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b'The Biden administration has announced that the President will take his first trip to the Middle East as president. His first stop will be in Israel to meet with Israeli leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, before heading to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.\\n\\nThe U.S.-Saudi relationship began nearly eight decades ago between FDR and King Ibn Saud. With varying degrees of tumult, the relationship has survived \\u2013 and sometimes thrived \\u2013 through 14 U.S. presidencies.\\n\\nHas all that now changed? Has there been a sense in Riyadh \\u2013 and across the Middle East \\u2013 that the U.S. (through recent Democratic and Republican administrations) is downgrading its focus in the Middle East. \\n\\nIs there a risk that China gradually replaces the U.S. as the most important geopolitical partner of Saudi Arabia?\\n\\nAnd will Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords? And, could President Biden engineer it and win the Nobel Peace Prize?\\n\\nFormer Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer served as Israel\\u2019s chief envoy to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021 \\u2013 working with three U.S. administrations. \\n\\nHe was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu\\u2019s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the U.S. relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He\\u2019s a graduate of the Wharton School and completed a degree at Oxford. \\n\\nAmbassador Dermer and I had this conversation a few days ago at the Jewish Leadership Conference (https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/), which is sponsored by The Tikvah Fund (https://tikvahfund.org/).'