Lawmakers in Washington are largely downplaying recent developments suggesting that Saudi Arabia is pivoting away from moderation and entertaining more hardline Islamism.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been at loggerheads in Sudan, Somalia and Yemen — including a recent Saudi airstrike on an Emirati shipment in southern Yemen — prompting questions about Riyadh’s continued interest in acting as a moderating force in the region. 

Saudi Arabia has also sided with Muslim Brotherhood-aligned forces in other regional conflicts, is increasing its business ties with Qatar and softening its stance toward other Islamist powers hostile to Israel, among other steps, some analysts say.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, who came away from the meeting indicating that potential disputes or shifts in the kingdom had been overstated.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) — who has been critical of Saudi Arabia in the past — told Jewish Insider that Prince Faisal, in the meeting, sought to directly rebut claims that Saudi Arabia was pivoting away from a position of moderation.

The overall message from Prince Faisal, Sherman said, was “the Saudis claim that they are anti-Brotherhood and that the disputes with the UAE are tactical, not ideological.”

“Just because the Saudis are not Shiite does not mean they’re Zionists. No one should get too carried away. And I’m sure there are elements of the Saudi government that are not nearly anti-[Muslim] Brotherhood as much as they should be,” Sherman said. “That being said, I see a foreign minister who is not Qatar or Turkey.”

“If you’re worried about Israel, you should never put any of the countries we’re talking about here in the ‘don’t worry about it’ category — you’ve got to worry,” he continued. “But the foreign minister went out of his way to say that when it comes to the Brotherhood or Iran, that there’s less reason to worry about Saudi Arabia.”

He said that he expects Saudi Arabia and the UAE to come to an agreement on the anti-Houthi campaign to deconflict the situation — likely one which would see the UAE take a decreased role in Yemen.

Sherman also said he did not see evidence that Saudi Arabia has significantly accelerated or expanded its relationship with Qatar — though he also noted that Saudi-Qatari tensions have gradually eased over the past few years and particularly since the Arab League blockade of Qatar. Saudi Arabia signed a major deal earlier this month to link Riyadh and Doha with a high-speed rail line. 

Even so, Sherman said he has other pre-existing concerns about Saudi Arabia, such as its pursuit of a nuclear program and bid to purchase F-35 fighter jets, neither of which was discussed at Wednesday’s meeting.

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also met with Prince Faisal. He said it was “great” to see the foreign minister and that the group had discussed various issues including Yemen, Sudan and Gaza.

“Saudi Arabia and UAE are very close, right? I mean, that’s an understatement,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told JI. “What I’m saying — everybody can have disagreements, spats, misunderstandings about different things, and that relationship is no different, but those two are two very, very close allies.”

“The U.S.-Saudi relationship remains a pillar of U.S. policy in the region,” Mast said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing to build upon our decades-old alliance to help resolve some of the region’s most pressing and complex challenges.”

He dismissed concerns about a potential Saudi repositioning or clash with the UAE.

“Saudi Arabia and UAE are very close, right? I mean, that’s an understatement,” Mast told JI in a brief interview. “What I’m saying — everybody can have disagreements, spats, misunderstandings about different things, and that relationship is no different, but those two are two very, very close allies.”

A congressional source deeply involved in Middle East issues argued that ties between the Sudanese Armed Forces — the faction Saudi Arabia is backing in Sudan — and the Muslim Brotherhood have been overstated and that the Saudi decision to back the SAF is a tactical one rather than an ideological signal of alignment with the Brotherhood. The source said that the Saudis have indicated that they are working to push the Brotherhood elements out of the SAF faction.

And, the source emphasized, both sides in Sudan have committed significant atrocities, further noting that the Trump administration sanctioned the Rapid Support Forces — which successive U.S. governments have found is committing genocide. The source said that Saudi Arabian officials have been clear they do not want the U.S. to sanction the UAE over its alleged support for the RSF, as some in Abu Dhabi heard after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit.

Regarding the Saudi strike in Yemen, the source said that Saudi Arabia was concerned about anti-Saudi forces approaching its territory and that the shipment the UAE convoy was transporting was being provided to those forces. 

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said that there “a lot of concerns” about a Saudi dispute with the UAE in Yemen but that he is not “worried about [the Saudis] repositioning to an extreme point.”

“I don’t think we see that yet. There’s still a lot of conversations going on,” Mullin said. “I think that was just one of those regional things that sometimes we have a lack of understanding — or maybe understand it, but don’t understand it.”

Another lawmaker who has had conversations with individuals in the region said on condition of anonymity that — despite recent headlines — they did not believe that Saudi Arabia was making a fundamental pivot in its posture away from moderation or toward a more extremist Islamist stance.

The lawmaker added that the tensions between the two U.S. partners have been “surprising” but also noted there is a long and complex history between the two countries.

Addressing the Saudi-Emirati tensions, Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledged that the two countries had conveyed “different interests,” but did not appear concerned that their differences would alter the Saudis’ view of Iran as the top threat in the region. 

