Now the Saudis have fully repaid Biden for his spitefulness, and then some.
Now the Saudis have fully repaid Biden for his spitefulness, and then some.
T he announcement late last week that China had brokered a diplomatic breakthrough between Iran and Saudi Arabia is alarming but unsurprising.
The deal between these two longtime antagonists could culminate in the restoration of bilateral diplomatic relations after years of tensions and even periodic hostilities. U.S.-based foreign-policy analysts are duly concerned by this setback to America’s strategic efforts to foster the development of an anti-Iranian bloc of nations in the Middle East, to say nothing of the way America was sidelined.
Some Middle East observers are cautiously optimistic about the deal. It could provide Riyadh cover to proceed with integration into the loose confederation forming around the Abraham Accords, they say, and it puts Beijing’s prestige on the line if Iran violates the deal’s protocols. Nevertheless, a Chinese-led reorchestration of regional relationships is an ominous portent.
No one should be shocked by any of this, least of all the Biden administration. From Day One, this White House made it a priority to alienate the Saudi government, and it succeeded.
As a candidate, Biden pledged to treat the Saudi government like “the pariah that they are.” In its approach to relations with the kingdom, the administration and its allies in Democratic politics deferred to the press corps, which was outspokenly incensed by the Saudi government’s involvement in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “The president’s intention, as is the intention of this government, is to recalibrate our engagement with Saudi Arabia,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki assured reporters. And that’s precisely what they did.
In its first weeks, the Biden administration froze arms sales to the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates and withdrew U.S. support for the kingdom’s “offensive operations” in Yemen — a brutal and often inhumane conflict against an Iranian-backed rebel group on the Arabian Peninsula.
The administration made a performance out of its efforts to isolate Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader. The White House declassified intelligence implicating bin Salman in Khashoggi’s death and released an FBI report compiled in 2016 indicating that Saudi nationals, one of whom enjoyed diplomatic status, had a “closer relationship than previously known” with some of the 9/11 hijackers.
The Biden White House initially regarded the Abraham Accords with bizarre hostility and leaned into the notion that there could be no enduring peace in the region without a resolution to the many outstanding issues in the Palestinian territories (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). “While we support normalization between Israel and countries in the Arab world,” State Department spokesman Ned Price clarified, “it’s also not a substitute for Israeli–Palestinian peace.”
By October 2021, with energy prices rising amid surging inflation rates, Joe Biden appeared at a CNN-sponsored town-hall meeting where he was asked how he could convince the OPEC+ cartel to relieve the pressure at the pump. “Gas prices relate to a foreign policy initiative that is about something that goes beyond the cost of gas,” Biden replied with an unmistakable reference to his administration’s anti-Saudi myopia. “There’s a lot of Middle Eastern folks who want to talk to me. I’m not sure I’m going to talk to them.”
The Saudis took the hint. Despite some initial overtures toward the Biden administration, including releasing an imprisoned women’s-rights activist whose plight had become “a cause célèbre for U.S. critics of the Saudi regime,” the kingdom and its regional allies soon began paying Biden back snub for snub. It was around then that the Saudis re-engaged in mediated talks with Iranian representatives — a process the Trump administration actively sought to disrupt. This ball was already rolling when the Biden administration realized that it could not have its war against the Saudi elite and affordable gasoline at the same time.
In July 2022, the president traveled hat in hand to Saudi Arabia in an effort to repair the relations he had soured, and the press gave him no small amount of grief for it. But the political media’s understandable indignation over the killing of a fellow journalist always made for a terrible foreign policy. The conduct of international relations in an imperfect world ensures that rational practitioners of statecraft are going to have to work with distasteful figures and bad actors. Biden’s modest concession to reality was overdue, but it nevertheless came too late.
In October 2022, with gas prices spiking, the kingdom not only refused to increase oil production but committed the OPEC+ cartel to slashing output in defiance of American requests. This affront convinced some Democrats of the need to punish the Saudis further, even going so far as to demand the full withdrawal of U.S. troops and missile-defense assets from the kingdom and its allies. Biden’s congressional allies somehow convinced themselves that the problems caused by disengagement from the Saudis might be remedied by even more disengagement.
Throughout its first 18 months, the Biden administration did everything it could to convince the Saudis that the United States was not a reliable partner. The White House and its executive agencies applied an inconsistent principle to the Saudis — indeed, one that seemed reserved for the Saudis alone. In the process, they convinced the kingdom to shop around for great powers that might better guarantee its interests. The Biden White House has since abandoned its ill-considered effort to antagonize the Saudi leadership, but we’re still dealing with its consequences. From cozying up to Russia to providing Beijing with the opportunity to bolster its international image, the Saudis have fully repaid Biden for his spitefulness and then some.