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Saudi Arabia Abandons Pursuit of US Defense Treaty Over Israel Stalemate

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Saudi Arabia has abandoned its pursuit of an ambitious defense treaty with Washington in return for normalizing relations with Israel and is now pushing for a more modest military cooperation agreement, two Saudi and four Western officials told Reuters.

In a drive to get a wide-ranging mutual security treaty over the line earlier this year, Riyadh softened its position on Palestinian statehood, telling Washington that a public commitment from Israel to a two-state solution could be enough for the Gulf kingdom to normalize relations.

But with public anger in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East at fever pitch over Israel‘s military actions in Gaza, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has again made recognition of Israel conditional on it taking concrete steps to create a Palestinian state, two Saudi and three Western sources said.

Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu is still eager to secure normalization with the Saudi powerhouse as a historic milestone and a sign of broader acceptance in the Arab world, Western diplomats said.

But he faces overwhelming opposition at home to any concessions to the Palestinians following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and knows any gesture in the direction of statehood would fracture his ruling coalition, they said.

With both leaders shackled for now by their domestic powerbases, Riyadh and Washington hope a more modest defense pact could be sealed before President Joe Biden leaves the White House in January, the sources said.

A full-blown USSaudi treaty would need to pass the US Senate with a two-thirds majority — and this would be a non-starter unless Riyadh recognizes Israel, the six sources said.

The pact now under discussion would involve expanding joint military exercises and drills to address regional threats, mainly from Iran. It would foster partnerships between US and Saudi defense firms, with safeguards to prevent collaboration with China, the sources said.

The agreement would promote Saudi investment in advanced technologies, especially drone defense. The US would increase its presence in Riyadh through training, logistics, and cyber security support, and may deploy a Patriot missile battalion to enhance missile defense and integrated deterrence.

But it would not be the kind of binding mutual defense treaty that would oblige US forces to protect the world’s biggest oil exporter in the event of foreign attack.

Saudi Arabia will get a security deal which will allow more military cooperation and sales of US weapons, but not a defense treaty similar to that of Japan or South Korea as initially sought,” said Abdelaziz al-Sagher, head of the Gulf Research Institute think-tank in Saudi Arabia.

THE TRUMP DILEMMA

The picture is complicated further, however, by the impending arrival of Donald Trump in the White House.

While Trump’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict excludes any provisions for Palestinian statehood or sovereignty, he is a close ally of the Saudi crown prince.

Palestinian and some Arab officials worry that Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner — architect of the “Deal of the Century” and also a close ally of the crown prince — may ultimately persuade him to support the plan.

How the prince reconciles Saudi priorities with this shifting diplomatic landscape will be pivotal, defining both his leadership and the future of the peace process, diplomats said.

The current US administration has not given up hope for a deal on security guarantees before Biden leaves office in January, but a number of obstacles remain. One person in Washington familiar with the talks said there was reason to be skeptical about whether there was enough time to strike a deal.

US officials are mindful that the kingdom is still interested in formally cementing the guarantees it has been seeking, especially to gain access to more advanced weapons, but are uncertain whether it would prefer to get it done under Biden, or wait for Trump, the source said.

“We continue to discuss and have many lines of effort on the table [with the Saudis],” the US official said.

The White House National Security Council declined comment when asked about efforts toward reaching a deal on US security guarantees for Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu’s office declined to comment when asked about the Saudi position on Palestinian statehood.

A defense treaty giving Saudi Arabia US military protection in exchange for recognizing Israel would reshape the Middle East by uniting two long-time foes and binding Riyadh to Washington at a time when China is making inroads in the region.

It would allow the kingdom to shore up its security and ward off threats from Iran and its Houthi allies, to avoid a repeat of the 2019 strikes on its oil facilities, which Riyadh and Washington both blamed on Tehran. Iran has denied any role.

A senior Saudi official said the treaty was 95 percent complete but Riyadh opted to discuss an alternative agreement, given it was not doable without normalization with Israel.

Depending on the format, a scaled-down cooperation agreement could be approved without going through Congress before Biden leaves office, two of the sources said.

There were other stumbling blocks in the negotiations to secure a mutual defense treaty.

For instance, there was no progress in the talks about civil nuclear cooperation because Saudi Arabia refused to sign a so-called 123 Agreement with the US that would have denied Riyadh the right to nuclear enrichment, the six sources said.

Saudi objections to articles related to human rights proved to be another area of disagreement, one Saudi source close to the talks told Reuters.

‘THE BIG PRIZE’

While the Saudi leadership strongly advocates Palestinian statehood, it remains uncertain, according to diplomats, how the crown prince would respond if Trump revives the deal he floated in 2020 to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The plan marks a dramatic shift in US policy and international agreements by overtly aligning with Israel and deviating sharply from the long-standing land-for-peace framework that has historically guided negotiations.

It would allow Israel to annex stretches of land in the West Bank, including Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley, and recognizes Jerusalem as the “undivided capital of Israel,” denying Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as their capital.

Saudi officials insist that the creation of a Palestinian state in accordance with previous international agreements, including East Jerusalem as its capital, remains an essential condition for long-term regional peace and stability.

Without it the cycle of violence will continue to jeopardize any normal relations, they say.

“How can we imagine a region integrated if we sidestep the Palestinian issue?” a senior Saudi official said. “You can’t prevent the Palestinian right to self-determination.”

And in some of the harshest criticism of Israel since the start of the Gaza war, the Crown Prince Mohammed called Israel‘s military actions in Gaza “collective genocide” in his address to an Arab and Islamic summit in Riyadh this month.

The potential for Saudi normalization with Israel, however, could be revisited in the future, perhaps once the dust settles after the Gaza war — and possibly under a different Israeli government, diplomats said.

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said Trump would leverage all possible avenues to secure historic normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“For Trump, Saudi Arabia is the big prize,” said Gerges.

“As to how normalization could happen despite repeated Saudi leaders insistence they will not recognize Israel until a real path to a Palestinian state is set, Trump could promise a ceasefire in Gaza in return for normalization and tentative promise to support a Palestinian state, without obliging Israel to make any real concessions to the Palestinians.”

The post Saudi Arabia Abandons Pursuit of US Defense Treaty Over Israel Stalemate first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.

Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.

Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”

“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”

Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.

UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.

Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.

“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”

On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”

The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.

“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.

“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.

“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.

“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”

During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”

At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.

The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.

As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.

Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.

For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance. 

On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.

One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”

The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.

These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference. 

Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.

This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students. 

Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.

These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.

McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction. 

This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.

We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”

Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.

The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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