As some observers predicted, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran has encouraged Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates to seek their own civilian nuclear programs. Jonathan Schanzer and Henry Sokolski contend that these programs are only a pretext for the development of technology that can be used for manufacturing nuclear arms:

[N]either Iran nor Saudi Arabia needs nuclear power. Nor, for that matter, does any other state in the gas-soaked, sun-drenched Middle East, where civil nuclear programs are simply nuclear-bomb starter kits. Instead of straining to control these programs, or even facilitating them, the U.S. should encourage less risky, cheaper, clean non-nuclear alternatives. . . .

[The] efforts to build nuclear plants in Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and Algeria, are dangerously misguided. When Washington encourages such pursuits, it accelerates an implicit arms race, even if the U.S. insists on additional safety measures. Whatever Riyadh has, Tehran will demand as part of the “better” nuclear deal the Trump administration wants someday to negotiate. Conversely, any concession made to Iran will become Riyadh’s next demand. Ditto, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, etc. What they’re buying is not an efficient source of energy; it’s an emergency option to build nuclear weapons.

To break this arms race, America should lead. First, it should stop bargaining over dangerous nuclear projects in the region, urge Riyadh to drop its nuclear plans, and press Tehran and other nuclear-supplier states to do the same.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.