As President Joe Biden prepares to travel to Saudi Arabia in July, the White House points to security concerns, not energy, as the trip’s principal focus. The administration is downplaying the president’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom U.S. intelligence services blame for a journalist’s brutal assassination.
Biden’s visit to Jeddah from July 15-16 follows months of delicate diplomacy with the oil-rich country amid disagreements over energy and security concerns and after the president’s campaign promise to take a harder line against the “pariah” kingdom.
“There’ll be a series of bilateral discussions, as there are on the sidelines of all cooperation councils and summits,” said John Kirby, the White House National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator. “He will have a bilateral meeting with King Salman and King Salman’s leadership team, and the crown prince is on that leadership team. So you can expect that he will see the crown prince while he’s there.”
White House officials have been reluctant to concede any trade-offs involved in the president’s stepped-up engagement with Saudi Arabia, a “strategic partner” of the United States for nearly eight decades. Instead, officials have pointed to a crop of areas up for discussion during the president’s first trip to the Middle East since taking office.
“There’s a big agenda there on the Gulf Cooperation Council. It’s counterterrorism. It’s climate change,” Kirby told reporters Wednesday. “Oil production, obviously, is going to be on the agenda.”
In Jeddah, Biden will attend a Summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, meet with Saudi and other Gulf leaders, and discuss new infrastructure and climate initiatives, as well as security threats from Iran, the White House said.
The Biden administration is “keeping expectations extremely low,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and State Department veteran.
“These deliverables are designed to make the meeting with MBS defensible and useful,” Miller said, adding that success will depend on the degree to which Saudi Arabia agrees to increase oil production, build ties with Israel, and put a dent in its repressive behaviors. He called it “an investment over time.”
“I think the administration hopes that on oil and on Israel, there’ll be significant gains,” he told the Washington Examiner. “But it’s not going to be enough to prevent people from saying, ‘Well, what did you get? You shook the hand of the murderer, and what did you get?’”
The prospect of a visit has been marred by controversy over Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, with the Saudi journalist’s widow urging Biden to sit down with her before the president travels to the region. A U.S. intelligence report released after Biden took office determined the crown prince was responsible for the former Washington Post columnist’s murder. And the kingdom is accused of other human rights abuses, including the detention of now-released U.S. citizens who have been unable to leave the country.
A statement from Saudi Arabia said Biden would “hold official talks” with the crown prince, using a characterization the White House has resisted. White House officials have said Biden will “see” the crown prince.
“The Crown Prince and President Biden will hold official talks that will focus on various areas of bilateral cooperation and joint efforts to address regional and global challenges,” Saudi Arabia’s statement said.
When asked why the White House omitted the meeting from its announcement, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre demurred, telling reporters that the president would see numerous leaders, the crown prince included. As for whether the president would bring up Khashoggi’s murder with the crown prince directly, Jean-Pierre insisted the administration is “not overlooking” the events.
She said the “human rights conversation is something that the president brings up with many leaders and plans to do so.” But in a nod at the delicate situation, she said the administration is “not looking to rupture relationships.”
A senior administration official said the president would likely do so “behind closed doors.”
Biden was confronted with criticism from Latin American leaders last week after refusing to invite Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba to the Summit of the Americas, which the U.S. hosted in Los Angeles last week. The White House said it has no regrets about excluding “dictators.”
“Yet he travels thousands of miles to shake the hand of a ruthless, authoritarian?” Miller asked.
