Biden Administration to modify US relations with Saudi Arabia

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The administration of US President Joe Biden has expressed its hope of modifying US relations with Saudi Arabia. The White House also suggested that it considers King Salman to be the US president’s equal and not his son MBS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), who is widely considered to be the kingdom’s de facto ruler. The press secretary of White House, Jen Psaki was asked at her daily briefing to follow up an answer she had given at a session a week earlier on whether the US still considers Israel and Saudi Arabia to be its allies. She also answered on Israel and said President Biden’s first call with a Middle Eastern leader will be with the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Psaki also discussed Saudi Arabia and said, “You know, we’ve made clear from the beginning that we’re going to recalibrate our relationship with Saudi Arabia”.

The press secretary added, “And part of that is going back to engagement, counterpart to counterpart. The president’s counterpart is King Salman, and I expect that, at an appropriate time, he would have a conversation with him. I don’t have a prediction of the timeline on that. I’ll also say that you know we have, Saudi Arabia is in a position where they’re defending themselves from threats from the region. They have critical self-defense needs, and we will continue to work with them on those, even as we make clear areas where we have disagreements and where we have concerns. And that’s certainly a shift from the approach of the prior administration”. The comments of Psaki are supposedly an attempt to step back from the influential crown prince.

However, former President Donald Trump preferred to deal with MBS and made his first overseas trip as president to Riyadh. It is noteworthy that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was alleged by US intelligence officials of having ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. President Biden’s new US director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines was admired during her Senate confirmation hearing last month. Haines said she will absolutely provide an unclassified report on Khashoggi’s assassination to the US Congress. Point to be noted that the US and Saudi Arabia have enjoyed largely positive bilateral relations since a diplomatic channel was first established in 1933. They agreed on opposing the Soviet Union and uniting regional oil industry interests but also disagreeing significantly on issues from Israel to George W Bush’s War on Terror.