The 1991 Saudi plan for Gaza is John Kiriakou’s account of an infrastructure proposal made during his first overseas posting, which he raises whenever a version of it resurfaces.
In 1991 Kiriakou was a new CIA officer on his first overseas tour, in Saudi Arabia, working to an ambassador he describes as having become legendary — Chas Freeman, later ambassador to China and an assistant secretary of defense, “brilliant” in Kiriakou’s assessment.[1] Freeman put a question to the Saudis: what if they were asked to build a port, an airport, a water desalination plant and an electrical grid in Gaza? “And they said, yeah, we would do it.”[1] The proposal was then taken to the Israelis, “and the Israelis said, absolutely never.”[2]
Kiriakou raises the episode because the same architecture reappeared in the Israeli press more than three decades later: Israel would technically continue to own Gaza while day-to-day administration passed to Saudi Arabia, which would also invest in an electrical grid, desalination, and a port, with Gaza disarmed and no Palestinian military. He calls it “a great idea” — and notes he has said so on podcasts more than once — before adding the date: “That was 1991.”[3][1]
Why he thinks the question recurs
The reason Kiriakou keeps returning to the plan is his reading of the conditions it was meant to relieve. Before October 7, he says, Gaza had “but 5 hours of water every day” before Israel shut it off, and a few hours of electricity before Israel shut that off too.[2] His conclusion is stated as a prediction rather than a judgement: “The situation’s untenable because another October 7th is going to happen if there’s not a sort of a pressure release valve.”[2] He closes the thought with a line he attributes to Martin Luther King: “Never underestimate a man’s desire to be free.”[4]
On the ceasefire that had just been reached at the time of the interview, Kiriakou is careful about the word: “It’s not a peace deal. It’s just a ceasefire. It doesn’t address a single one of the core issues. Not a single one.”[5] He says he is rooting for it to hold, and commends the populations on both sides for trying, while withholding any confidence in either leadership — and states that a durable settlement requires an independent Palestine, “because the current situation’s untenable.”[6][7]
Kiriakou’s ambassador
Freeman was one of the two chiefs of mission Kiriakou served under during his own posting to Saudi Arabia, and he describes him in September 2025 as “the legendary Chas Freeman, who, God bless him, he’s still alive. He has some health problems, but he is one of the leading voices out there in support of the Palestinian people.”[8]
He also gives the career consequence of that position. Freeman “went on to be the assistant secretary of defense, and then he was supposed to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council, but the Obama people killed the nomination because he’s pro-Palestinian.”[8]
The contrast Kiriakou draws is with the ambassador who followed — a former governor of Mississippi and Secretary of the Navy under Bill Clinton, “nice guy, sweet guy, completely out of his element”, who did whatever the national security adviser told him. Kiriakou’s point is that the second sort is what Riyadh prefers: “that’s what the Saudis wanted.”[9]