and was unverifiable.”

There is no credibility within JCPOA’s inspection process or the ability to snap back sanctions once lifted, should Iran violate the agreement. … The agreement as constructed does not “cut off every pathway” for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. To the contrary, it actually provides Iran with a legitimate path by doing that simply by abiding by the deal…The agreement is unverifiable. Under the terms of the JCPOA and a secret side deal (to which the United States is not privy), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) will be responsible for inspections under such severe limitations as to prevent them from reliably detecting Iranian cheating…These inspections do not allow access to Iranian military facilities, the most likely location of their nuclear weapons development efforts.

Turns out they were right.

Additionally, the Obama/Biden Administration was openly hostile to Netanyahu and many progressives are openly sympathetic to the Palestinians. There’s no telling if they would build on or simply throw away the progress toward peace in the Middle East made by the Trump administration. My guess is the latter.

November 23, 2017: Rough Cuts 2