The official Saudi line on the nuclear deal emerged on Monday when the Saudi Council of Ministers, the kingdom’s cabinet, held its weekly meeting. A report on the proceedings, released by the Saudi Press Agency, was written in the news outlet's usual anodyne prose, noting that “the Cabinet reviewed a number of reports on the development of the situations at regional and international arenas” before continuing: “The Kingdom viewed the agreement as a primary step towards a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear program. As far as good intentions are provided and as long as it concludes to a Middle East and Gulf region free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. Hoping that such a step will be followed by more important steps leading to guarantee the right for all countries in the region to peacefully use nuclear energy.”

The translation is awkward, but the operative phrase is “as far as good intentions are provided.” The problem for King Abdullah and the other members of the House of Saud, as well as most Saudis, is that they don’t trust Iran in the diplomatic sphere and they don’t trust Shiites religiously.

The Saudis are sufficiently sensitive to Western good manners to avoid making anti-Shiite remarks in English (in public, at least). But fearing the worst from the Geneva talks, Saudi officials have spent the past several days whipping up concern in New York, Washington, and London.

Holding forth in The Wall Street Journal’s premier “Weekend Interview” slot on November 23, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz said his country was putting “maximum pressure now on the United States not to succumb to the president of Iran's soft talk.” The billionaire businessman, who is not normally given license by Riyadh to talk about political issues, pleaded, “The U.S. has to have a foreign policy. Well-defined, well-structured. You don’t have it right now, unfortunately. It’s just completely chaos. confusion. No policy. I mean, we feel it. We sense it, you know.”

Saudi princes and officials often cast Israel as the villain of the Middle East, implying and often saying outright that if it were not for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, everything in the region would be fine. Prince Alwaleed skipped this line of argument completely, instead saying, “For the first time, Saudi Arabian interests and Israel are almost parallel. It’s incredible.”

Incredulity is also a good word to sum up the feelings at a roundtable in Washington D.C. that I attended a few days earlier, when U.S. officials, military officers, and think tankers questioned another prominent Saudi personality. Asked what the kingdom would do if Israeli aircraft flew over Saudi Arabia on their way to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, the Saudi, whose remarks were off the record, replied: “Nothing. Why would we do anything? They would be doing what we want to happen.” Of course, after a pause, he added, “But we would issue a strong public note of condemnation for the intrusion into air space when it was all over.”