Lazar Berman: Are Saudis moving away from Israel and toward Islamists?
The Times of Israel Daily Briefing
The Times of Israel
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Times of Israel's Lazar Focus. Each Friday, join host diplomatic correspondent Lazar Berman for a deep dive into what's behind the news that spins the globe.
Only 16 days before the October 7, 2023, attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the podium at the United Nations. As a Saudi diplomat listened intently, he said, "We are on the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
The war that erupted with the Hamas invasion has, not surprisingly, pushed off normalization, but it was still seen as likely once the hostages came back and Hamas was beaten.
That prognosis has been replaced by alarm in recent months. The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE -- a close Israeli ally -- spilled out into the open in Yemen, and continues to simmer in Sudan and Libya.
Meanwhile, Riyadh's relations with Ankara and Doha continue to improve. In parallel, Saudi media and clerics launched a bitter war of words on the UAE, Israel, and even Jews.
Berman drills down into the economic, strategic, and military roots of the UAE-Saudi regional rivalry, and whether the idea of blocs in the Middle East is even accurate.
He then gives his assessment of whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is really realigning the kingdom's foreign policy, and what it means for a peace deal with Israel.
Lazar Focus can be found on all podcast platforms. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Laser Focus. I'm your host, Laser Berman. Now, this week, I'm actually coming to you from a cold and icy Washington, D.C. |
| 0:12.5 | I flew here on a last-minute trip on Wing of Zion with Prime Minister Netanyahu for his urgent meeting with President Trump at the White House to discuss Iran. |
| 0:22.9 | Now, before I head back to Andrew's Air Force Base in about an hour and a half to head back to |
| 0:27.5 | Israel, I wanted to talk to you about a very important topic. It's a topic that I'm sure you've |
| 0:33.0 | read about, thought about in the past, but it's one that has come back into the news in a pretty |
| 0:37.7 | worrying way in recent weeks. Now, the subject that I want to talk about is Saudi Arabia. And to |
| 0:43.6 | start this, I want to take you back to September 22nd, 2023. We're talking 16 days before the |
| 0:50.0 | October 7th Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Of course, no one knew this was going to happen |
| 0:56.1 | except Hamas. But we were at the United Nations in New York. President, excuse me, Prime Minister |
| 1:01.9 | Netanyahu comes up to the podium. Many of the Arab countries and many other countries |
| 1:08.8 | leave the room. But one Saudi diplomat stays. |
| 1:13.6 | And in his speech, Netanyahu speaks really in the climax of the speech about the Saudi |
| 1:20.2 | relationship and an impending peace deal with the Saudis. |
| 1:24.5 | And he says, I believe we are on the cusp of a dramatic peace deal, |
| 1:29.5 | a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And that really captured the zeitgeist at the time. |
| 1:34.9 | It was that a peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would really be the game changer, |
| 1:40.0 | was inevitable. It was a question of when and not if. Now, of course, the war that has broken out |
| 1:46.0 | for the past two and a half years since October 7th has gotten in the way of that piece. |
| 1:51.7 | It's changed Saudi calculations. It certainly wasn't the time to do a peace deal. But the |
| 1:55.8 | expectation throughout most of it was when there's going to be a ceasefire, the Saudis will come back |
| 2:01.3 | around and we'll get back on track. But in recent months, there's been a very different |
| 2:06.6 | discourse around Saudi Arabia and coming out of Saudi Arabia. It's one that has caused some |
... |
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