How biden lost saudi arabia

Biden attempts to justify Saudi Arabia trip

US President Joe Biden has defended his plan to visit Saudi Arabia by saying engagement with Riyadh is paramount for countering “Russia’s aggression,” achieving “greater stability” in the Middle East, and ensuring Washington’s ability to “outcompete China.”

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Saturday evening, Biden directly responded to the critics of the trip, saying that while human rights issues are always on the agenda, his job is to keep the US “strong and secure” and a “more secure and integrated Middle East benefits Americans in many ways.”

“We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world. To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes,” Biden wrote, adding that Saudi Arabia is one of those nations.

The president listed some practical benefits of “reorienting” relations “with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years.”

“Its waterways are essential to global trade and the supply chains we rely on. Its energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine,” the American leader said, revealing that oil-rich Saudi Arabia is now working with US experts “to help stabilize oil markets with other OPEC producers.”

Biden also stressed that “violent extremism” is less likely to rise in a region “that’s coming together through diplomacy and cooperation.”

Admitting that his visit is seen by many as controversial, Biden said his administration had reversed “the blank-check policy” towards Riyadh by releasing the intelligence report on the murder of a Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in Turkey (which deemed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman responsible for ordering the killing) and imposing new sanctions on the state. Riyadh claimed its security agents “went rogue” in Istanbul.

“My administration has made clear that the United States will not tolerate extraterritorial threats and harassment against dissidents and activists by any government,” Biden said, at the same time hailing some of Riyadh’s achievements in international politics.

Biden used his op-ed to contrast his own administration’s policies in the Middle East with those of Donald Trump, whom he referred to only as “my predecessor” without ever mentioning his name.

Biden is scheduled to travel to the Middle East from July 13 to July 16. He will make stops in Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia. In his op-ed, the president emphasized the symbolic meaning of his direct flight from Israel to Saudi Arabia.

“That travel will also be a small symbol of the budding relations and steps toward normalization between Israel and the Arab world, which my administration is working to deepen and expand,” he explained.

The announcement of the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia and especially his upcoming meeting with the Crown Prince has drawn harsh criticism as Biden had previously pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over Khashoggi’s murder. His administration is struggling to rein in a surge in gas prices in the US and hopes to boost production in the Gulf kingdom.

Has Biden Now Lost Saudi Arabia?

The ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan has blown a global hole in the post-1945 American Century system of elaborate world domination, a power vacuum that likely will lead to irreversible consequences. The immediate case in point is whether Biden’s Washington strategists—as he clearly makes no policy—have already managed to lose the support of its largest arms buyer and regional strategic ally, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Since the first days of Biden’s inauguration in late January, US policies are driving the Saudi monarchy to pursue a dramatic shift in foreign policy. The longer-term consequences could be enormous.

Within their first week in office the Biden Administration indicated a dramatic shift in US-Saudi relations. It announced a freeze in arms sales to the Kingdom as it reviewed the Trump arms deals. Then in late February US intelligence issued a report condemning the Saudi government for the killing of Saudi Washington Post journalist Adnan Khashoggi in Istanbul in October, 2018, something the Trump Administration refused to do. That was joined by Washington’s lifting the anti-Saudi Yemeni Houthi leadership from the US terrorist list while ending US military support to Saudi Arabia in its Yemen war with Iran-backed Houthi forces, a move that emboldened the Houthis to pursue missile and drone attacks on Saudi targets.

Post-911 Pentagon Policy

While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has so far been careful to avoid a rupture with Washington, the motion of his feet since the Biden regime shift in January has been significant. At the center is a series of secret negotiations with former arch-enemy Iran, and its new President. Talks began in April in Baghdad between Riyadh and Teheran to explore a possible rapprochement.

