Biden’s top aide in Saudi Arabia to further push for normalization with Israel after Blinken failed to do so

A top advisor to US President Joe Biden has reportedly traveled to Saudi Arabia as part of Washington’s relentless push to broker a normalization deal between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

Biden’s senior Middle East Brett McGurk adviser travelled to Saudi Arabia just over a week after top US diplomat Antony Blinken left the Persian Gulf nation to hold further talks with Saudi officials focusing on “the administration’s efforts to reach a normalization agreement between Israel and the kingdom as well as other issues,” US-based news website Axios reported Saturday.

According to the report, McGurk was also expected to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman to discuss the kingdom’s normalization of relations with Israel.

McGurk’s visit, the report insists, marks yet another attempt by the White House to push for a Riyadh-Tel Aviv normalization deal in the next six to seven months just in time for the launch of Biden’s re-election campaign for the 2024 presidential polls.

The top aid's visit to Riyadh -- where he is expected to also hold talks with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman (MbS) -- comes less than two weeks after Blinken’s high-profile trip to the kingdom for talks with MbS and other top Saudi officials, who snubbed his latest push for the normalization deal amid Saudi Arabia’s warming ties with neighboring Iran, a fierce foe of Washington ever since the Islamic Revolution toppled a US-installed brutal dictator in the country.

The development comes as State Department’s senior Middle East diplomat, Barbara Leaf, is also “expected to visit Israel, the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan this week,” the report added, citing two American officials.

Leaf, according to the unidentified officials, accompanied Blinken on his trip to Saudi Arabia and “is expected to follow up on” the normalization deal “with Israeli officials.”

The report further points to the reestablishment of formal ties between Tehran and Riyadh and the official visits to Iran by the Saudi top diplomat and other officials, describing it as part of “a wave of normalization in the region” with the Islamic Republic.

In a joint press conference with Blinken earlier this month, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud emphasized that “without finding a pathway to peace for the Palestinian people…any normalization will have limited benefits.”

Saudis snub US push on Tel Aviv ties, oil prices, Syria during Blinken’s high-profile visit

Saudi officials rebuff top US diplomat’s push during a visit to the Kingdom to normalize relations with Israel and win concessions on oil prices and Riyadh’s resumption of ties with Syria and Iran.

Saudi Arabia cautiously welcomed the US-brokered normalization deals in 2020 between the Israeli regime and four other US-backed Arab regimes -- United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – during the Republican administration of former hawkish president Donald Trump, who remains a hostile political foe and rival of Biden’s Democratic administration.

At the time, the despotic kingdom was widely expected to jump on the bandwagon as the two regime had engaged in growing contacts and de-facto rapprochement in recent years despite claims that it was committed to the 2002 so-called Arab Peace Initiative -- which conditions any normalization with the Israeli regime to the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

The Riyadh regime in November 2020 granted permission for Israeli airlines to use its airspace, hours before the first Israeli flight to the UAE was set to take off.

Palestinian leaders, activists and ordinary people have repeatedly rejected any normalization deals between the Israeli and despotic Arab regimes as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause” and the land of Palestine.

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