On video: Iran and Saudi Arabia decided to renew ties and open embassies (Reuters)
President Joe Biden's top advisers will fly from Saudi Arabia to Israel today (Monday) to update Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the talks that White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had last night with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, three Israeli officials told Walla and senior Americans.
why is it important
Senior American officials said that one of the topics National Security Adviser Sullivan discussed with the Saudi Crown Prince was the efforts to promote further normalization steps between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In a speech delivered by Sullivan in Washington last Thursday, he said that achieving full normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a declared national security interest for the United States.
"As a sign of how focused we are on this issue and to make it clear to you how seriously we take this, I'm not saying anything more on the matter so as not to sabotage our efforts," Sullivan said.
Will be updated on the details of the meeting of the US representatives with Saudi Arabia (Photo: Reuven Castro)
in the news center
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met yesterday in Jeddah with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
At the same time, Sullivan held a four-way meeting with bin Salman and the national security advisers of the United Arab Emirates and India.
President Biden's senior adviser on the Middle East issue, Brett McGurk, and Biden's senior adviser on energy issues, Amos Hochstein, who participated in the talks in Saudi Arabia yesterday, will arrive in Jerusalem today and meet with Netanyahu, with the Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, and with the head of the National Assembly, Tzachi Hanegbi.
Will help connect Arab countries to India?
Bin Salman (Photo: Reuters)
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The big picture
One of the topics discussed by Sullivan in yesterday's four-way meeting with bin Salman and the senior officials from India and the United Arab Emirates was a large-scale joint infrastructure project to connect the Gulf and Arab countries through a network of high-speed trains that will be connected to India via shipping routes from seaports in the Middle East.
This is an idea that came up for the first time about a year ago during the discussions of the joint forum established for the United States, Israel, India and the United Arab Emirates and was named I2U2.
The previous Israeli government headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid proposed the idea which was based on the initiative of the former Minister of Transportation Israel Katz to connect Israel and the Gulf countries with a railway network.
Senior American officials said that the White House decided to use this idea and make a change to it - when instead of Israel, Saudi Arabia will be integrated into the project, which has great resources and ability to promote such a significant move.
The goal is that if the project progresses, it will be possible to integrate Israel into it in the future.
what are they saying
There was no response from the White House.
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Political-political
Tags
Joe Biden
Benjamin Netanyahu
Saudi Arabia
Muhammad bin Salman
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