“The UAE seems like they’re trying to diversify their sources of support in the region, and that’s a point of some disagreement between the Saudi leadership and UAE leadership,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI.

“I have no insight into what’s going on there, but clearly they’ve got different interests,” Ricketts told JI. “Saudi Arabia’s long-term interest is in a peaceful Middle East where they have allies to offset Iran. Saudi Arabia knows that in the region their worst enemy is Iran, and so they’re going to want allies to push back.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee as well as on Foreign Relations, said his primary concern was the UAE’s deepening ties with Russia.

“I mean, the UAE seems like they’re trying to diversify their sources of support in the region, and that’s a point of some disagreement between the Saudi leadership and UAE leadership,” Cornyn told JI.

“What worries me a little bit is UAE talking about allowing the Russians to build a military base there,” he continued. “They seem to be less convinced that they can rely on support from the United States and so they are looking for other friends. That concerns me.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) attributed the fissures to the situation in Sudan and instability in Yemen that neither country could independently solve, but said he had been informed that the Saudis and Emiratis had addressed their differences. 

“Well, Yemen is a mess,” Kennedy said. “The UAE and the Saudis have been allies. Now, they recently got crossways, but I understand they got it worked out. I don’t know what else to say. I mean, Yemen is just, … it’s not a stable country.”

Pressed on the Gulf states having “worked out” their issues, the Louisiana senator responded, “Well, I think that got a lot of it worked out. The Saudis and UAE … they’re crossways in Sudan. They’re not always joined at the hip, so I wasn’t particularly shocked about it, but my understanding is they got it worked out.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he hadn’t been following all of the developments with Saudi Arabia’s regional posture but had been tracking the conflict in Sudan, where Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been backing opposing sides in the civil war. Warner emphasized that “neither one of them are the good guys,” referring to the UAE-aligned RSF and Saudi-aligned SAF.

“It does bother me, not just where [the Saudis] may be moving, but also just … in terms of bombing [in] Yemen,” Warner added, referring to the Saudi strike.

Warner, who led Intelligence Committee members on a visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2024, said that the Saudis were, at the time, “anxious to get normalization with Israel,” but the Gaza war interrupted that progress.

And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said the “instability” in the region — including the Saudi-UAE tensions —  demonstrates the need for strong congressional oversight of “any agreement that’s reached with any of our potential partners there.

President Donald Trump recently announced a series of deals with Saudi Arabia, including selling the kingdom F-35 fighter jets and naming Riyadh a major non-NATO ally, without making public strides toward Saudi-Israeli normalization.

“And very bluntly, it reemphasizes that our one truly reliable ally in the Middle East is Israel,” Blumenthal continued.

In recent days, a chorus of left-wing lawmakers in Congress have ramped up their ire towards the United Arab Emirates, accusing the Gulf country of helping fuel the yearslong civil war in Sudan by reportedly backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the non-Islamist Arab force fighting the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). 

The UAE has long denied allegations of involvement in the war. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that, according to sources, recent assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department’s intelligence bureau purport to show the UAE sending Chinese drones to the RSF. 

On the other side, Iran, Russia, Egypt and Turkey have provided support to the SAF, according to conflict monitors and reporting by Bloomberg and The Washington Post.

The war in Sudan has wrought havoc upon the eastern African nation, with both warring factions committing crimes against humanity. The conflict has killed as many as 150,000 people and has displaced around 12 million. 

Over the more than two-year long conflict, both militias have been accused of widespread sexual assault, mass killings of civilians, torture and deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure. On Monday, the RSF captured the city of El Fasher after an 18-month blockade which saw the group effectively devastate the city, with reports of mass killings, sexual violence and the destruction of hospitals and displacement camps.

The U.S. government, under former President Joe Biden, determined the RSF was committing genocide and found both the RSF and SAF guilty of committing war crimes.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s growing influence with the Sudanese Armed Forces has alarmed experts, who warn that the SAF’s deepening ties to Islamist networks threaten regional stability and could pose a risk far beyond the eastern African nation.

“The Muslim Brotherhood has had a strong presence in Sudan since the 1940s and that presence has evolved over the years,” Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, told Jewish Insider. “It’s important to note that this presence is also why Iran is such a strong supporter of the Burhan [head of SAF] government.” 

Liam Karr, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, who has condemned actions on both sides of the conflict, says the ties date back to former Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for several decades before the SAF overthrew him in 2019. 

“The SAF is working with several Islamist brigades that consist of former Bashir-era army, police and intelligence personnel,” Karr told JI. “This includes the al Baraa Ibn Malik Brigade, which is widely associated with the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and Bashir and has an estimated 20,000 fighters.” 

In recent months, the SAF has received explosive attack drones from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to aid in the conflict, while Egypt, one of their key backers, arrested a key Islamist militia leader aligned with the group — signaling that even staunch regional supporters of the group are “growing wary of its Islamist factions,” according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies Research Fellow Hussain Adbul-Hussain. 