Barnett was a professor at the US Naval War College and later strategist for the Israeli Wikistrat consultancy. As he described it, the entire national boundaries of the post-Ottoman Middle East carved out by the Europeans after World War I, including Afghanistan were to be dissolved, and present states balkanized into Sunni, Kurd, Shiite, and other ethnic or religious entities to ensure decades of chaos and instability requiring a “strong” US military presence to control. That became the two decades of US catastrophic occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond. It was deliberate chaos. Secretary of State Condi Rice said in 2006 that the Greater Middle East aka New Middle East would be achieved through ‘constructive chaos’. Because of a huge backlash from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region the name was buried, but the chaos strategy remains.

The Obama “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions, which were launched in December 2010 with the CIA and Clinton State Department destabilizations of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya by US-backed networks of the Muslim Brotherhood, were further implementation of the new US policy of chaos and destabilization. The proxy US invasion of Syria then followed, as did Yemen with the covertly US-backed Houthi revolution against Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012.

The ongoing Teheran vs Riyadh conflict has its roots in that Cebrowski-Barnett Pentagon-CIA strategy. It marked and fed the split between pro-Muslim Brotherhood Qatar and anti-Brotherhood Riyadh in 2016, after which Qatar sought support from Iran and Turkey. It has marked the bitter proxy war in Syria between forces backed by Saudi Arabia against forces backed by Iran. It has marked the Saudi vs Teheran proxy war in Yemen, and the political stalemate in Lebanon. Now the Saudi regime under MBS appears to be embarking on a major turn away from that Shiite-Sunni war for domination of the Islamic world by pursuing peace with its foes including Iran.

Teheran is key

Under the Trump Administration, policy shifted from an apparent US backing of Iran under Obama with the 2015 nuclear JCPOA, and to the disadvantage of Saudis and Israel, over to a one-sided Trump-Kushner backing for Saudi Arabia and Israel, exiting the JCPOA, and imposing draconian economic sanctions on Teheran and other moves last embodied in the ill-conceived Abraham Accords aimed against Teheran.

MBS and the Saudis are clearly reading the handwriting on the wall from Washington and are moving to defuse multiple zones of conflict which had led it down a US-scripted dead end. Washington under Trump had fed MBS with arms galore (paid for with Saudi petrodollars) to fuel the conflicts. It has been a catastrophe for the Saudis. Now as it became clear that a Biden Administration also means no good for them, MBS and the Saudis have begun a strategic pivot towards ending all its conflicts within the Islamic world. The key to it all is Iran.

Back-channel talks

In April the Saudis began the first of what now have been three bilateral negotiations on stabilizing their relations with Iran, back-channel secret talks first in Iraq, then Oman. Baghdad has a major stake in such a peace as US policy in Iraq since 2003 has been to create chaos by pitting a majority Shiite against a 30% minority Sunni to sow civil war. In July Prime Minister al Kadhimi secured a Biden pledge to end US troop presence by year-end.

The Teheran-Riyadh back-channel talks reportedly involve Iran’s stance towards Washington under Biden Pentagon policies, as well as Iran’s willingness to de-escalate military presence in Syria and Yemen and Lebanon. Indirect talks between the US and Iran about a return to the 2015 nuclear deal were suspended after the Iranian elections in June. Iran also announced it was stepping up uranium enrichment.

While no agreement is yet at hand, a fourth talk has just been announced which indicates a will to forge a compromise as soon as the government of newly-elected Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is approved by the Majlis or parliament. A deal will not be easy, but both sides realize the status quo is a lose-lose proposition.

At the same time Iran under Raisi is playing hardball with Biden negotiators. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is reportedly demanding that the Biden administration lift all sanctions on Iran and compensate it for the damage they caused, and have Iran recognized as a nuclear threshold state with the ability to produce a nuclear bomb within a short time. The US sanctions imposed in 2018 have caused a 250% annual rise in food prices and a free fall in the currency as oil revenues have plunged. Raisi is under enormous domestic pressure to change this, though Biden’s Washington to date refuses to lift sanctions as precondition to resuming JCPOA talks.

For Teheran the question is whether it is better to trust a rapprochement with the Saudi-led Arab Sunni Gulf states, or rely on Washington whose track record of broken promises is underscored by their catastrophic exit from Kabul.

