Saudi Arabia is so angry at the emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers that it is threatening to develop its own nuclear capability — one more indication of the deep differences between the United States and the Persian Gulf Arab states over the deal, which the major powers and Iran aim to complete by June 30. President Obama had hoped to bridge that gap with a show of American-Arab unity at this week’s summit meeting at Camp David. The summit meeting fell well short of his ambitions, an unfortunate outcome for both sides.
As summit meetings usually do, this one concluded with an upbeat joint statement, reaffirming a “strong partnership” between the United States and the gulf states, Sunni-dominated nations that consider Shiite Iran their main adversary. This could not, however, conceal sharp and persistent differences over a deal that is intended to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions.
American officials assured the gulf leaders that “the objective is to deny Iran the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon,” but The Associated Press quoted Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, warning, “It would be too early to prejudge what we accept, what we don’t accept.”
The most overt evidence of the unsettled ties between the United States and its longstanding Arab allies was a decision by King Salman of Saudi Arabia to stay home, after the White House announced he would be at the meeting. Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, also a no-show, chose to attend a horse show in Britain. A more ominous sign of tension was the threat by Saudi Arabia — and to a lesser extent, other Arab states — to match whatever nuclear enrichment capability Iran is allowed to keep under the agreement. “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, said recently in Seoul, South Korea.
It is hard to see how threatening and snubbing a president who is offering crucial assistance to the Saudi-led war in Yemen and who still has two years left in office advances Arab interests. Even so, Mr. Obama could have done a better job of calming Arab insecurities long before he invited the gulf leaders to Camp David.
The Sunni Arabs have two main worries. One is that the nuclear agreement with Iran would leave Iran with a limited capability to produce nuclear fuel for energy and medical purposes, instead of ending it outright. They also worry that Iran’s re-entry into the international community after decades of isolation would mean that Washington’s loyalties would henceforth be divided and that America could no longer be counted on to defend them.
Mr. Obama tried to address that in the joint statement, which declared, “The United States policy to use all elements of power to secure our core interests in the Gulf region, and to deter and confront external aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War, is unequivocal.” But he stopped short, and wisely so, of offering a formal pact similar to the NATO treaty that some Arab leaders had wanted but that could drag the United States into Middle East conflicts.
There is little doubt that the regional landscape, politically and diplomatically, is shifting. Senior American and Iranian officials, who had no contact after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, now hold regular negotiations. International business is poised to take advantage of Iran’s investment potential once sanctions are lifted, pumping billions of dollars into Iran’s ravaged economy.
Nevertheless, it is perverse for Arab leaders who once considered Iran’s nuclear program their gravest threat to complain about a deal intended to diminish that threat. A more rational fear is that when sanctions are lifted, Iran, which is causing trouble in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, will have more resources with which to expand its influence.
Administration officials have a reasonable comeback: They say Iran is far more likely to use the money freed up by the lifting of sanctions to meet accumulated domestic needs. They argue that many of Iran’s recent political gains owed more to the weakness of disintegrating states like Yemen than to Iran’s inherent strength. And they seem pretty clear-eyed about the fact that while a nuclear deal may open room for cooperation with Iran on other issues, Iran’s long history of bad behavior argues strongly for caution in all dealings with Tehran.
A verifiable nuclear deal that limits Iran’s abilities has the best chance of keeping Iran from a nuclear weapon. The solution definitely does not lie in threats by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to build up their own nuclear capabilities, which could set off a new arms race and inflame the region even more.
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