Is Trump About To Make a Move In Middle East?

T. Belman. In fact the Kashoggi affair has helped move things along. MBS was so weakened that he needed support from both Trump and Netanyahu and thus became a yes man.

The New York Sun | January 7, 2019

Is President Trump about to make his move in the Middle East? We ask because Secretary of State Pompeo leaves Tuesday for a swing through the region at a time when the stars seem to be aligning for something big. Is it possible that President Trump’s talk with Prime Minister Erdogan, our plan pull GIs out of Syria, John Bolton’s visit to Israel, and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s call for an election are linked?

Feature the latest from one of the most sagacious scoop artists on the Middle East beat, Karen Elliott House of the Wall Street Journal. She’s out with a column in tomorrow’s Journal alerting her readers not to be surprised if Prime Minister Netanyahu fetches up in Riyadh to meet with the Crown Prime, Mohammed bin Salman — and “soon.” Ms. House doesn’t write something like that off the top of her head.

A Netanyahu-MBS parley would be stunning. With Iran on the warpath, it would underline that Israel and the Saudis have bigger issues than the Palestinian Arabs. It comes after what Ms. House calls two years of effort by the Trump administration to get “Riyadh and Jerusalem openly working together.” She reckons MBS “loves risk” and wants to get past the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

This is the context in which Ms. House suggests that Mr. Pompeo’s Mideast swing seems “choreographed for a dramatic finale starring the crown prince.” Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, was in Israel today. Mr. Pompeo starts Wednesday in Jordan, and will deliver what Ms. House calls a “major speech in Cairo,” and will visit Riyadh.

What gets us about this is not only the capacity of a Netanyahu-Saudi sit-down to impact the Middle East. We’re still, after all, highly skeptical of the Saudis. We have, though, a lot more confidence in a Trump-Pompeo-Bolton team than a team led by President Obama or any dovish Democrat and an apostle of appeasement like, say, Secretary of State Kerry. Mr. Trump is just more credible.

The bigger impact may be at home. The way the papers tell it, the Trump administration’s foreign policy is in “chaos” (Los Angeles Times) or “confusion” (Politico). Yet what would the Democrats be able to make of an entente between a hardline Israel premier and the House of Saud? Could it finally force the President’s critics to address the substance of what Mr. Trump is at least trying to do?

From a distance it looks like one big question mark is in Israel, where the possibility is that between now and the election, set for April 9, Mr. Netanyahu could be brought up on corruption charges. We have our doubts about the investigation, but conceivably the case against Mr. Netanyahu could prove to be stronger than any desire to give him a chance to forge a relationship with the Saudis and an alliance against Iran.

Ms. House reckons a Saudi summit would have only “upsides” for Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu. For MBS, she writes, “openly cooperating with Israel without resolving the future of Jerusalem and its Islamic holy sites surely would provoke opposition from religious Saudis.” That, though, would be “sotto voce” given the prince’s repression of his opponents.

Our own view is that if there is a chance for Israel and the Saudis to begin an open and constructive working relationship, American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital may have actually had a positive effect. It certainly made clear that nothing would be gained by waiting for final status talks — a logic the Sun has been sketching for years. So we wish them luck.