Roule said Iran has a vested interest in providing the SAF with weaponry in order to reestablish a presence in the region and revitalize their “broken proxies,” following Israel’s degrading of its military capabilities and of its proxy Hezbollah, as well as the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. 

“This is of extreme importance to the U.S. and its partners in the region, because if the Quds Force [IRGC] is able to establish a presence it lost in Syria, it would be able to reestablish training camps it operated a decade ago for Hamas smugglers, routes for weapons that it could send back into Gaza and revitalize Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as provide a transshipment location of weapons to the Houthis,” said Roule. “The Muslim Brotherhood presence in Khartoum is of serious concern for the United States and deserves much greater attention. It is a significant threat to the United States, Israel and the region.” 

Anti-Israel lawmakers, including some of the Jewish state’s most vocal critics in the House, have sounded the alarm on the RSF, but have notably glossed over the SAF and its increasingly Islamist alignment. 

“Sudan is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and a genocide,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in a post on social media on Tuesday. “The UAE and other arms dealers to the RSF and RSF-aligned militias must be held accountable.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) echoed the same sentiment, saying she is “horrified” by the RSF’s “mass killings of civilians.”

“We must do everything in our power to stop this genocide, including cutting off all weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates who are arming and funding this ethnic cleansing,” said Tlaib on social media on Wednesday.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) followed suit and similarly directed his criticism at the Emirates. 

“I am incredibly concerned about the deepening humanitarian crisis in Sudan, and the atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces,” Castro wrote on social media on Wednesday. “The United States must put pressure on the RSF and those who back it — including the United Arab Emirates — to end these atrocities.”

A number of far-left activists online have also singled out the RSF and its reported Emirati ties for condemnation. 

Kenneth Roth, a virulent critic of Israel and former head of Human Rights Watch, posted on Tuesday, “British arms sold to the United Arab Emirates are being found in Sudan, where the UAE is arming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as they commit genocide.” 

“Both the Biden and Trump administrations refused to hold the UAE accountable as it armed Sudan’s RSF, despite massacre after massacre, atrocity after atrocity,” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, adding, “Members of Congress are showing more responsibility and initiative.” 

House Democrats, led by Reps. Gregory Meeks and Sara Jacobs, released a statement in April marking the two year anniversary of the conflict. “External actors like the UAE must immediately stop fueling the conflict by arming the warring parties,” the statement said notably only listing the UAE and omitting any mention of Turkey, Iran, Russia, and other countries who have sent arms to factions in Sudan.

A bi-partisan group of senators, including Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, released a statement on Thursday breaking in tone from the other lawmakers – condemning both sides and making mention of all nations reportedly backing the war. 

“Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have committed atrocities against civilians and pursued a zero-sum war at any cost,” the lawmakers said in a statement. “Foreign backers of the RSF and SAF-including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russia, Iran, China and governments in the immediate region-have fueled and profited from the conflict and legitimized the monsters destroying Sudan,” the senators continued. 

Secular forces in Sudan have called for the country’s Islamist movement to be classified as a terrorist group, according to Hussain. Sudan’s Civil Democratic Alliance of Revolutionary Forces (Sumud) has stated that the “Islamist movement sees no pathway for ending the fighting other than the complete submission of the Sudanese people to its terrorist regime, an arrangement that has never achieved peace.” 

Karr says the Trump administration and the SAF’s own partners have put “heavy pressure” on the group to “distance itself politically from the Islamist groups.” Karr also believes pressure should be applied to the RSF.

In his second term, President Donald Trump voiced support for designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Various members of congress have introduced legislation that would require the secretary of state to use this designation, though Congress has yet to move forward with the legislation. 

Israel’s first ambassador to the United Arab Emirates said on Thursday that he is “very, very worried” about the future of the Abraham Accords, as Israel’s ties in the Gulf are coming under strain following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this week.

“For the last week, I am almost not sleeping. I’m very, very worried,” Amir Hayek said at a webinar hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy marking the five-year anniversary of the signing of the Accords, when Israel normalized ties with the UAE. 

UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed flew to Doha this week in a show of support for Qatar after the Israeli attack. Reports have indicated that Israel did not successfully hit the terror leaders it targeted, instead killing several lower-level Hamas officials. Other Gulf leaders, including Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also planned visits to Doha, and Qatar will host an emergency summit with Arab leaders on Sunday. 

A barrage of criticism directed at Israel — including from President Donald Trump — has sparked fears that its goal of regional integration could now be even farther away. 

“I believe that Israel should look at our partners as partners, and talk to them, and not let this situation and the Abraham Accords collapse,” said Hayek, who was ambassador to the UAE from 2021 to 2024. “I think that it will be very hard to rebuild the Abraham Accords if we will pass a point of breaking them, even if we think that we can do it for a few months. No. No. We need to do everything to protect the Abraham Accords.”

Hayek did not specifically reference Israel’s actions in Qatar, nor did he mention Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision on Thursday to move forward with a controversial new settlement expansion plan, known as the E1 corridor, in the West Bank. But he suggested “internal Israeli politics” may be at play.

