The Guardian reports that the Saudis are looking to make a separate deal with the U.S. in which Washington gives them everything they want in exchange for nothing:
All three parts of the draft deal involve the US giving vital strategic assistance to Saudi security. In place of progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Saudi monarchy is presenting a purely bilateral deal as a US win in its efforts to contain Iranian expansionism and in Washington’s “great-power competition”, particularly with China.
This “less for less” agreement is no better for the U.S. than one that also involves Israel. In both arrangements, the U.S. is expected to hand out major favors and commitments and gets nothing for its trouble except extra burdens in the future. The Saudis don’t want the free giveaway to be put at risk by tying it to an agreement with Israel, and they are naturally still happy to accept the bribe that Biden was going to give them for normalization. It is clearly a bad, one-sided deal that creates new obligations for the U.S. that we can’t afford.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
