Two questions are arising as talk heats up over a formal Saudi-Israeli peace treaty: Is it possible and, less discussed, is it desirable?

The Biden administration seems eager to keep the story of back-channel negotiations alive. “Peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a big deal,” the national security advisor, Jacob Sullivan, told reporters Tuesday. He added that it “would benefit the United States of America in a fundamental way.”

Yet, Mr. Sullivan is lowering expectations that a deal is around the corner. “There are still ways to travel,” he said, adding that the diplomacy is “highly technical” and may not be completed quickly. Unmentioned was the fact that as the presidential election season heats up, forging a treaty that passes congressional muster may be difficult. 

At the end of 2020, the Trump administration was very close to cutting a Saudi-Israeli deal, several Washington sources tell the Sun. Such an agreement would have capped the successful campaign that saw four Arab countries sign peace treaties with the Jewish state under the Abraham Accords.

Rather than taking advantage of his predecessor’s efforts, President Biden vowed to turn the Saudis’ de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, into a “pariah.”

“Two and a half years ago the Saudis were ready to make a deal,” a senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who often travels to Riyadh and Jerusalem, Jonathan Schanzer, tells the Sun. “Biden could have taken a win after assuming office. It was a huge missed opportunity.” 

The Saudis soured on partnership with America, turning instead to Communist China, which facilitated a tension-easing agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, an avowed Saudi foe. On Friday, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian of Iran met at Riyadh with the crown prince, known as MbS. 

The self-appointed Shiite leader, Iran, and the Saudi kingdom, a Sunni powerhouse, have ways to go before their enmity ends. Yet, their rapprochement is a cause for worry for Israel, which Iran threatens to erase off the map. A potential Saudi-Iranian thaw under Beijing’s tutelage also raised concerns at Washington — and it may have triggered the latest attempt at reviving the Israeli-Saudi peace negotiations.

MbS, who has proved a wily negotiator, played his hand well, making a long list of goods for Washington to deliver in return for signing a peace treaty that would bolster Mr. Biden’s foreign policy image and, at the same time, aid the beleaguered Israeli prime minister. 

Prince Mohammed mostly wants a formal American defense treaty and an uranium enrichment facility on Saudi soil. Mr. Biden’s political opponents and Saudi detractors on the Hill are unlikely to approve a deal involving the sale of advanced weapons, such F-35 fighter jets. Nuclear non-proliferation hawks are unhappy as well.

Mr. Sullivan said Tuesday that Washington would ask the International Atomic Energy Agency’s opinion on supplying enrichment facilities to the Saudis, perhaps hoping the Vienna-based watchdog will help him politely reject Riyadh’s request.

Yet, it would be difficult for the administration to deny enrichment to the Saudis at the same time that, as widely reported, it negotiates a deal with Iran that would leave the Islamic Republic with a hefty cache of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, nearing the level required to make a bomb. 

“Mr. Biden’s negotiators are tied up in a Gordian knot of their own making” and “they can untie it quickly by turning the page on a dead-letter nuclear deal,” a former White House official, Richard Goldberg, writes in the Wall Street Journal.

If America revives the United Nations ban on Iran’s enrichment, which existed before the 2016 nuclear deal, it could “speak consistently” when denying Riyadh an enrichment facility, Mr. Goldberg, an FDD adviser, suggests. 

“Israel never agreed to a nuclear program for any of its neighboring countries,” Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office said in a statement last week. It reacted to a top adviser to the premier, Ron Dermer, who indicated to an NPR interviewer that in order to reach a deal with Riyadh, Israel may not oppose a Saudi enrichment facility. 

A peace treaty involving the top Arab world power would significantly transform the Mideast. Yet, the deal’s most recent iteration, launched in a column by the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman, seems more about process than peace.

The administration’s goal is “a more integrated, more stable Middle East,” Mr. Sullivan said Tuesday. Yet, both Israel and the Saudis are unlikely to welcome any “integration” of hostile Iran, which the Biden administration seems eager to promote. 

If Saudi demands are accepted by America and Mr. Netanyahu, moreover, the loss of military edge and an acceleration of the region’s nuclearization could hurt Israel in the long run.

A peace treaty with the current reform-oriented Saudi regime may be worth it, though a future Saudi ruler emboldened by access to advanced American arms and nuclear weapons could imperil Israel and the entire region.

Agreeing to Riyadh’s condition may amount to a “short term gain, with a very cloudy future,” Mr. Schanzer says.