Barack Obama spoke with Saudi King Salman, pictured, to discuss the outline being announced. Saudi Arabia cautiously endorses Iran deal

Saudi Arabia released a cautious statement Monday endorsing the nuclear “framework” agreement reached last week between Iran and six world powers.

“The council of ministers,” a top governing body within the Saudi system, “expressed hope for attaining a binding and definitive agreement that would lead to the strengthening of security and stability in the region and the world,” read the statement, first published by the Saudi state news agency.


The careful Saudi embrace of the Iran deal stands in contrast to that of Israel, whose officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, have lashed out at the negotiations in a serious of interviews and statements.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Netanyahu reiterated his concerns about the framework agreement and said there is “still time to get a better deal.”

Officials in U.S. and Israeli governments have openly expressed concern that if Iran secures a nuclear weapon, a nuclear arms race between the Shiite nation and its Sunni regional rivals — including not only Saudi Arabia, but also Egypt, Turkey, and potentially even Jordan and Qatar — might ensue.

The U.S. concern about Saudi Arabia’s reaction to the deal is reflected in the fact that even before speaking about it in the Rose Garden on Thursday or calling Netanyahu, Obama spoke with Saudi King Salman to discuss the outline being announced. He has also invited the leaders of Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain — to a summit at Camp David this spring.

In its statement, Saudi Arabia expressed its hope that the agreement would lead to a “Middle East and the Arabian Gulf region free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons,” a possible reference to Israel’s undeclared nuclear program.

For nearly two weeks, the Saudi military has been conducting airstrikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in its southern neighbor, Yemen. Monday’s statement encouraged “good neighborliness” from the Iranian regime, as well as “non-interference in the affairs of Arab states,” an allusion to the conflicts in Yemen and in Syria, to which Iran has sent advisers to shore up Bashar Assad’s embattled regime. In a briefing Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it continued to pound Houthi positions: “Air operations are still going, targeting military sites, ammunition and arms stores controlled by the Houthi militias.”

Obama, in an interview with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman published Sunday evening, alluded to Saudi concerns about Iran’s rising power in the region, but said he was more worried about internal threats to the stability of Arab Gulf monarchies: “Populations that, in some cases, are alienated, youth that are underemployed, an ideology that is destructive and nihilistic, and in some cases, just a belief that there are no legitimate political outlets for grievances.”

“When it comes to external aggression,” Obama said, “I think we’re going to be there for our [Arab] friends — and I want to see how we can formalize that a little bit more than we currently have, and also help build their capacity so that they feel more confident about their ability to protect themselves from external aggression.”

“The biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” he said. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries. Now disentangling that from real terrorist activity inside their country, how we sort that out, how we engage in the counterterrorism cooperation that’s been so important to our own security — without automatically legitimizing or validating whatever repressive tactics they may employ — I think that’s a tough conversation to have, but it’s one that we have to have.”