JERUSALEM — President Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich country, for the first time since taking office in July, to lower gasoline prices for consumers and tackle Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, according to some analysts.
Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have reached an all-time low. Saudi Arabia reportedly turned down Biden’s request to speak earlier this year, citing rising oil costs as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The first step, according to Mohammed Khalid Alyahya, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is to identify the problem “Repairing an eighty-year-old relationship that has benefited both the US and Saudi Arabia. It hasn’t sunk any lower than it has recently.”
On the 50th anniversary of the creation of King Faisal Air College, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends a graduation ceremony and air display in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on January 25, 2017.
On the 50th anniversary of the creation of King Faisal Air College, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends a graduation ceremony and air display in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on January 25, 2017. (Faisal Al Nasser/REUTERS)
To broker a reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, Biden will have to renounce his campaign promise to regard the country as a “pariah” state after the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul, according to the CIA.
“There’s no getting around the fact that President Biden’s first effort to downgrade the bilateral relationship while humiliating and ostracising Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has backfired,” said John Hannah, a former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
IN LIGHT OF BIDEN’S ‘PARIAH’ COMMENT, A WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL WAS PRESSED ON HIS SAUDI TRIP.
The visit, according to Hannah, a senior scholar at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), was “a big climb down for the administration forced on them by $5 per gallon gasoline costs, roaring inflation, and an accommodationist policy toward Iran that has reached a dead end.”
“All of the virtue signalling of the administration’s first few months in office, aimed at making good on the president’s campaign promise to turn the Saudis into pariahs, might have made the Democratic Party’s progressive left feel good,” Hannah continued, “but it backfired miserably when it came to serving US national interests.”
GAS PRICES HIT 5 CENTS CENTS CENTS CENTS CENTS CENTS CENTS CENT
“It poisoned relations with the Arab and Muslim world’s most influential country to the point where it wouldn’t even take a call from the US President in the middle of a European crisis (the Ukraine war) that posed the greatest challenge to the American-led international order in the past 30 years,” he added.
THE WHITE HOUSE DECLASSIFIES THE KHASHOGGI REPORT, IN WHICH THE SAUDI CROWN PRINCE IS CHARGED.
Biden will visit Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday to discuss “the UN-mediated truce in Yemen, which has led to the most peaceful period there since the war began seven years ago….expanding regional economic and security cooperation, including new and promising infrastructure and climate initiatives, as well as deterring threats from Iran, advancing human rights, and ensuring global energy and food security,” according to a White House statement.
President Biden will travel to Israel and Saudi Arabia next month, according to the White House.
President Biden will travel to Israel and Saudi Arabia next month, according to the White House.
Saudi Arabia’s critics have encouraged Biden to hold the monarchy accountable for suspected terrorism and human rights violations, while some have expressed surprise at his policy shift.
Biden’s choice to visit the Kingdom, according to Ali Al-Ahmed, head of the Gulf Institute in Washington, D.C., will be considered “one of the worst blunders” committed by a US president. Noting that Biden, who had previously referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah,” is displaying vulnerability to both friends and foes.
“Now, American allies in the area are speculating that we should follow MBS’ lead. We can do the same thing if he can bring the American president to his knees.”
“The significance of this concession is strategic,” Al-Ahmed said, “because it will empower Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China to become more aggressive with a president outwitted by (the) youthful MBS.”
FAMILY MEMBERS OF THE 9/11 ATTACK DEMAND RELEASE OF FBI DOCUMENTS DETAILING SAUDI PART IN THE TERRORIST ATTACK
Families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 terrorist attacks are also unhappy with Biden’s visit.
“We applaud the President’s pledge to do everything possible to assist the 9/11 family community, but sympathy is insufficient. President Biden must do what other Presidents have failed to do: demand transparency from Saudi Arabia and responsibility for those who aided al-Qaeda and the hijackers who killed our loved ones “9/11 Families United’s National Chair, Terry Strada, stated.
9/11 Families United is a group made up of relatives of victims and survivors of the terrorist attacks.
According to 9/11 Families United, declassified US intelligence revealed “a document seized in the days following the 9/11 Attacks from a Saudi agent who is known to have provided substantial assistance to the hijackers, showing a drawing of a plane and formula used to calculate the rate of descent required of an aircraft to reach a target on the horizon at a given speed, showing a drawing of a plane and formula used to calculate the rate of descent required of an aircraft to reach a target on the horizon at a
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Brian Katulis, a senior scholar and vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said “The Biden administration’s Middle East policy strategy appears to be maturing, going from adolescence to a more mature era of balanced engagement with close regional allies.”
RIYADH’S FRUSTRATION WITH D.C. IS HIGHLIGHTED IN SAUDI ARABIA’S BIDEN-HARRIS SKIT.
“America’s capacity to get things done in the Middle East and achieve its stated aims has been harmed by hyper-partisan noise and cheap tactics aimed at making the bilateral relationship a partisan wedge issue in America’s internal politics. This has been an issue in both US-Saudi and US-Israeli relations, and hopefully, this visit will help create a new, more stable tone “He went on to say.
“The Biden administration should instead use this opportunity for re-engaging Saudi Arabia more deeply to have candid conversations about how the kingdoms practise on human rights create distance between itself and key parts of the world, and also aren’t compatible with its own efforts to social reform agendas at home,” Katulis advised on human rights and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
“It would also be wise for the Biden administration to stress human rights as a problem in its negotiations with Iran, which has an appalling record when it comes to honouring its own people’s basic rights,” he concluded.
Read more:-
- Right now, there are no doves on the FOMC: Economists anticipate an aggressive Fed meeting this week
- The Best Places to Spend Your Emergency Food Stamps and What You May Buy With Your Snap Benefits
- Stimulus Updates for Summer 2022: What You Need to Know
“US media are putting Iranians on mute and disproportionately focused on Saudi Arabia,” according to Mohammed Khalid Alyahya, former editor-in-chief of the English edition of the Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya.
