One of the big stories to come out of the Middle East in the past decade has been the warming relations between Jerusalem and a number of Arab states, brought together by shared concerns over the growing power of Iran. But these informal, quiet alliances go back much further, explains Clive Jones:

[W]e can trace Israel’s ties to Oman back to the mid-1970s, when Israel offered and provided advice to Sultan Qaboos on border security, when he was faced with the Marxist-oriented Dhofar Rebellion. Israel provided intelligence based on its own experience of securing its borders against the PLO cross-border attacks from Jordan.

The real benchmark, [however], was the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, which allowed the opening of low-level ties between Israel and many Gulf countries. Of course, these ties fell into disarray following the outbreak of the second intifada. Nonetheless, the opening of low-level ties after Oslo set a precedent for further interactions in the future, and even when some Gulf states such as Oman and Qatar [felt compelled] to suspend ties, institutional links often continued in order to maintain diplomatic dialogue.

In the longer term, these links have another dynamic: Israel has proved to the Gulf states, based on its own performance against its external threats, that it is willing to take on what is seen as Iranian aggression and aggrandizement in Lebanon and Syria, demonstrating that it is a partner in curbing Iranian military influence throughout the region. [Thus] many Gulf states who see Israel as more reliable than the Trump administration, whose unpredictability means that Gulf states cannot be sure of what the medium- to long-term U.S. policy in the Middle East and Gulf region is going to look like.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”