Late on Nov. 22, flight-tracking websites monitored a business jet, frequently used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, making a five-hour round trip from Tel Aviv to Neom, the futuristic city that Saudi Arabia is building on its Red Sea coast. Within hours, the Middle East was abuzz with reports that Netanyahu and Yossi Cohen, the head of Mossad, had held secret talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Though the Saudi foreign minister quickly tweeted a denial that the meeting occurred, several other Saudi and Israeli sources confirmed that the historic session had indeed been held, and that Israeli-Saudi normalization and countering Iran had topped the agenda. It’s a critically important development for all kinds of reasons, not least being the powerful signal it seemed intended to send to an incoming Biden administration about Saudi Arabia’s crucial role in any efforts to advance stability in a volatile region that remains critical to U.S. interests.
The Saudis have plenty of reason to try and get on U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s good side. Outside of outgoing President Donald Trump’s inner circle, the kingdom’s friends in Washington are few and far between these days. Over the past four years, the bipartisan bill of indictment against Mohammed bin Salman has grown too long to list in full. But the highlights include the ineffective prosecution of a brutal war in Yemen, the kidnapping of Lebanon’s prime minister, the unjust arrest and mistreatment of women’s rights activists, planting spies in U.S. technology giants, and, of course, the horrific murder and dismemberment of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit team. Trump’s refusal to hold the crown prince to account—“I saved his ass,” Trump famously bragged to Bob Woodward after shielding the prince from congressional sanction—was widely seen as enabling Saudi Arabia’s repeat offenses against U.S. interests and values.
