Analysts suggest that a series of prominent visits by US officials to Saudi Arabia, highlights the improved relationship between the two countries. This has become more apparent as discussions continue regarding a potential agreement involving the Gulf kingdom’s recognition of Israel.

A spate of high-profile visits by US officials to Saudi Arabia underscores how ties have warmed amid talks over a potential deal that would see the Gulf kingdom recognize Israel, analysts say.

Less than a year after US President Joe Biden warned of unspecified “consequences” for Riyadh during a dispute over oil supply, he is dispatching top aides to meet Saudi royals at a rapid clip.

Over the weekend, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, landed in Jeddah for a summit on Ukraine, his third visit to Saudi Arabia in just a few months.

While bilateral sessions, including during a three-day tour by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, have touched on topics from terrorism to Yemen, the prospect of normalizing Saudi-Israeli ties has been a mainstay agenda item, fuelling rosier exchanges even if it is still seen as a long shot.

The hurdles to an actual deal remain high: Riyadh is reportedly bargaining hard for benefits like security guarantees and assistance with a civilian nuclear program with uranium enrichment capacity.

And Saudi officials have long vowed not to normalize relations with Israel before the conflict with the Palestinians has been resolved.

The issues bedeviling the decades-old relationship are well-known, from flare-ups over human rights to Saudi concerns about Washington’s reliability as a security partner.

Those concerns took on new importance after attacks on Saudi oil facilities in 2019, claimed by Yemen’s Huthi rebels but widely attributed to Iran, temporarily halved crude output.

Saudi officials were deeply disappointed by the tepid response of then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, which they believed undermined their traditional oil-for-security trade-off.

Growing cooperation with Moscow and Beijing highlights how, as Alghannam put it, Riyadh is no longer content to place “all the eggs in the American basket”.

The Saudis also leaned on China to broker a landmark rapprochement with Iran announced in March, something the Biden administration was in no position to do.

During last October’s dust-up over oil production, both sides were rankled by the stern exchanges that ensued, said John Hannah, a former US senior foreign policy official who has been visiting the kingdom for three decades.

Even then, though, a genuine rupture was never seriously considered, as the Saudis were simultaneously pitching normalization terms that would lock in long-term cooperation with Washington.

The new US-Saudi closeness has not gone unnoticed elsewhere, including among Palestinian officials who hope Riyadh will insist on an independent Palestinian state.

Alghannam said Riyadh needs to know whether the Israelis are “actively working towards making tangible progress on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”.

Khalil Wakim, with AFP