Last week, the U.S. Navy intercepted a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman loaded with thousands of AK-47s, which it was bringing from Iran to Houthi militants in Yemen. The interdiction underscores the importance of policing these waters, a task often shared by the Combined Maritime Task Force, a U.S.-led league of 34 countries that includes such Middle Eastern states as the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt. Bradley Bowman and Ryan Brobst argue that Israel should be invited to join:

Iran has repeatedly attempted to seize American unmanned surface vessels (USVs). On August 29, 2022, the U.S. Navy detected an Iranian ship in the Persian Gulf towing an American USV. When U.S. forces responded, the Iranian vessel cut the line towing the USV and departed. Two days later, another Iranian ship seized two USVs that had been operating in the Red Sea for more than 200 days without incident. Two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers responded quickly, seeking to recover the USVs. The Iranian crew refused to release them for approximately eighteen hours, eventually relenting the next morning.

Israel shares an interest in countering smuggling and other malign activity in the Red Sea, and it previously conducted naval exercises with Bahrain, the UAE, and the U.S. in those waters focused on “visit, board, search, and seizure tactics.”

The Israeli navy is one of the more capable in the region and has a naval base at Eilat located on the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba. . . . Israeli naval assets also include dozens of patrol boats operated by crews experienced in detecting and interdicting smuggling operations, especially those conducted by Iranian proxies.

On March 5, Riyadh appointed Salman al-Dosari—a prominent journalist and vocal supporter of the Abraham Accords—as its new minister of information. Hussain Abdul-Hussain takes this choice as one of several signals that Saudi Arabia is inching closer to normalization with Israel:

Saudi Arabia has been the biggest supporter of Palestinians since before the establishment of Israel in 1948. When the kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Red Sea in 1945, the Saudi king demanded that Jews in Palestine be settled elsewhere. But unlimited Saudi support has only bought Palestinian ungratefulness and at times, downright hate. After the Abraham Accords were announced in August 2020, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah burned pictures not only of the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain but also of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Since then, many Palestinian pundits and activists have been accusing Saudi Arabia of betraying the cause, even though the Saudis have said repeatedly, and as late as January, that their peace with Israel is incumbent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While the Saudi Arabian government has practiced self-restraint by not reciprocating Palestinian hate, Saudi Arabian columnists, cartoonists, and social-media activists have been punching back. After the burning of the pictures of Saudi Arabian leaders, al-Dosari wrote that with their aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians “have liberated the kingdom from any ethical or political commitment to these parties in the future.”