David Pollock examines the data from a recent survey of public opinion in Saudi Arabia. While some of the results are disheartening, others are less so:

Against the background of [last] week’s exchanges of fire between Israel and Gaza, it is striking that the solid majority (76 percent) of Saudi citizens say that Hamas “firing missiles or rockets [at] Israel from Gaza” will have “negative effects on our region.” Moreover, as in previous polls since November 2020, around 40 percent of Saudis continue to accept economic ties with Israel. In this survey, 38 percent answered in the affirmative to this proposition: “If it would help our economy, it would be acceptable to have some business deals with Israeli companies.”

By way of instructive comparison, affirmative responses to this question in Egypt or Jordan, both officially at peace with Israel for several decades, have hovered at around the 10-percent range in every recent survey.

This relatively high level of popular acceptance and nuanced attitudes, however, does not mean that most Saudis favor full normalization with Israel today—nor active cooperation with it against Iran. Again as in previous recent polls, just 20 percent say that the Abraham Accords will yield positive results for the Middle East.

[A] large majority (81 percent), surprisingly, also agree with this deliberately provocative statement: “In case of an earthquake or other natural disaster, as we just saw in Turkey and Syria, Arab countries should refuse any humanitarian aid from Israel.”

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.”