The White House is looking for a full “reset” of its ties with Saudi Arabia, turning its back on President Biden’s campaign promise to make Riyadh a “pariah” over the 2018 murder and alleged dismemberment of US-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a new report.
“Both sides have decided that for the sake of achieving peace and stability in the Middle East, we need to move past it,” one senior US official told CNN this week.
The report added that Biden plans to mention Khashoggi’s murder if and when he meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The prospect of a sitdown between the two has been rumored for weeks, but the White House has pointedly declined to announce a date amid reports of internal debate over whether a meeting should take place.
“I’m not sure whether I’m going. I have no direct plans at the moment,” Biden told reporters last week. “But let me tell you that I have been engaged in trying to work with how we can bring more stability and peace in the Middle East.”
“There is a possibility that I would be going to meet with both Israelis and some Arab countries at the time, including I expect would be Saudi Arabia would be included in that if I did go. But I have no direct plans at the moment,” he added.
The move to make nice with MBS is driven by soaring inflation and rising gas prices, the officials told CNN, indicating that Biden is being forced to put aside his personal objection to the crown prince in order to make up for lost oil imports from Russia due to sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I do think the desperation of the trajectory of the global economy is driving everything,” one official said. “They [the White House] are anxious, they are desperate.”
“Their fear, and their anxiety, is making them throw principle out the door,” the official continued. “The worst [economic] outcomes on this are really bad and would devastate any hopes the Democrats would have in November.”
The rapprochement has already begun. According to CNN, top US national security officials Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein have repeatedly met with their Saudi counterparts — as well as MBS himself — in recent months.
Hatic Cengiz, the late journalist’s fiancée, told the outlet that Washington’s decision to “reset” relations with Saudi Arabia is “horribly upsetting to me and supporters of freedom and justice everywhere.”
“When the President of the US goes to this murderer’s hometown to appease him, he’s not only glossing over his past heinous crimes with stunning impunity but enabling his future ones,” an unnamed friend of Khashoggi told CNN. “It’s a wink-wink nudge-nudge to commit the next crime in a cleaner, less messy fashion.”
A National Security Council spokesperson told The Post that the administration is “not overlooking any conduct that took place before we entered office.”
“We have a significant agenda with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the other countries of the Middle East. That agenda is focused on delivering results for the American people as well as ending wars and leading through diplomacy to bring stability to the Middle East region,” the spokesperson continued.
The spokesperson also pointed to early actions taken by the administration, including sanctions and “the so-called Khashoggi ban to make sure that any country that seeks to use tools of repression against people abroad who criticize their government will pay a price.”
“As we emphasized then, it was also important to reorient – but not rupture – relations with Saudi Arabia, a strategic partner of the United States for eight decades,” the spokesperson added. “We share a host of interests with Saudi Arabia, from containing Iran, to counterterrorism, to helping protect its territory, where 70,000 Americans live and work.”