In this editorial, Arab News throws more than a bucket of cold water on the strange idea published in the London Times, that Israel and Saudi Arabia had reached agreement to allow the Israeli Air Force to use Saudi airspace to attack Iran. Calling the thought a ‘fantasy’, ‘conspiracy theory’, and ‘deluded drivel’, the paper goes over several of the reasons why this idea is implausible from the start.

Missing from the piece, and for logical reasons, is any mention of the capacity of Iran to retaliate. That factor is a major one when it comes to dealing with frictions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. A look at a map of the region and a quick check of Iran’s conventional arsenal should immediately suggest cause for careful Saudi behavior.

Editorial: Total fabrication

Reports of secret Saudi-Israeli meetings surface from time to time in the international press. Over the past 30 years there have been quite a number of reports and now, it has happened again. The UK’s Sunday Times published a report three days ago claiming that the Kingdom had agreed to allow Israelis use of Saudi airspace in the event of an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The story is a complete fabrication. Even the Israelis say it is false. That is it nonsense — with its claims that the head of Mossad had been in secret talks with Saudi officials and that Mossad is in regular contact with Saudi intelligence — would have been evident to anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Kingdom and its policies. Sadly not to the Sunday Times, whose publication of hoax Hitler diaries in 1983 remains a landmark for journalistic gullibility.

The reality is far more prosaic but quite simple — and quite fixed: The Kingdom has no contacts with Israel, direct or indirect. There will be no contacts until peace is established in the Middle East. That will only happen when Israel agrees to withdraw from all the lands it has occupied since the 1967 war, including Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and recognizes an independent, sovereign Palestinian state.
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