The Biden administration will only sign a defense pact with Saudi Arabia if the kingdom agrees to normalize relations with Israel, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has made it clear in an interview with The Financial Times.
"The integrated vision is a bilateral understanding between the US and Saudi Arabia combined with normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, combined with meaningful steps on behalf of the Palestinian people. All of that has to come together...you can’t disentangle one piece from the others," Sullivan said.
Normalization between Riyadh and Tel Aviv is "the path that we [the US] believe could produce a more secure Israel and a more peaceful region," he added.
The US national security advisor also said that all the US can do is "work out what we think makes sense" and "try to get as many countries in the region on board with it and then present it, and it will ultimately be up to the Israeli leadership and frankly ultimately the Israeli people can decide whether that’s a path they want to take or not."
The remarks come a few days after State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Washington is "very close to reaching an agreement on the bilateral pieces of the package between the United States and Saudi Arabia."
Riyadh, however, made it plain that it will not sign off on the deal unless there is calm in Gaza and a path to an independent Palestinian state, according to Miller.
Bloomberg News earlier reported that the US and Saudi Arabia are "nearing a historic pact" to offer the kingdom "security guarantees and lay out a possible pathway to diplomatic ties with Israel, if its government brings the war in Gaza to an end." Per Bloomberg, if signed, the pact would "potentially reshape the Middle East."
In January, media reported that Saudi Arabia had resumed negotiations with the US on a defense deal after a three-month pause due to the escalation in the Middle East following the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ sudden attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The violent ambush led to the Jewish state launching a ground military operation in Gaza, which is also being devastated by Israeli airstrikes that have already killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Hamas health authorities.
In early August 2023, Washington and Riyadh agreed to broad contours of a potential deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. In September of that year, however, media cited a source in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office as saying that Riyadh had informed Washington of the termination of negotiations on a Saudi-Israel normalization deal.
The United States launched a process to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world in 2020. As a result of these efforts, in September 2020, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed a set of documents known as the Abraham Accords, and were joined by Morocco in December of that year. In January 2021, Sudan also signed the declarative section of the Accords, but did not sign the relevant document with Israel, unlike other states, due to disagreements between the Sudanese military and civilian leadership over the issue.