The exercise serves to defuse controversy and prepare the ground. At the start of his upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, US President Joe Biden announced, in a column published on Saturday July 9 by the washington postwant to “to strengthen a strategic partnership that is based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while respecting fundamental American values”.
In this text titled “Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia” (“Why am I going to Saudi Arabia”), the American president, who goes to Israel on Tuesday and then to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia on Friday, responds to critics who accuse him of denying himself in order to extricate Saudi Arabia’s promise to produce more oil. Joe Biden had, before his election, promised to make the oil monarchy a “outcast” international because of the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
“I know that many disagree with my decision to go to Saudi Arabia. My views on human rights are clear and enduring, and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel, and they will be during this trip”, assures the American president. He recalls having declassified an explosive report by American intelligence concerning the circumstances of the death of Jamal Khashoggi.
But he does not mention in his column the name of Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, who according to this same report has ” valid “ murder. Joe Biden is due to meet him in Jeddah next week, as part of an expanded meeting around King Salman.
“Stabilize the oil market”
“My job as president is to ensure the solidity and security of the country”justifies the 79-year-old Democrat, citing the need to ” to counter “ Russia, to get into “the best position possible” against China and to ensure a “greater stability” in the Middle-East. “To do these things, we need to have a direct relationship with the countries that can contribute. Saudi Arabia is one.explains Joe Biden again.
“In Saudi Arabia, we reversed the blank check policy we inherited” of former President Donald Trump, adds Joe Biden. He specifies : “From the start, my goal has been to redirect – but not to break – relations with a country that has been our strategic partner for 80 years”.
The American president also refers to an important issue of his trip: oil, at a time when high gas prices are exasperating Americans and hurting his party’s electoral prospects. Riyadh, he assures, “work with my experts to help stabilize the oil market”. Washington would like all the Gulf countries to open the floodgates to lower prices.
A region “full of challenges”
Joe Biden first planned to meet with interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Then he will fly to Jeddah on Friday, the first direct link of this kind between the Jewish state and an Arab country which does not recognize its existence. Donald Trump had already made this trip with a very strong symbolic dimension, but in the opposite direction.
The Middle East is “less under pressure and more integrated than eighteen months ago”, upon his arrival at the White House, assures Joe Biden. He mentions in particular the rapprochement between Israel and several Arab countries, started under the tutelage of the former Republican president. The Biden Administration “works to deepen and extend” this process, says the Democratic president.
Joe Biden wants ” make progress “ facing a region that remains “full of challenges”between the Iranian nuclear program, and the unstable situation in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon… But he discerns none the less “promising trends” in the region, believing that “the United States can strengthen them like no other country can. That’s what my trip next week will be for.”.