“We [Israel] didn’t start the war, but we need to know when to finish the war,” said Hayek. “Maybe it’s related to the internal Israeli politics. But we all need to be very, very wise in order to protect, I think, one of the most important things that we have in our region.” 

Hayek, a businessman who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, said he is still doing everything in his power to promote Israel’s ties with the UAE and with Bahrain.

“To be an ambassador, it’s not a lifetime job, but it’s a lifetime mission,” said Hayek. “I’m talking not only to the Emiratis, Bahrainis and other countries. I’m talking to my government as well, saying we need to do everything needed in order to keep those relations.”

Hayek maintains hope in the future of the Accords. But if their promise was already being tested by the war in Gaza, it has grown even more fraught this week.

“Hope is my middle name, and I think that I will need a lot of hope these days when we see some difficulties with the Abraham Accords,” said Hayek. “I hope that the Abraham Accords will stand … and we’ll go forward with our partners and friends in the Middle East.”

One of the original drivers of the 2020 Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel, was Israel’s vocal, public stance against Iran’s nuclear program and regional aggression. That stance also brought Israel and Saudi Arabia closer, a relationship that developed to the point that in the summer of 2023, it seemed like normalization was just around the corner — which officials, including former Secretary of State Tony Blinken, have since confirmed.

By extension, it might make sense for the Abraham Accords and a Saudi-Israel rapprochement to be back in the headlines after Israel took the ultimate stand against Iran’s nuclear program last month, bombing it with assistance from the U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed hope to expand the accords in recent weeks, ahead of and during his meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. 

Yet there has been almost no serious talk about Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords in recent weeks.

Riyadh has also been publicly signaling that its relationship with Tehran is still on track since China brokered a deal between the two countries in 2023. Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf States, spoke out last month against the Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran. Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah. 

With no long-term ceasefire in Gaza and a strategy of trying to contain and balance Iran’s power in the region, the Saudis are in no rush to normalize relations with Israel, experts told Jewish Insider.

Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, told JI that the Saudis’ statements came out of a fear that “if Iran is attacked by Israel and the U.S., the Iranians would retaliate against them … The public statements are all basically defending Iran’s right as a sovereign state to get the Iranians not to see them as an ally or a proxy of America and Israel.”

But, “in fact, they are allies of America,” he added. 

“There’s all this public condemnation of the attacks on Iran,” Haykel said, “but when the U.S. pulled its forces from the Air Force base in Qatar [due to Iran’s retaliation], they moved their planes to a Saudi base. So they condemned the U.S. for attacking Iran, but they also gave the U.S. protection.”

In addition, he noted, Saudi Arabia is in CENTCOM, as is Israel, such that if any Iranian drones or missiles were detected over Saudi territory, the information would be relayed to Washington and Jerusalem. “It is a fact that [the Saudis] are part of a security architecture that protects Israel as much as it protects them.”

Haykel said there is a sense of relief in Riyadh from how the 12-day Israel-Iran war played out, but Saudi officials are still concerned about Iran’s remaining ballistic and cruise missiles: “[Iran is] very close and can swarm Saudi Arabia. Unlike Israel, the Saudis don’t have an Iron Dome. They’re much more vulnerable.” 

The meeting between bin Salman and Araghchi is “part of the strategy to protect themselves from an Iranian attack,” Haykel added.

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, told JI that “the Gulf states are immediate neighbors of Iran and will always have to live with them.” 

“Iran will always be a problem for them no matter who is in power. It is a huge, advanced state, and they are these tiny Gulf states. They can’t stop Iran’s ambition and wish for hegemony,” he said. 

Aboubakr Mansour argued that the Saudis have an interest in keeping the current Iranian regime in place, because a more liberal Iranian regime may turn itself into Washington’s favored Middle Eastern power, as it was in the 1960s and ‘70s, threatening the close relationship Riyadh has with the Trump administration.

“They have an interest in Iran remaining the pariah that it is,” he said.

Haykel said that the Saudis “are not going to shed tears for Iran, regardless of their public statements.” 

“They sound like they’re anti-Israel, but in actual fact, the Israeli military capability that has been on display vis-a-vis Iran, the attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities and the Israeli capability to defend itself from Iranian attacks are all things the Saudis want,” he added. “They want an Iran chastened, that doesn’t use non-state actors and doesn’t have a nuclear program. They want a contained Iran.”

Saudi Arabia’s strategy has been “trying to get Iran to behave more responsibly,” rather than as a “hugely destabilizing factor in the region through its proxies,” Haykel said. That was also the motivation behind the 2023 China-mediated detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, he explained.

Aboubakr Mansour said that balancing the other major powers in the Middle East — Iran, Israel and Turkey — is a priority for Riyadh.

A decade ago, “standing up to Iran was one of the main attractions of Israel [for the Saudis], that was true then,” Aboubakr Mansour said. “Now there’s a main factor they need to calculate, that the U.S. is not reliable and maybe it isn’t going to be again … [The Saudis] had four good years with Trump and the Abraham Accords, and then the Biden administration [and the Saudis] couldn’t stand each other.” 

In addition, he said that the Gulf states “have a complete lack of hard power compared to Israel, Iran and Turkey,” and bin Salman has big ambitions for his country and its economy.

“All of these elements together lead them to calculate their national interests and strategy in a way that gives them maximum leverage over everyone all the time,” he said. “It’s about balancing everyone against everyone else … The Saudis’ ambition is huge and they can’t allow the Iranians, Turks or Israelis to become a hegemonic force in the region.” 

As such, Aboubakr Mansour posited that “the Saudis are in a place where they want to see neither the Israelis nor the Iranians win. [The Saudis] want them to put each other in check, which will give [the Saudis] more leverage.”

As for what the means for Saudi-Israel normalization, Aboubakr Mansour argued that “the Saudis are comfortable playing the normalization game for as long as they can … because they can gain more from their current position than actually normalizing.”

Normalization talk gives the Saudis positive attention from the media, attracts investment and makes them look better in Washington, but “it’s a good show. There’s no reality to it,” Aboubakr Mansour said. 

“They cooperate with the Israelis — they have a new class of statesmen who are [Millenials], they are not interested in the ‘resistance’ and see the positive in Israel — but interests dictate everything. They will play the game as long as they can extract more leverage from it … Normalizing with Israel doesn’t have the incentives for the Saudis that it did five years ago,” he said.

Haykel similarly said that “the Saudis are very good at temporizing, kicking the can down the road until they feel the time is right,” he added.

The Saudis “have their own constraints — domestic, regional and the Islamic public – that they have to keep in mind,” Haykel said. “They are insisting first and foremost on a ceasefire … They seem to be talking less about irreversible steps towards Palestinian statehood, but I think it is still a condition for normalization.”

Still, he said, “Palestinian statehood is seen in Israel as rewarding terrorism and not something the Israeli public is willing to entertain at the moment, and the Saudis know this well.”

Because of that, the Saudis have been “pushing for more cosmetic things … [such as] working with France to get as many states as possible to recognize a Palestinian state through the U.N.” 

According to Haykel, the Saudis want to be able to say that a solution for Palestinian self-determination has been found, without making specific demands of what that means, whether the Palestinians would have an army or not, or if they would have full or partial sovereignty.

In that regard, not much has changed since Oct. 7, 2023, in that the Saudi leadership “never had much respect for the Palestinian Authority, with a few exceptions,” and as such, Riyadh does not want to be saddled with the bill for Gaza’s reconstruction because they do not think the PA is up to the task, Haykel said.

“They want some kind of face-saving solution with the ceasefire being a precondition,” he said. “They’re waiting for President Trump to put pressure on Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire and then make gestures toward the Palestinians.”

At the same time, Haykel warned that there is some talk in Riyadh of pushing for a U.N. Security Council resolution that would enshrine a right for the Palestinians to have sovereignty over the West Bank and to have a capital in east Jerusalem. The idea, he said, came from former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

“They would like the U.S. to push for this regardless of what Israel says or thinks or does,” he added, “but they have not moved to do this yet.” 

Meanwhile, the only recent public movement toward Israeli-Saudi normalization was the appearance last week of Saudi journalist Abdulaziz Alkhamis in the Knesset for a meeting of the Caucus to Advance a Regional Security Arrangement. 

Alkhamis said that the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and subsequent war, along with the Israeli strikes on Iran, are a sign that the region’s “tectonic plates” are moving, and that Israel exposed Iran’s strategic limitations. However, he emphasized that “normalization, from a Saudi point of view, is not just a bilateral agreement. It is a regional alignment and must include a credible, irreversible path to Palestinian sovereignty.”

Former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said in the caucus meeting that “there is too much weight given to the Palestinian matter and it is being turned into [an excuse] to stay in place. We must be daring and make advances — we must, but we should also demand this courage from neighboring countries that want to advance normalization.”

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is departing today for Saudi Arabia, the first leg of an Abraham Accords-themed congressional delegation that also plans to visit Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Israel and meet with leaders in each country. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who is leading the delegation, told Jewish Insider that the trip will take place even as Israeli strikes against Iran continue. 

“I think the timing just becomes all that much more important,” Schneider said in an interview on Friday. “Last night, Iran took a significant hit to its nuclear program and its military. So I think and hope maybe it opens up possibilities. We’ll find out.” 

Other members attending the trip, which is hosted by the Atlantic Council’s N7 Initiative, include Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Zach Nunn (R-IA). 

“During these times of instability in the region, support for the Accords is necessary to enhance Israel’s security and stability, as well as a way to counter threats posed by Iran,” Bacon said in a statement. 

It has been nearly five years since Israel normalized ties with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in the Abraham Accords, which were widely viewed not just as a diplomatic accord but also a counterweight to Iran’s influence in the region. 

“The Arab countries around Israel remain committed to this idea of a better future, a pathway to peace, and I believe the Abraham Accords are that path,” said Schneider. “The purpose of the trip, before the strikes against Iran, was to talk about that. That doesn’t change.”

The Senate on Wednesday defeated two resolutions aimed at blocking certain weapons sales to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, with five Democrats voting with nearly all Republicans against both resolutions.

The 56-39 votes came as a pressure tactic from some progressive Democrats on the two U.S. partners and the Trump administration over dealings between President Donald Trump and the two Gulf states — Qatar’s provision of a luxury jumbo jet to serve as Air Force One and the UAE’s investment of $2 billion in a Trump-linked cryptocurrency.

Democratic Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) voted against the two resolutions. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voted present.

Coons said in a statement that “these resolutions don’t hold President Trump accountable” and will not punish Trump at all, but will rather “target other countries for the actions of our president, countries that host more than 10,000 U.S. troops on strategically important bases and are our partners.”

He said that blocking the sales would weaken two pillars of stability in the region and create space from those partners at a critical time, as well as make other nations doubt Congress’ reliability. 

He said the sales were negotiated years ago. 

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who led the effort with Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has framed the arms sales as a direct response to “cash payments” from the two nations. 

“Normally those might be deals that Congress would approve, but we cannot approve any security relationship today with countries in the Middle East that are engaged in the fundamental corruption of American foreign policy,” Murphy said earlier this week. “The Trump administration is moving these sales forward as part of a broader scheme which enriches Donald Trump to the tune of billions of dollars.”

He said the Qataris are looking to be “not left out” of the second Trump administration and that the Emiratis are seeking “our secrets,” specifically sensitive semiconductor technology that could be compromised by China.

Republicans’ essentially united front against the resolutions came even though multiple Senate Republicans have expressed deep skepticism of Qatar and called for its status as a major non-NATO ally to be reconsidered.

Murphy, meanwhile, in a Senate floor speech earlier this week expressed gratitude for Qatar in spite of the resolutions.

“What makes this moment so dangerous is that both UAE and Qatar, but especially Qatar, are key partners of the United States,” Murphy said. “They’re imperfect allies, but they are our allies. In fact, I’ve been down on this floor in the past arguing on behalf of Qatar and the U.S.-Qatar relationship, when other senators have tried to denigrate the Qataris’ contributions to regional peace. The Qataris have been a critical partner of ours on so many important issues.”

He suggested that Qatar had felt bullied by the Trump administration into offering the jet and “feels like it had little choice but to say yes when asked for this $400 million gift” because the U.S. had punished and isolated Qatar during the first Trump administration when Saudi Arabia and the UAE “effectively ganged up to blockade Qatar and Trump gave that move implicit consent.” 

He claimed that the UAE had first set the precedent for Qatar by investing in Trump’s cryptocurrency, leaving Qatar to play catch-up.

But he also noted that the U.S. has never allowed any other Middle East country to buy MQ-9 Reaper drones, the weapons sale to Qatar in question, because the U.S. has felt that such transfers are too risky.

During President Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East earlier this month, he shuttled between Gulf capitals to announce major economic deals. In Qatar, it was an eye-popping $1.2 trillion economic commitment in trade agreements and direct investment. Saudi Arabia pledged to invest $600 billion in the United States in defense, energy and infrastructure. And in the United Arab Emirates, Trump announced a series of agreements — including one to build Stargate UAE, the largest artificial intelligence campus outside the United States, in partnership with OpenAI and Nvidia — worth more than $200 billion, on top of $1.4 trillion previously committed in U.S. investments.

Missing from the list of deals announced on Trump’s Middle East junket was any kind of similar agreement with Israel, which Trump did not visit on his first major trip abroad since returning to office. Economic ties between the U.S. and Israel are strong; Israel is a larger trading partner to the U.S. than either Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar, and American investors are among the biggest investors in Israeli startups. But the country lacks the liquid financial firepower that is available to the oil-rich Gulf monarchies, which risks placing Israel at a disadvantage in the eyes of an American president who sees the world as a series of business deals. 

“You try not to compete in areas where you have a disadvantage. We have a capital disadvantage. So we should compete where we have an advantage, which is on innovation and technology,” said Michael Eisenberg, who co-founded Aleph, an Israeli VC firm. 

Some Israeli business leaders and innovators are now urging the country to seriously consider adopting a strategy of “economic diplomacy” to place the country more firmly on Trump’s radar. They think that startup founders and venture capitalists stand to serve as Israel’s best ambassadors, better suited to make the economic case for deepening U.S.-Israel ties than the buttoned-up bureaucrats who populate global capitals advancing Israel’s interests.

“Founders are Israel’s best ambassadors. They travel more than diplomats, pitch to the world’s biggest investors and solve real-world problems that transcend borders,” said Jon Medved, the Israel-based CEO of OurCrowd, a global venture investing platform. “Do they have a responsibility to engage in economic diplomacy? I think they already do, whether they realize it or not.” 

Where the Gulf countries have the ability to spend seemingly endless sums of money on American investments and projects to woo Trump, Israel offers “deep tech expertise” and a venue for early stage collaboration that cannot easily be replicated. 

