A few hours after Joe Biden greeted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a punch before a long meeting between the couple, the US president still insisted that his visit to Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with the day-to-day leader of the kingdom.
“I did not come here to meet with the Crown Prince,” Biden said, noting his agenda, which included a summit with other Arab leaders.
For weeks before his visit to Saudi Arabia, the White House tried to use the summit to deflect criticism of the controversial trip to a nation that Biden had pledged to treat as an outcast. But it is the images of the president committing to Prince Mohammed, the man that American intelligence concluded he authorized the operation that led to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, which may be the most legacy duration of the trip.
“This visit was mainly about optics, especially the Saudi side,” said Steven Cook, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Council. “There were a lot of advantages for the Saudis and a lot of disadvantages for the Americans.”
Biden and his team knew that the trip would have a political cost, and that Riyadh would use its meeting with Prince Mohammed as a sign of the rehabilitation of the Crown Prince in the west, less than four years after Khashoggi’s assassination. . But with oil prices at their highest levels in more than a decade and Washington trying to isolate Russia, collaborators pressured Biden to repair ties with the world’s largest crude exporter.
The challenges, however, of re-establishing relations with Riyadh were underscored when Saudi officials quickly rejected Biden’s assessments of two key U.S. goals: human rights and oil.
The president told reporters that he raised the assassination of Khashoggi, who was assassinated by Saudi agents in 2018, at the top of his meeting with Prince Mohammed.
Biden said Prince Mohammed reiterated that he “was not personally responsible” for the assassination: Riyadh has blamed the assassination on a rogue operation.
The president, who had previously refused to speak to the Crown Prince, said he “indicated he probably was” in response. However, Saudi officials said Prince Mohammed backed down, insisting those responsible were tried and imprisoned.
US President Joe Biden punches Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman © Saudi Royal Court
Officials said the Crown Prince then cited the abuse of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq while trying to question Washington’s human rights record. The exchange was brief and leaders moved on to other issues, they added.
Similarly, Biden told reporters he believed he had reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia to produce more oil in the coming weeks. But Saudi officials, who have long argued that simply pumping more crude will not reduce prices, were quick to downplay it.
They reiterated Riyadh’s position that any decision to produce more oil would be based on demand.
“If you say we promised more oil it means we see a shortage of oil,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. “If we see an oil shortage, more oil will be produced.”
Biden achieved some foreign policy victories on his first visit to the Middle East as president, which began with a stop in Israel. This included Saudi Arabia agreeing to open its airspace to all flights to and from Israel, a country with which Riyadh has no formal relations.
Washington and Riyadh also agreed to cooperate to build 5G and 6G in Saudi Arabia, an agreement the U.S. hopes will dislodge the realm of Chinese communications technology.
But Brian Katulis, a senior member of the Middle East Institute, said the success of the visit would only be clear in the coming weeks and would depend on the follow-up of the Saudis.
“If Biden gets relief from the gas pump and is seen to get some relief for Americans with inflation through this visit … this will pay more political dividends than the price that comes from the people. that springs up on Twitter, ”he said.
Even before it began, the trip had aroused criticism from human rights activists and U.S. lawmakers, and Biden had struggled to articulate why he was going to Saudi Arabia.
At various times he suggested that it was to drive greater regional integration, to step up efforts to end a seven-year war in Yemen and to stabilize energy markets.
The message was sharpened throughout the visit, and ended with a speech on Saturday to the leaders of the Gulf states and Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, in which he insisted that the US would continue to be an “active partner and committed to the center.
“We will not walk away and leave a gap to fill China, Russia or Iran,” Biden said.
These comments were designed to address the perception among Arab states that successive US administrations have tried to break away from the region. This sentiment has pushed Gulf states in particular to deepen ties with Russia and China, the region’s largest oil buyer, and to cover their traditional relations with Washington.
Yemeni security guards inspect damage to telecommunications ministry following airstrikes on the night of the Saudi-led coalition against the Huthi rebel capital, Sanaa, in February © Mohammed Huis / AFP / Getty Images
The Gulf states and Israel are also concerned about Biden’s efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers, fearing it would embolden its main rival. Riyadh has been upset by its criticism of human rights and its policies in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia leads a coalition fighting Houthis rebels aligned with Iran.
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden’s “general instinct is that the Middle East will be a source of trouble and not an opportunity.”
But factors such as the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concerns about the deepening of China’s footprint in the region, have made it impossible to ignore the region.
“He’s reluctant to fit in too much, but he also understands that he can’t give up either,” Alterman said.
Whatever the White House’s vision, Biden ended up giving a “big victory” to Prince Mohammed, said Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator familiar with royal court thought.
“The visit was a claim for MBS and one that proved that Saudi Arabia and MBS cannot be ignored let alone isolated,” Shihabi said.
However, for critics of Saudi Arabia, the trip shattered any lingering hope that Biden would back up his earlier promises and hold the kingdom accountable.
Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted her condemnation of the trip using a fake account of the former journalist and an image of Biden and Prince Mohammed punching.
“Hi @Potus, is this the responsibility you promised for my murder?” she wrote.