The dramatic collapse of US presence in Afghanistan gives all parties a clear idea that, regardless of who is US President, US institutional powers behind the scenes pursue an agenda of destruction, and can no longer be relied on to be true to their promises of support.

The implications of a genuine Saudi-Iran agreement would be a major pivot in geopolitical terms. In addition to ending the Yemen war and the proxy Syrian war, it could end the destructive stalemate in Lebanon between Iran-backed Hezbollah and major Saudi interests there. Here is where the recent arms talks between Riyadh and Moscow become more than interesting.

Russia’s pivotal role

Into this geopolitical cocktail of competing interests, the role of Russia becomes strategic. Russia is the one major foreign military power that has aimed at ending the Sunni-Shiite proxy wars and creating stability across Eurasia into the Middle East, a direct challenge to Washington’s Cebrowski-Barnett strategy of deliberate instability and chaos.

Taken alone it was interesting, but the fact it has been followed four months later by a visit by Saudi Arabia’s Vice Minister of Defense Prince Khalid bin Salman to Russia to the annual International Military Technical Forum (ARMY 2021) near Moscow, gives new significance to growing Saudi-Russian ties as well at a time Biden & Co. are “recalibrating” US-Saudi ties as the State Department put it, whatever that means. Khalid tweeted, “I signed an agreement with the Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Colonel General Alexander Fomin between the Kingdom and the Russian Federation aimed at developing joint military cooperation between the two countries.” Bin Salman also added, “Met with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu to explore ways to strengthen the military and defense cooperation and discussed our common endeavor to preserve stability and security in the region.” Notably, Russia has conducted joint military exercises with Iran for the past several years and is also well suited to foster a Saudi-Iran detente.

The Moscow talks came only weeks after the Pentagon and Biden Administration announced it was removing eight Patriot anti-missile systems from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, and Iraq, as well as removing a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system from the Saudi Kingdom, and accelerating the withdrawal of US troops from the region, moves that hardly boost confidence in Washington as protector of Saudi Arabia. The world’s finest anti-missile defense technology, the S-400 air defense system, happens to be made in Russia, as do a broad array of other military equipment.

All these moves by the Saudis are clearly not going to lead to an overnight break with Washington. But clear is that the Saudi monarchy has understood, especially in the wake of the abrupt Biden abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban, that continued dependence on a US security umbrella it has enjoyed since the 1970’s oil shocks, is a fading illusion. MBS clearly realizes that he has been played by both Trump and now Biden. The tectonic plates of Middle East and Eurasian geopolitics are shifting and the implications are staggering.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Why Biden Could Come Back From Saudi Arabia Empty-Handed

Biden is set to travel to Saudi Arabia this week to plead his case for additional oil output.

The trip may end in disappointment as Middle East producers have very little capacity to spare.

A razor-thin global capacity cushion would make supply shocks even more shocking to the market.

As U.S. President Joe Biden travels on his first visit to the Middle East this week, he and his team will make the case for the need for additional oil supply to the market. The Middle East is just the right place to go when oil supply is concerned. Unfortunately for President Biden and for consumers in America and elsewhere, the biggest oil producers in the Middle East have very little to offer in the short term to alleviate the pain at the pump. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude oil exporter, may not have the capacity and/or the willingness to tap deeper into capacity despite the continuous calls from major oil-consuming nations.

The top OPEC producers, all of which are in the Middle East, have some spare oil production capacity left, but the actual numbers are shrouded in mystery, and analysts are only guesstimating how much oil Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) could add to the market if they wanted to.

Middle East Energy Resources Vital For Global Supplies

Days before the visit to the Middle East, President Biden defended his decision to make the trip in an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Saturday.

“Today, Saudi Arabia has helped to restore unity among the six countries of Gulf Cooperation Council, has fully supported the truce in Yemen, and is now working with my experts to help stabilize oil markets with other OPEC producers,” President Biden wrote.

“A more secure and integrated Middle East benefits Americans in many ways. Its waterways are essential to global trade and the supply chains we rely on. Its energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine,” he added.