“We’re the lab. The Gulf can be the scale-up market,” Medved continued. “There’s a powerful opportunity for synergy, not just competition.” 

It’s not news to the American government that Israel excels in technology. In 2022, the two countries launched a strategic high-level dialogue on technology as a way to advance cooperation on artificial intelligence, climate change and pandemic preparedness. (The dialogue slowed down after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.) 

Avner Golov, who until 2023 served as the senior director for foreign policy in Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office, thinks the collaboration between the two countries should be formalized with a photo op, like the signing ceremonies Trump participated in during his visit to the Gulf. The U.S.-Israel security memorandum of understanding, which promises Israel $3.3 billion in U.S. security assistance annually, expires in 2028, and Golov thinks the renegotiation of that agreement is an opportunity to strengthen the tech and economic ties between the countries — to put Israel’s tech diplomacy to the test. 

“I envision going to the White House Rose Garden, signing, for the first time, a formal strategic partnership between Israel and America, approved in both Congress and the Israeli Knesset,” Golov told Jewish Insider. Such a deal, as Golov sees it, might also include ways to make it easier for American businesses to operate in Israel. 

Eisenberg, who has invested in major Israeli startup successes such as WeWork and Lemonade, thinks changes to Israel’s “regulatory environment” can help make the sell to American companies and, by extension, Trump. 

“We’re not going to do zero taxes like Dubai, but we need to be attracting more capital here by making our regulatory environment much simpler and lowering our capital gains taxes to be competitive with the United States so that we can bring capital formation vehicles like hedge funds to Israel,” Eisenberg said. 

Of course, many leading tech companies already have large operations in Israel. The chip giant Nvidia announced a $500 million investment in an Israeli AI research data lab in January. In March, Google acquired the Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz for $32 billion, Google’s largest-ever acquisition. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Google President Ruth Porat were with Trump in Saudi Arabia, along with other top CEOs. 

“Many of them have employees in Israel because of our innovation, but we need to build a strategy around attracting them, getting deeper engagement and using them in our attempt to build us into a regional superpower,” added Eisenberg. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long touted Israel’s startup ecosystem, but some worry he has not sufficiently tapped into that world to meet the moment, when Trump — whom Netanyahu has always sought to present as a close friend — seeks flashy financial success on the world stage. 

“[Netanyahu] should have realized that in a competition for the affections of a strongman like Trump, Israel had little to offer,” The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg wrote this month. 

But the basis of the U.S.-Israel relationship has never been purely about dollars and cents. 

“If we’re going to make sure, ‘Hey, don’t forget about us,’ it’s not about money. It’s about morality and humanity and the purpose of Israel on the world stage,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told JI. “Obviously there’s this whole notion that there are a lot of deals to be done. But that’s not how we compete.” 

Before President Donald Trump departed the Middle East last week, his motorcade made one final stop in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before heading to the airport: a visit — the first by a U.S. president — to the Abrahamic Family House, a multifaith complex with Muslim, Christian and Jewish houses of worship. 

His tour, with stops inside the mosque, church and synagogue, underscored the message of tolerance that he shared in an address at a Saudi investment forum earlier in the week. 

“From the United States’ point of view, that is a signal to everybody he met in the region that week, and to people he didn’t yet meet, that religious freedom and tolerance is absolutely crucial going forward,”  Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Jewish Insider last week.  

Trump had just wrapped up a four-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, and all week he had spoken about the Gulf nations’ efforts at modernizing and moving away from sectarian divisions. 

“Before our eyes a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence,” the president said at the forum. 

Trump used the speech to call for Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel, following the lead of the UAE, as well as Bahrain and Morocco. So could the Saudis similarly follow suit by creating an Abrahamic Family House of its own, or something similar to advance religious pluralism? 

Religious freedom experts say that’s highly unlikely. After all, it is only in recent years that people of other religions have even been able to legally practice their faiths at home, behind closed doors, in Saudi Arabia, part of the wide-ranging reforms implemented by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But as a monarch with near-unlimited authority as well as near-unlimited resources, MBS’ next move is anyone’s guess — and that pertains to religion, too, even in this deeply religious country where the vast majority of people practice Sunni Islam. 

“I think you won’t see a version of the Abrahamic Family House in another country. I think what you will see is each country, in their own way, doing similar things in the years to come,” said Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader who met with MBS in 2018 as part of the first delegation of evangelical leaders to Saudi Arabia. “Obviously in Saudi Arabia, the baseline is different.”

As the home of Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia has long been viewed as the standard-bearer for the Muslim world. In the UAE — a much smaller nation, where nearly 90%  of residents are foreigners there for business purposes or as laborers — Islamic law has never been applied as strictly. 

“The strategy of letting expatriates worship as they like or other cultural practices that aren’t inherently Islamic looks very different in a country where the majority of those residing in it are expatriates, versus the majority of those residing in it are Arab Muslim,” said Moore. 

