WORLD AFFAIRS JOURNAL
The Cold Arab-Israeli Alliance Against Iran
by Michael J. Totten
April 19, 2016

…The Saudis are congenitally incapable of saying anything friendly about Israel in public—behind closed doors, the Saudis get along with Israel fine—but Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir nevertheless said, “There is an agreement and commitments that Egypt accepted related to these islands [in Straits of Tiran], and the kingdom is committed to these.” He’s referring to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin in 1979, which guarantees passage of Israeli ships through the Straits of Tiran. By publicly agreeing to respect Israel’s right to this particular international waterway, the Saudis are implicitly agreeing to at least part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty despite the fact that no formal peace treaty exists yet between Jerusalem and Riyadh. READ MORE