Peace, Normalization and a Nuclear Saudi Arabia. It Doesn’t Add Up

Forget about the Iranian nuclear threat.  The new hot topic in the Israeli discourse is “Peace with Saudi Arabia”. But this turns out to be a more complex topic than it first appears. The “Saudi Peace”  mixes together global strategic issues, nuclear Iran, the Palestinian issue, the two state solution, and the domestic Israeli political situation. And as is usual in Israel, this is wrapped in ambiguity, contradictory messages, and misconceptions. Is the Saudi option being promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu feasible?

The first complication derives from the double condition that the Saudis are demanding from the US in return for a readiness to recognize and sign a peace treaty with Israel. The conditions are – to sign a formal defense treaty with the US based on the NATO model, and to receive US permission for a civil nuclear project that would include a complete nuclear fuel cycle and uranium enrichment. The enrichment of uranium on Saudi soil is an inseparable and central component of the Saudi National Atomic Energy Project SNAEP.

The Saudi demand to enrich uranium on Saudi soil stands in direct conflict with the US law on nuclear cooperation – Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act which forbids uranium enrichment and separation of plutonium within the territory of a country that purchases nuclear reactors from the US. This is intended to prevent the possibility of a military route to nuclear weapons. The US government is currently investing great efforts to institutionalize the model of the UAE  purchase of the Barakah civilian nuclear reactor -  the purchasing country voluntarily foregoes the wish to enrich uranium on its soil, and signs the IAEA Additional Protocol – and to set this model as the nuclear “gold standard” in international relations.

In this context, it would not be reasonable to assume that in the event of a US refusal to supply Saudi Arabia with the possibility of enriching uranium on its soil, the Saudis would turn to Russian, China or France to obtain it.  According to Article 1 of the NPT,  which is the basic cornerstone of the NPT, it is forbidden for the five declared nuclear weapons states  - US, Russia, Great Britain, France and China – to transfer nuclear weapons to any country or “in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacturer or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or devices”. An agreement on the part of a nuclear weapons states, from the  five member “nuclear club”, to provide Saudi Arabia with the option of enriching uranium on its soil would have far reaching global consequences and could signify the beginning of the disintegration of the NPT and the global order which prevented the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The Saudi nuclear issue became complicated and ran aground in the past decade because of its unwillingness to adopt US legislative restrictions. In addition, not only did Saudi Arabi object to signing the IAEA Additional Protocol, it is also not a signatory to the standard IAEA Agreement on Safeguards unlike most of the countries in the world. In spite of repeated IAEA requests, Saudi Arabia has signed on only to the minor agreement with the IAEA the Small Quantity Protocol (SQP) which applies to countries without a nuclear program (for example, the State of Palestine which is party to the NPT). Saudi Arabia is not in effect a full member of the NPT and does not have a tradition or practices for strict nuclear monitoring.

US nuclear nonproliferation policy shows us that the possibility of US approval of uranium enrichment on Saudi soil is slim. Israel knows this, but perhaps fears that a negative last minute development in the Saudi-US negotiations would enable Saudi Arabia to somehow receive approval to enrich uranium. This could evolve and develop in the future to a dangerous route to nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia and serve as a trigger for similar demands from other countries. Opening this Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East would bring to an end Israel’s nuclear monopoly. In the face of a nuclear Saudi Arabia under US auspices, Israel would find it difficult to implement the “Begin doctrine” of freedom of action that it has reserved for itself in the field of nuclear weapons prevention.

The Israeli fear has led to the unusual article by the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen in the Wall Street Journal entitled Korea is a Model for Middle East Peace. In the article (which presumably was written by the Prime Minister’s Office), Israel proposes an “original way” of reaching a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia –that the US sign a formal defense agreement with Saudi Arabia based on the US Mutual Defense Treaty with South Korea, and in this way make redundant the Saudi need for uranium enrichment on its soil. The rationale is as follows: a US nuclear umbrella for Saudi Arabia will create defense and deterrence against Iran and at the same time will spare the Saudis the need to enrich uranium on their territory. From the Israeli point of view, this is a multilayered magical solution: achieving regional strategic stability, deterring Iran, and distancing possible military dangers. Advancing regional peace, Saudi recognition of Israel, and the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries.

We now reach the second complication which poses difficulties for normalization and peace with Saudi Arabia. A mutual defense treaty is an extremely serious affair. It relates to issues of war and peace in international relations, not to passing political needs. It is not by coincidence that a two thirds majority (67 votes) is required for Senate approval of almost automatic commitment to mobilize the US armed forces in a distant arena. Beyond the expansion of the multilateral defense treaty, NATO, – to protect Europe - since the end of the Cold War, the US has not signed a bilateral defense treaty.

Furthermore, the “Israeli proposal” and the comparison with the mutual defense treaty with South Korea is problematic in itself and does not hold water. The historical enmity between Iran and Saudi Arabia is not similar to the war between the North and the South in the Korean peninsula. South Korea is a democracy, Saudi Arabia is not. Iran does not have nuclear weapons, North Korea is a nuclear weapons state which has carried out nuclear tests and explosions. Above all, it does not appear that the US would be in a hurry to destabilize the détente that has recently developed between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the regional stability that is likely to follow this. The US would also find it difficult to grant an almost automatic  strategic commitment to Saudi Arabia which just in the recent decade launched an aggressive war against Yemen.

The third complication derives from the latent function of the idea of normalization and peace with Saudi Arabia, and is highly important from the US point of view: the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the return of the two state solution to the global diplomatic table. The Saudi Peace Initiative based on the 1967 lines which became the Arab League Initiative in 2002 is a diplomatic cornerstone of Saudi diplomacy. It is the most daring peace proposal that  Arab countries have proposed to Israel. Furthermore, the Saudi Peace Initiative removed from the agenda the return of refugees to the State of Israel. They will return to their own independent state in the West Bank.

The question is: how much will Saudi Arabia insist on its peace initiative in its negotiations with the US, and to what extent will the Biden administration agree to adopt it. Will the Saudi Peace Initiative become the only acceptable international formulation, together with UN Security Council resolution 2334 which clearly determines that the West Bank is outside Israel’s sovereign borders? Will the Saudi Peace Initiative replace general declarations and slogans? Will it replace the Abraham Accords (which are not peace agreements) and noncommittal proposals for autonomy? These are critical questions today with the deterioration of the security situation in the West Bank. It is possible that this is the last opportunity for the Biden administration and the State of Israel before a descent into war the West Bank. This would be an escalation that would certainly impact Jordan and other countries in the region.

And the biggest question: would Israel agree to a peace settlement based on the 1967 borders which are in effect the lines on which the 1949 Independence War ended? These would be Israel’s recognised and secure borders.

Shemuel Meir is an independent Israeli strategic analyst

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