The President and his team will make the case for higher OPEC oil production during meetings with leaders from the Gulf states in Saudi Arabia, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said this week.

“We will convey our general view…that we believe that there needs to be adequate supply in the global market to protect the global economy and to protect the American consumer at the pump,” Sullivan said.

According to the White House, OPEC has the capacity to take “further steps” to boost oil production, Sullivan added.

Not Much Spare Capacity Left

According to analysts, the Saudis and the UAE would rather stick to their guns and keep aside what little spare capacity they have left.

“Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ have very limited spare capacity, and they have to manage it carefully,” Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Bloomberg.

Per the OPEC+ deal, the Saudi oil production target is at 11.004 million bpd for August. The Kingdom has rarely reached this level, and not for a sustained period of time. So, it’s not certain that the Saudis have the ability to pump 11 million bpd or more on a sustainable basis. It’s even less certain that the Kingdom can quickly tap—if it wanted to—into the 12.2 million bpd production capacity it claims it has.

Analyst estimates about OPEC’s spare capacity are disparate, too. According to the IEA, the EIA, and OPEC, the spare production capacity is around 3 million barrels per day (bpd). Some analysts, however, believe that the cartel has no more than 1 million bpd of spare capacity available.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron was caught on camera telling President Biden that both the Saudis and the UAE were close to their limits in terms of production. The UAE hastened to explain that the “maximum” production level quote attributed to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan referred to the UAE’s quota in the OPEC+ deal.

But doubts remain.

Most analysts say that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are unlikely to tap much into their spare capacity regardless of the U.S. push for more oil. A razor-thin global capacity cushion would make supply shocks even more shocking to the market.

“If President Joe Biden is hoping that his July trip to the Gulf will yield an immediate and significant tranche of extra oil supply from Arab Gulf producers, he will likely be disappointed,” said Bill Farren-Price, a director at Enverus Intelligence Research, commenting on an Enverus report from this week on OPEC’s spare capacity.

“A more likely outcome is that if talks go well, Riyadh commits to increase supply over the medium term,” Farren-Price noted.

Saudi Arabia and UAE leaders ‘decline calls with Biden’ amid fears of oil price spike

The Gulf nations have capacity to pump more oil to ease supply fears but relations with the US have chilled under Biden

The Biden administration is seeking to increase oil supply after formally banning Russian oil imports on Tuesday. Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images

The Biden administration is seeking to increase oil supply after formally banning Russian oil imports on Tuesday. Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images

The de-facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have declined to arrange calls with US president Joe Biden in recent weeks as the US and its allies have sought to contain a surge in energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing Middle East and US officials, both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan have been unavailable to Biden after US requests were made for discussions.

“There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,“ a US official said of a plan for Saudi Prince Mohammed and Biden to speak. “It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].”

Last week, OPEC+, which includes Russia, declined to increase oil production despite western entreaties.

However, the US has for the first time in years opened up diplomatic channels with Venezuela, a Russian ally and which has the world’s largest oil reserves. Venezuela has now released at least two Americans from jail in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the Biden administration in a possible prelude to increasing production to ease the price surge.

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have chilled during the Biden administration over American policy in the Gulf region.

Issues include the revival of the Iran nuclear deal; lack of US support for Saudi intervention in Yemen’s civil war and its refusal to add Houthis to its list of terrorist groups; US help with a Saudi civilian nuclear program; and legal immunity for Prince Mohammed, who is facing lawsuits over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit-team in its Istanbul consulate four years ago.

During Biden’s election campaign he vowed to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” state, saying there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”

Earlier this week, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said there were no plans for the Biden and Prince Mohammed to talk soon, and no plans for the president to travel to Riyadh.

Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US, confirmed strained relations between the two countries. “Today, we’re going through a stress test, but I am confident that we will get out of it and get to a better place,” Al Otaiba predicted.

The two Gulf nations are regarded as the only global suppliers with capacity to pump more oil to ease the price surge.

