National Security Adviser Susan Rice announced yesterday during an interview at the White House that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter will be traveling to Saudi Arabia and Israel in order to convince these traditional U.S. allies of the benefits of the nuclear deal with Iran, according to a report yesterday by Reuters.

Carter’s travel plans have been determined by a White House that is in the midst of a multi-pronged effort to sell the nuclear agreement negotiated Vienna, according to Reuters:

Carter’s trip next week, which the White House already announced will include a stop in Israel, is one of several initiatives President Barack Obama and his staff are taking to sell the controversial deal at home and abroad.

A number of traditional allies of the United States, including those Carter will be visiting, are critical of the deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the agreement “repeated the mistakes” of the nuclear deal with North Korea, which subsequently developed nuclear bombs. Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, said on CNN last night that the main problem of the deal is that it does not change Iran’s behavior.

While the initial official Saudi response to the nuclear deal was muted, Saudi media has slammed the agreement, with Reuters reporting today that officials close to the ruling family have privately “railed against the deal as likely to embolden Iran to give more backing to regional militias.”

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former head of the Saudi Arabian intelligence services and Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States for over 20 years, wrote today that the agreement would “wreak havoc in the region,” in an op-ed published in Lebanon’s The Daily Star. Echoing Netanyahu, Prince Bandar further wrote, “The strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region’s intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse.”

This skepticism has been expressed by other regional powers, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Critics have long warned that the deal may spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and that Iran, which stands to receive an influx of cash due to sanctions relief, will ramp up its sponsorship of terror in the region.

[Photo: Ash Carter / Flickr ]