Biden fist-bumps Saudi crown prince, then raises Khashoggi murder case

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – (AFP):

US President Joe Biden has said that he confronted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over attacks on dissidents during his visit to Saudi Arabia.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman drew global outrage for the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate, an operation US intelligence services said he had personally “approved”.

Saudi officials deny the crown prince’s involvement and say Khashoggi’s death resulted from a “rogue” operation.

“What happened to Khashoggi was outrageous,” Biden said Friday night after a meeting with Prince bin Salman in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

“I just made it clear if anything occurs like that again they will get that response and much more.”

But Biden did not specify what exactly he meant by “that response”, and earlier in the day he greeted Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, with a fist bump.

That moved prompted Khashoggi’s fiancee to write to Biden on Twitter — in what she framed as an imagined response from Khashoggi himself — that “the blood of MBS’s next victim is on your hands”.

Despite his earlier condemnations of Saudi human rights abuses, Biden now appears ready to re-engage with the kingdom — a key strategic US ally, a major supplier of oil and an avid buyer of weapons.

Washington wants the world’s largest crude exporter to open the floodgates to bring down soaring oil prices, which threaten Democratic chances in November mid-term elections.

Yet Biden also tried to tamp down expectations that this week’s visit to the Middle East would yield immediate gains.

“I’m doing all I can to increase the supply for the United States of America,” he said, adding that concrete results would not be seen “for another couple weeks”.

Normalization with Israel

US officials are also touting efforts to promote integration between Israel and Arab nations.

Biden arrived in Saudi Arabia after a stop in Israel, becoming the first US leader to fly directly from Tel Aviv to an Arab nation that does not recognise Israel.

Saudi Arabia had refused to join the US-brokered Abraham Accords under which Israel normalised ties with the kingdom’s neighbours, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, in 2020.

Riyadh has repeatedly said it would stick to the decades-old Arab League position of not establishing official ties with Israel until the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved.

But it is showing signs of greater openness towards Israel, and has announced during Biden’s visit on Friday that it was lifting overflight restrictions on aircraft travelling to and from Israel, a move Biden hailed as “historic”.

Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid also praised the decision.

“This is the first official step in normalisation with Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The White House announced Friday that peacekeepers including US soldiers would leave the strategic Red Sea island of Tiran, located near Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Analysts say the move could spur contacts between Israel and Saudi Arabia as they chart a possible path towards formal bilateral ties.

Jeddah marks the final stop on Biden’s Middle East tour, following talks on Friday with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and meetings with Israeli officials a day earlier.