US-Saudi Arabia bilateral security pact nearly finalised, says White House

The United States has said that a bilateral security agreement with Saudia Arabia has been nearly finalised.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan held talks with Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince and the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, on Sunday during a visit to the kingdom.

A security pact with the Saudis has been key to US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda to counter the China-Iran axis in the region. Lately, the Biden administration has packaged the US-Saudi pact as part of a broader plan for the Middle East that would also include Israel-Saudi Arabia normalisation and a pathway for a Palestinian statehood.

White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby told Reuters that the US and Saudi Arabia are “closer than we’ve ever been” on a bilateral agreement and it is now “near final.”

What’s there in US-Saudi defence deal?

The US-Saudi defence pact will include a series of development that will have security guarantees and civil nuclear cooperation, according to CBS News.

Once this is done, the report said the deal will be part of a broader deal presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the normalisation of relations with the Saudis, but that would be dependent on the third component of the deal: making concessions for a pathway for Palestinian statehood.

Previously, the White House had said that the Biden administration was working on a trilateral deal for the Middle East and none of the three parts of the deal will move in isolation.

A source told CBS that the “pressure is on” to complete the deal soon as only a few weeks are left in the Congressional calendar and the deal will need to go to lawmakers for their approval.

Separately, Reuters reported that negotiators have been discussing the sale of F-35 fighter planes and other weapons to the Saudis as part of the deal.

The report said that negotiators have to work around a longstanding US-Israeli agreement that US weapons sold to countries in the region must not impair Israel’s “qualitative military edge”, which means that US cannot provide weapons to Israel’s neighbours which are superior than those sold to Israel.

An official was further quoted as saying that the US-Saudi agreement will be short of a NATO-style agreement. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is a military alliance of Western nations based on the idea of collective defence.

“We are very close to an understanding on the major elements between us. We of course will also have to then work on pieces that relate to the Israelis and Palestinians, which is a critical component of any potential normalization deal,” said another official.