Israel, Saudi normalization a long way off, Biden says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israel and Saudi Arabia are a long way from a normalization agreement that would involve a defense treaty and a civilian nuclear program from the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a CNN interview broadcast Sunday.

U.S. officials have been negotiating in a bid to reach an elusive normalization deal between the two countries.

“We’re a long way from there. We got a lot to talk about,” Biden said in an interview with “Fareed Zakaria’s GPS.”

Israel’s energy minister voiced opposition last month to the idea of Saudi Arabia developing a civilian nuclear program as part of any U.S.-mediated forging of relations between the countries.

Biden pointed to Saudi Arabia’s decision, on the eve of his visit to the kingdom last summer, to open its airspace to all air carriers, paving the way for more overflights to and from Israel.

Israel’s religious-nationalist government has acknowledged setbacks in the normalization efforts, amid Saudi censure of its policies toward the Palestinians.

But Foreign Minister Eli Cohen sounded a hopeful note about the rare participation of an Israeli delegation at a Riyadh-hosted soccer video-gaming tournament over the weekend.

“I commend the delegation’s inclusion,” he told Israel’s Army Radio earlier on Sunday. “Ultimately we want to reach a state of full relations (with Saudi Arabia) – meaning cooperation on economic matters, intelligence, tourism, flights, et cetera – and I reckon this will happen sooner or later.”

The Israel Football Association, which is managing the delegation at the FIFAe World Cup Riyadh 2023, said its participation was enabled by Riyadh’s agreement to allow in all comers – not any explicit arrangement between the Saudi and Israeli governments.

The U.S. president also noted efforts toward a permanent ceasefire in Yemen, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and has widely been seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“So, we’re making progress in the region. And it depends upon the conduct and what is asked of us for them to recognize Israel,” Biden said in the interview.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think they have much of a problem with Israel. And whether or not we would provide a means by which they could have civilian nuclear power and/or be a guarantor of their security, that’s – I think that’s a little way off.”

Israel has said it expected to be consulted by Washington on a U.S.-Saudi deal affecting its national security. Israel, which is outside the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has no nuclear energy, is widely believed to have atomic weaponry.

Pointing to precedents like Iraq and Libya, Israel has long worried that potentially hostile neighbors could use civilian nuclear energy and other projects developed under the 1970 NPT as cover for clandestine bombmaking.

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