Khamenei Seems Nervous as Israel and Saudi Arabia Get Closer to a Deal

By Jimmy Quinn

Wednesday, May 01, 2024

 

Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei unveiled a new hashtag, #No2Normalization, to express opposition to a possible normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. With a drumbeat of reports suggesting that a deal could come soon, Khamenei sounds nervous about what that would mean for his country’s ambitions.

 

“Governments in West Asian region that ignored Zionist regime’s crimes & extended a hand of friendship to it should be awaiting their own people rising up against them. #No2Normalization” he said in a post to X today. (The Iranian government refers to the Middle East as West Asia.) He also said that, while nations in the region are arrayed against the “Zionist regime” today, they’ll be “against their own” governments if normalization happens.

 

Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Abraham Accords could be strategically devastating for Iran. After all, the Saudis provided intelligence for use by the coalition that took down the missile and drone barrage that Iran directed at Israel last month. Khamenei can expect more of that sort of cooperation if formal diplomatic ties are established between the two countries. That’s a far cry from how things looked last year, when Tehran had leveraged the Biden administration’s alienation of the kingdom to resume normalized ties in a deal brokered last year by China.

 

But the October 7 massacre, which was intended in part to prevent a Saudi-Israel deal from emerging, seems to have moved such a deal along. Haaretz reported on Monday that Riyadh has decided to seek normalized ties but that it has yet to decide on the timing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Saudi Arabia this week to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to a State Department summary, they “discussed ongoing efforts to achieve lasting regional peace and security, including through greater integration among countries in the region and enhanced bilateral cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia.” Blinken said after the meeting that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were “very close to completion” of the agreements between Riyadh and Jerusalem that would accompany normalization.

 

Of course, there remain plenty of possible obstacles. The Biden administration, for instance, is demanding concessions from Israel on its conduct of the war in Gaza; Blinken said that “calm in Gaza” and a pathway to Palestinian statehood are prerequisites for a deal. The Saudi requests of the U.S., such as Washington’s assistance on civilian nuclear-energy development, are a tough lift. And for its part, Riyadh would need to believe that the benefits of normalization outweigh the domestic consequences of embracing Israel — clearly a factor that Khamenei is trying to exploit in today’s clumsy attempt to throw a wrench into the talks.