Jeddah, Saudi Arabia –
Before setting foot in Saudi Arabia, President Joe Biden knew there would be trouble.
Biden was risking criticism by visiting a country he had vowed to make a “pariah” for human rights abuses, and there was no guarantee the visit would immediately result in increased oil production to offset rising oil prices. the gas.
He decided to face the pushback anyway, hoping to use the visit to mend strained ties and make it clear to wary Arab leaders that the United States remains committed to their security and the region’s stability.
His visit to Saudi Arabia was occasionally awkward but, in Biden’s opinion, ultimately necessary. Although he has focused on countering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and limiting China’s growing influence in Asia, those goals become much more difficult without the partnerships he tended toward here.
“It is becoming increasingly clear to me how closely intertwined US interests are with Middle East successes,” the president said Saturday at a summit in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
It was a belated acknowledgment of the geopolitical reality that, for nearly a century, has kept the United States deeply involved in the energy-rich region, most recently with ruinous wars that dragged on for two decades. Biden tried to turn the page on those conflicts as he insisted that the United States would remain engaged.
“We will not walk away and leave a vacuum for China or Russia or Iran to fill,” Biden said. “We will seek to seize this moment with active and principled American leadership.”
The summit, where Biden announced $1 billion in US funding to alleviate hunger in the region, was the final destination of Biden’s four-day trip, which included stops in Israel and the West Bank.
His travels were overshadowed by a steady stream of grim news from Washington, where Democratic plans to tackle climate change failed on Capitol Hill and there was new evidence that inflation had reached historic levels.
And at every step of the way, Biden faced a very different region than the one that existed when he served as vice president.
President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal struck under President Barack Obama, and Tehran is believed to be closer than ever to building a nuclear weapon.
The threat, which Biden has struggled to address through renewed negotiations, has deepened coordination between Israel and its Arab neighbors, who have found common cause in confronting Iran.
The fledgling ties have also opened the door to further economic and security integration, reshaping contentious Middle East politics at a time Arab leaders feared the United States had become a less reliable ally. They were wary of Obama’s outreach to Iran and Trump’s erratic behavior, then viewed Biden as neglectful of the region once he took office.
Biden’s challenge has been to recognize the changing landscape and persuade leaders in the Middle East to remain aligned with US interests in Afghanistan.
Although Biden expressed a renewed commitment to the region by saying “America is not going anywhere,” he also appeared to recognize its limitations.
“The United States has a clear vision on the challenges in the Middle East and where we have the greatest ability to help drive positive outcomes,” he said.
In addition to announcing the new funding for famine relief, he met individually with several of his counterparts, some for the first time since he became president.
He also invited Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who recently became president of the United Arab Emirates, formalizing his role at the forefront of major political decisions, to visit the White House in the coming months.
It was another effort to soften ties that have become strained, in part due to Biden’s actions. For example, while the US has played a key role in encouraging a month-long ceasefire in Yemen, the Emiratis have criticized its decision to reverse a Trump-era move that had included the Iranian-backed Houthis as a terrorist group.
The centerpiece of Biden’s Middle East outreach was his first meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and heir to the throne held by his father, King Salman.
The meeting began Friday with a fist bump outside the royal palace in Jeddah, a friendly gesture that was quickly criticized due to Prince Mohammed’s history of human rights abuses. In addition to cracking down on critics of him in Saudi Arabia, the prince, according to US intelligence, likely approved of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi nearly four years ago.
Biden rejected the notion that he was abandoning human rights by meeting the crown prince, saying he brought up Khashoggi’s murder during their conversation. The issue created a “cold” start to the meeting, according to a US official who was not authorized to speak about the private meeting and insisted on anonymity.
The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news network reported that Prince Mohammed responded to Biden’s mention of Khashoggi by saying that attempts to impose a set of values may backfire, citing an unnamed Saudi source. He also said the United States had made mistakes at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, where detainees were tortured, and pressed Biden over the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during a recent Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The atmosphere between the two eventually became more relaxed, the US official said, as they discussed energy security, the expansion of high-speed Internet access in the Middle East and other issues.
The regional summit in Jeddah and Biden’s visit provided Prince Mohammed with an opportunity to showcase his country’s heavyweight role in the Middle East and his position at the helm of the world’s largest oil exporter.
He hinted that the kingdom could extract more oil than it currently produces, something Biden wants to see when existing production quotas among OPEC+ member countries, which include Russia, expire in September.
“I am doing everything I can to increase supply for the United States of America, which I hope will happen,” Biden said Friday. “The Saudis share that urgency, and based on our discussions today, I expect we will see more steps in the coming weeks.”
It has also tried to lure Arab nations to its side over the Ukraine invasion by publishing satellite images indicating that Russian officials visited Iran in June and July to view weapons-capable drones it might acquire.
The disclosure appeared to be aimed at drawing a connection between the war in Europe and the Arab leaders’ own concerns about Iran.
So far, none of the countries represented at the summit have moved in unison with the United States to sanction Russia, a foreign policy priority for the Biden administration. If anything, the UAE has become a kind of financial haven for Russian billionaires and their billionaire yachts. Egypt remains open to Russian tourists.
Meanwhile, there are sharp divisions on regional foreign policy among the heads of state who attended the summit.
For example, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates are trying to isolate and pressure Iran over its regional reach and proxies. Oman and Qatar have strong diplomatic ties with Iran and have acted as brokers in talks between Washington and Tehran.
But before wrapping up his speech at the summit, Biden expressed hope for a new era of cooperation.
“This is a table full of problem solvers,” he said. “There is a lot of good we can do if we do it together.”
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Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Megerian and Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.