MBS has made clear his desire to turn Saudi Arabia into a global business and tourism hub. Part of that mission involved his 2016 decision to sharply curtail the powers of the religious police, who for decades had regulated every facet of daily life in the country, in a bid to make the country more appealing to foreigners. 

The Muslim World League, a major Islamic NGO, hosted a forum in Riyadh in 2022 for a diverse array of global religious leaders that included Jews, Muslims, evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Buddhists and Hindus. Saudi Arabia has also made efforts in recent years to rid textbooks of negative references to Jews and Christians. 

Houda Nonoo, a former Bahraini ambassador to the U.S., touted “the presence of interfaith houses of worship across the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]” as “a powerful symbol of coexistence and mutual respect.” The king of Bahrain has promoted religious tolerance in the small island nation, situated between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. 

“Building houses of worship for all religions is a meaningful step toward making people of all faiths feel seen, respected and truly welcome,” Nonoo told Jewish Insider last week, declining to specifically comment on whether Saudi Arabia should adopt a similar approach. 

Overall, true religious pluralism in Saudi Arabia remains far afield. The State Department has designated Saudi Arabia a “country of particular concern” on matters of international religious freedom since 2004, alongside China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Russia, among others.

A U.S. delegation to the country last year departed early when Saudi officials asked Cooper, the then-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, to remove his yarmulke. The Saudi Embassy in Washington acknowledged the flub, describing the incident as “unfortunate” and “the result of a misunderstanding of internal protocols.”

But despite Saudi Arabia at times facing global censure for such incidents and for other human rights abuses, the country is guaranteed to be a major figure in shaping the changing face of the Middle East, particularly in relation to Israel’s standing in the region. 

“Without question, the most important address on this issue about how we move forward on the peace end of things is Saudi Arabia,” said Cooper. “Expect that whatever the Saudis do will have a Saudi, if you will, stempel” — Yiddish for “stamp” — “and imprint. It won’t look like whatever anybody else has done.” 

A widely followed social media service in the United Arab Emirates is pushing a boycott campaign against Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce platform, after its president endorsed a recent social media comment critical of biased media coverage against Israel.

In a series of dramatically worded Instagram posts on Wednesday, Smashi, a digital information service owned by the Dubai-based media group Augustus Media, took aim at Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s president, over a brief social media remark voicing agreement with a fellow tech entrepreneur who had denounced a news article for uncritically citing casualty figures provided by Hamas.

“Thx for saying this,” Finkelstein wrote on Tuesday, responding to a viral post from Martin Varsavsky, an outspoken board member of Axel Springer, the German publishing giant whose subsidiary, Politico, had run the Associated Press story Varsavsky dismissed as “one-sided Hamas support.”

Smashi, in its framing of Finkelstein’s comment, said he had backed a “pro-Israel tweet defending Israel’s airstrikes” against Hamas, “adding fuel to the debate over the legitimacy of Israel’s military actions, which equate to a genocide, in Gaza.”

Noting that Shopify has nearly 25,000 customers in the Middle East, “with a substantial concentration” in the United Arab Emirates, Smashi urged its followers to use alternate e-commerce platforms in the region, sharing a list of six competitors to Shopify.

Finkelstein’s online remark has drawn separate calls from anti-Israel activists to boycott Shopify — which has previously been a target of such campaigns. But Smashi’s involvement stands out given its wide reach in the United Arab Emirates, which has continued to maintain its normalization agreement with Israel even amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

Augustus Media — whose advertising partners include Nike, Citi Bank, Samsung, Nestle and Coca-Cola — owns another digital media brand, Lovin Dubai, that has promoted other anti-Israel content since October 7th. The so-called “local news and lifestyle brand” has described the Israeli hostages held by Hamas as “prisoners,” for instance, and amplified a conspiracy theory about “‘Zionists’ organ harvesting Palestinian bodies.”

Augustus Media did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. 

Smashi has also turned a critical eye toward Google over its recent acquisition of Wiz, an Israeli cybersecurity startup. In a social media post this week, the company emphasized that Google had just paid a “world record $32 billion” for the startup “founded by former Israeli military officers.”

After some followers took issue with the framing as celebratory, the company said in response to critics that its coverage of Google had been misinterpreted.

“We, as a policy, call Israel’s acts in Gaza a genocide,” the streaming service wrote. “This news is also one of the pieces where we highlight that Google has invested in one such startup which is Israeli and by former military officers. While everyone highlighted it as a big deal in tech world, we are one of the only few who highlighted for IOF [[Israel Occupation Forces, a term used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the IDF] soldiers being behind it.”

Still, the company — which claims more than 605,000 followers and reaches more than 28 million viewers, according to Augustus — has otherwise recently reserved its involvement in boycott efforts to Shopify.

It is unclear, however, why Smashi has chosen to target Shopify now, as Finkelstein, who is Jewish, had previously spoken up more vocally in support of Israel amid its war with Hamas.

Finkelstein did not return a request for comment on Wednesday, nor did a spokesperson for Shopify.