Joe Biden lands in Saudi Arabia seeking to halt shift towards Russia and China

Analysis: US president aiming to convince Jeddah to increase oil supply in order to calm global energy markets

Joe Biden fist bumps Mohammed bin Salman during visit to Saudi Arabia – video

Joe Biden landed in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah to a tepid welcome from the Saudi crown prince whose country he once pledged to make a “pariah” on the world stage.

While Saudi Arabia announced it would open its airspace to flights from Israel, making Biden the first US president to fly directly from Tel Aviv to the kingdom, expectations of further gains during his visit remained low. The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told journalists onboard Air Force One not to expect any bilateral announcements in response to American demands that Saudi Arabia pump more oil to calm global energy markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia is keen to prove its independence from US interests as it increasingly courts Russia and China.

“From the start, my aim was to reorient – but not rupture – relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post prior to his visit, sidestepping his pledge on the campaign trail to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah”, and the later release of a US intelligence report stating that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, “approved” an operation to capture and murder the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

“It’s a completely different Saudi Arabia, one that in many ways has modernised and opened up a bit, but is also seeing greater crackdowns – and the Biden administration is brutally aware of all this,” said Dina Esfandiary of the NGO Crisis Group.

Biden’s visit means carefully stage-managing relations with Prince Mohammed, the Kingdom’s powerful de facto ruler, who observers say has the upper hand as Biden courts his goodwill at a time of rising global oil prices mounting a challenge to his presidency domestically.

The two shared a fist bump on Biden’s arrival, although the president later warmly shook hands with the king, Salman bin Abdulaziz. At the start of the president’s Middle East trip, officials said he would avoid close contact such as shaking hands as a precaution against Covid.

The US president is under intense pressure to repair the fragile relationship between two nations, one that traditionally relied on the kingdom liberally supplying oil to the global market in exchange for the US’s backing in areas of security and defence.

This has increasingly shifted in recent years, exacerbated as the relationship between Biden and Prince Mohammed has soured and Saudi Arabia looks to Russia and China to diversify its interests.

“The message from Saudi is you can’t tell us what to do, we’ll help you as far as it suits us but we won’t go against our own interests,” said Esfandiary.

Cinzia Bianco, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, agreed. “The Saudi leadership has learned to do without seeking validation from the United States, and Bin Salman in particular – he’s learned to survive and maybe even thrive within the region and to some degree internationally, without getting validation from the US administration,” she said.

Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said that, with the visit to Saudi Arabia, Biden was reneging on previous promises to prioritise human rights. “It’s a very huge backing down actually,” Cengiz told the Associated Press. “It’s heartbreaking and disappointing. And Biden will lose his moral authority by putting oil and expediency over principles and values.”

Saudi Arabia’s recent cooperation with Russia has included an agreement for Rosatom, a Russian state company, to build a nuclear power plant in the kingdom, as well as signing an agreement last year to “explore ways to develop military to strengthen the military and defence cooperation” between the two countries according to the deputy defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman.

China is historically the largest importer of Saudi Arabian oil, while the kingdom has bought Chinese arms including drones and fighter aircraft. Last November, US intelligence agencies concluded that Saudi Arabia is manufacturing its own ballistic missiles with the help of China, according to satellite imagery.

Bianco stressed that the US administration saw Biden’s visit as a vital opportunity to intervene and warm relations before Saudi Arabia moves ahead with Chinese and Russian deals that largely remain in their infancy. “The US administration sees an opportunity to undo all of that or take a step back and create some space,” she said. “There’s a lot on paper rather than in reality, and there’s still space for the administration to try to create some distance between Saudi Arabia, Russia and China.”

Yet as Biden landed in Jeddah to discuss how to increase the global supply of oil in order to bring down prices, doubts persisted as to whether he would fly home with anything to show for his visit at all. Shortly before his arrival, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had more than doubled its imports of Russian oil in order to free up more of its own crude for export, shunning demands for sanctions from the west while increasing profit margins amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Maybe the US administration had good intentions when it began setting up this trip, but ultimately it’s making them look bad – they’re losing the public relations war,” said Esfandiary. “It’s not clear that they’re going to make any gains, my sense is that everyone will walk away disappointed.”