First, a U.S.-Saudi security pact that produces normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state — while curtailing Saudi-China relations — would be a game changer for the Middle East, bigger than the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Because peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, would open the way for peace between Israel and the whole Muslim world, including giant countries like Indonesia and maybe even Pakistan. It would be a significant Biden foreign policy legacy.

Second, if the U.S. forges a security alliance with Saudi Arabia — on the conditions that it normalize relations with Israel and that Israel make meaningful concessions to the Palestinians — Netanyahu’s ruling coalition of Jewish supremacists and religious extremists would have to answer this question: You can annex the West Bank, or you can have peace with Saudi Arabia and the whole Muslim world, but you can’t have both, so which will it be? Now wouldn’t that make an interesting discussion around Netanyahu’s cabinet table?

I’d love to see Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, go on Israeli television and explain to the Israeli people why it is in Israel’s interest to annex the West Bank and its 2.9 million Palestinian inhabitants — forever — rather than normalize ties with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world. A Saudi-Israeli peace could dramatically reduce the Muslim-Jewish antipathy born over a century ago with the start of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict. But before such a choice — annexation or normalization — can be brought before this extremist Israeli government, a lot of things have to be agreed to by a lot of people.

That said, Jake Sullivan is not in Riyadh today for tourism. The Saudis are seeking three main things from Washington: a NATO-level mutual security treaty that would enjoin the U.S. to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense if it is attacked (most likely by Iran); a civilian nuclear program, monitored by the U.S.; and the ability to purchase more advanced U.S. weapons, like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antiballistic missile defense system, which are particularly helpful to the Saudis against Iran’s growing mid- and long-range missile arsenal.

Among the things the U.S. wants from the Saudis are an end to the fighting in Yemen, where the conflict has blessedly been diminishing over the past year, an unprecedentedly large Saudi aid package to Palestinian institutions in the West Bank and significant limits on the growing relationship between Saudi Arabia and China.