What’s Undermining Obama’s Camp David Summit

The last time there was really good news from a Camp David summit  was 1978, when Jimmy Carter brought together Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin and laid the basis for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. The 2000 Camp David summit at which Bill Clinton tried to do the same with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat didn’t have a happy ending.

And the Camp David summit President Barack Obama is hosting to allay Gulf allies’ concerns over a nuclear deal with Iran isn’t likely to measure up either.

Just last week Saudi Arabia’s King Salman told Secretary of State John Kerry that he was looking forward to this meeting. But the Saudi king decided not to come. Of the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, only Kuwait and Qatar are sending top leaders. Regardless of the reason for King Salman’s absence, the optics are terrible for the U.S. Once again, a Middle East leader is publicly saying no to a U.S. president on something important (earlier members of that club include Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad). Frank conversations may take place with Saudi Arabia’s highly influential deputy crown prince, Muhammed bin Nayef, and Defense Minister Muhammad bin Salman, who is also the king’s son. But it’s hard to imagine much of consequence will be announced without the king’s participation.

Bilateral relations fray over time because of perceptions that one or both parties have changed views on something that matters greatly to the other. The oil-for-security trade-off at the foundation of the U.S.-Saudi bond has been unraveling for some time. After the Arab Spring uprisings began, the Saudis saw the Obama administration abandon Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and call for political change in Bahrain–actions that, to the Saudis, raised questions about Washington’s commitment to the kingdom’s stability. Add to that U.S. support for Iraq’s former Shiite prime minister, Nouri al- Maliki(who is, to Saudi eyes, a client of Iran) and U.S. unwillingness to take military action against the Assad regime.

The biggest driver of tensions is the Saudi perception that the U.S. is pursuing an Iran-centric approach to the region enabling the kingdom’s arch enemy to gain influence and prestige. Yes, the Saudis worry about a nuclear Iran. But the immediate byproducts of a U.S.-Iran nuclear agreement stress them more. Iran seeks to spread its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen–effectively the Saudis’ back yard–and bolster Mr. Assad in Syria through Shiite groups and militias. Freed from sanctions and open for international business, Iran would have money to expand those activities. There is a real sense among the Saudis that Washington is either mendacious or naive on Iran and can’t be trusted, and that U.S. officials view Saudi Arabia–like Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali–as expendable allies. This isn’t a divide over tactics but a gap of strategic dimensions.

No amount of military  hardware can solve this problem. Washington has sold the Saudis and Emiratis billions of dollars’ worth of weapons systems in the past several years, and Saudi Arabia’s outreach to Pakistan and Egypt for troops to fight the Houthis in Yemen speaks volumes about its capacity. The Saudis reportedly want a written defense or security agreement. King Salman may have opted to skip the summit because he didn’t want to attend a meeting that wouldn’t produce the results he seeks and at which the Obama administration would press the Gulf countries to coordinate their defenses. There are limits on what Washington can do for Riyadh because of the need to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge, and Congress would need to approve any serious security arrangement. Similarly, the Obama administration doesn’t want to make commitments to Saudi Arabia that could drag the U.S. into a war in Yemen.

Neither the Obama administration nor the Gulf countries can afford a major rift. King Salman did call President Obama to express his regret. The summit is likely to end with reciprocal commitments on ways to enhance security against Iran. But behind the photo ops remains a troublesome dynamic: In cutting a deal with Iran, the president has opened a breach with allies, including Israel, that fear a rising Iran and don’t trust the president. Those worries can be ameliorated only by a significant change in Iran’s behavior–and right now, at least, that is not a bet worth making.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.

This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.