WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday effectively acknowledged the failure of one of his biggest and most humiliating foreign policy gambles: a fist-bump with the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince associated with human rights abuses.
Biden’s
awkward encounter with Mohammed bin Salman in July was a humbling attempt to
mend relations with the world’s most influential oil power at a time when the
US. was seeking its help in opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the
resulting surge in oil prices.
That fist
bump three months ago was followed by a face slap this week from Prince
Mohammed: a big oil production cut by OPEC producers and Russia that threatens
to sustain oil-producer Russia in its war in Ukraine, drive inflation higher,
and push gas prices back toward voter-angering levels just before U.S.
midterms, undercutting the election prospects of Biden and Democrats.
Asked about
Saudi Arabia’s action, Biden told reporters Thursday it was “a disappointment,
and it says that there are problems” in the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
A number of
Democrats in Congress called on the U.S. Thursday to respond by pulling back on
its decades-old provision of arms and U.S. military protection for Saudi
Arabia, charging that Prince Mohammed had stopped upholding Saudi Arabia’s side
of a more than 70-year strategic partnership. The relationship is based on the
U.S. providing the kingdom with protection against its outside enemies, and on
Saudi Arabia providing global markets with enough oil to keep them stable.
Calling the
oil production cuts “a hostile act,” New Jersey Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski
led two other lawmakers in introducing legislation that would pull U.S. troops
and Patriot missile batteries out of the kingdom.
“What Saudi
Arabia did to help Putin continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against
Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer said, adding, “We are looking at all the legislative tools to best deal
with this appalling and deeply cynical action.”
The U.S. has
no plans at the moment to withdraw military personnel or equipment from Saudi
Arabia, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday.
Congress and
the administration were reacting to the announcement of a bigger than expected
cut of 2 million barrels a day by the OPEC-plus group, led by Saudi Arabia and
Russia. The production cut is likely to drive up prices, bolstering the oil
revenue Russia is using to keep waging its war in Ukraine despite U.S.-led
international sanctions and further shaking a global economy already struggling
with short energy supply.
Saudi oil
minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, a half-brother of the crown prince, insisted at
the OPEC-plus session there was no “belligerence” in the action.
The
administration says it’s looking for ways to blunt the impact of OPEC’s
decision, and notes that the cost at the pump has still dropped in recent
months.
Foreign arms
sales ultimately are Congress’s to approve or disapprove, a U.S. official
argued Thursday, so it was up to lawmakers to choose whether to try to make
good on cutting U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia. The official spoke on condition
of anonymity to discuss the government’s take on the matter.
The official
called Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia, and meetings with Middle East leaders
there, steps toward building relations across the region, and said Biden’s
meeting with the crown prince was in line with other face-to-face sessions with
allies, rivals and adversaries, including Putin.
As a
candidate, Biden had made a passionate promise to make the Saudi royal family a
“pariah” over human rights abuses, especially Saudi officials’ killing of
U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in
2018.
The U.S. intelligence
community formally concluded that Prince Mohammed, who wields much of the power
in Saudi Arabia in the stead of his aging father, King Salman, had ordered or approved
of Khashoggi’s killing.
Biden as
president disappointed rights activists when he opted not to penalize Prince
Mohammed directly, citing his senior position in the kingdom and the U.S.
strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia.
Then
Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine worsened an already tight global oil
market, driving up gasoline prices and inflation overall. Ally Israel and some
in the administration argued that smooth relations between Riyadh and Washington
had to be the U.S. priority.
As U.S.
prices at the pump rose and Biden’s poll ratings fell further, senior
administration officials began shuttling to the Gulf, seeking to soothe Prince
Mohammed’s anger at Biden’s campaign remarks and the U.S. findings in
Khashoggi’s killing. That led to Biden paying his first visit as president to
Saudi Arabia in July, putting presidential prestige behind the attempt to get
U.S.-Saudi relations, and the global oil supply, back on steadier ground.
In Jeddah,
Biden stopped short of offering a much-anticipated handshake. Instead, Biden,
looking frailer and more stooped in comparison with Prince Mohammed, who is in
his late 30s, leaned in to offer an out-of-character fist bump. Prince Mohammed
reciprocated. Any smiles on the two men’s faces as their knuckles touched were
fleeting.
Critics
deplored Biden’s outreach to a prince accused of ordering the imprisonment,
abduction, torture and killing of those, even fellow royals and family members,
who oppose him or express differing views.
Even if
“you’re not willing to use the sticks with MBS, then don’t give up the carrots
for free,” Khalid al Jabri, the son of a former Saudi minister of state, Saad
al Jabri, said Thursday, using the prince’s initials.
The senior
al Jabri accuses Prince Mohammed of sending a hit squad after him in 2018, and
of detaining two of his children to try to force his return. Prince Mohammed
denies any direct wrongdoing, although he says as a Saudi leader he accepts
responsibility for events on his watch.
Khalid al
Jabri, who like his father now lives in exile, offered an argument echoed by
rights advocates, Democratic lawmakers and others:
“That is one
major flaw of the Biden policy so far, that in this kind of U.S.-Saudi
rapprochement, it has been lopsided, it’s been one-way concessions. And that
doesn’t work for MBS.”
Saudi Arabia
has made a couple of moves that benefited the U.S. since Biden’s visit. Saudi
Arabia was among the intermediaries who recently won the release of two
Americans and other foreigners captured by Russia as they fought for Ukraine. And
OPEC-plus made a modest increase in oil output shortly after the visit. The
U.S. official cited Saudi Arabia’s agreement to allow Israeli civilian
overflights of Saudi territory as one gain from Biden’s trip.
The
subsequent oil production cuts have far offset the earlier gains, however.
Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials also have kept up outwardly warm
dealings with Russian officials. And rights advocates point to a series of
multidecade prison terms handed down to Saudi men and women over the mildest of
free speech, especially tweets, since Biden’s visit.
By November,
the Biden administration will have to decide whether to make another major
concession to the prince. A U.S. court set that deadline for the U.S. to
determine whether it will weigh in to agree or disagree with Prince Mohammed’s
lawyer that the prince has legal immunity from a lawsuit in U.S. federal court
over the killing of Khashoggi.
Lawmakers
are scheduled to be out of Washington until after the Nov. 8 midterm elections
and when they return will be focused on funding federal agencies for the full
fiscal year through September 2023. Prospects for a lame-duck Congress taking
up the bill introduced by Malinowski and the two other lawmakers are slight.
Rising gas
prices would be bad news for Democrats heading into the final stretch of the
midterm elections, while Republicans remain eager to capitalize on the
decades-high inflation and rising cost of living, with high gas prices a
constant reminder as voters fill up their tanks.
Sen. Dick
Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, had one of the more
scathing reactions to OPEC’s announcement.
“From
unanswered questions about 9/11 & the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, to
conspiring w/ Putin to punish the US w/ higher oil prices, the royal Saudi
family has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation. It’s time for our
foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance,” he tweeted Thursday.
AP writers
Jill Colvin in New York City and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed.