Monitoring Desk
Washington, DC – With the war in Ukraine leading to a surge in petrol prices in the United States and around the world, oil production will top US President Joe Biden’s agenda when he visits Saudi Arabia later this month.
But Biden and his top aides have shied away from acknowledging the global energy crisis is driving the visit. Instead, they have cited an array of issues – from normalising ties with Israel, to ending the war in Yemen, dealing with Iran, addressing climate change and developing “counterterrorism” strategies.
Analysts have said this demonstrates Biden’s reluctance to engage with the Gulf kingdom amid human rights concerns, as well as his administration’s efforts to fend off criticism from lawmakers in Washington.
“It could be that the focus on normalisation and trying to stabilise or bring peace to the region is a way to try and shift the narrative over the visit to a more politically friendly terrain for the White House,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Indeed, while many members of Biden’s Democratic Party are sceptical of deepening ties with Riyadh, there is nearly unanimous consensus in Washington favouring expanding normalisation between Israel and Arab countries.
Invoking ‘peace’
On several occasions last month, Biden invoked Israel and “peace” in the region when asked about his visit to Saudi Arabia, even before the trip was confirmed.
“It has to do with national security for them – for Israelis,” Biden told reporters of the visit on June 13. “I have a programme, anyway. It has to do with much larger issues than having to do with the energy piece.” A day later, the White House formally announced that Biden will take a trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia between July 13 and 16. After weeks of speculation, US officials also confirmed that the president would meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom US intelligence reports had accused of ordering the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Riyadh has insisted that the killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 was a rogue operation that took place without the approval or knowledge of top officials, including bin Salman, who is known as MBS.
Still, the death of the Saudi journalist, who was a US resident and worked for the Washington Post at the time of the killing, stirred strong condemnations against the kingdom in Washington, and much of the ire was directed at MBS. At a Democratic Party presidential debate late in 2019, Biden – then a candidate – famously pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” when asked about the murder.
Shibley Telhami, professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, said there is a political calculation behind Biden’s emphasis on normalisation between Israel and Arab states in the context of his Middle East trip.
“He thinks the popularity of normalisation with Israel would perhaps offset the negatives of appearing with Mohammed bin Salman,” Telhami told Al Jazeera.
But Telhami added that the US president is “miscalculating” because while normalisation is popular among congressional Democrats, Democratic voters are “leaning more towards the Palestinians now than they are towards the Israelis”.
Meanwhile, the Democratic rank and file opinion of Saudi Arabia remains “negative”, he said.
Normalisation with Israel
For his part, Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, said promoting normalisation with Israel in advance of the visit to Saudi Arabia fits with Biden’s support for Israel throughout his career but also happens to be politically beneficial. “I’m sure that when Biden says it’s partly about making peace for the sake of Israel and so forth these days, on the one hand, he’s playing to the pro-Israel vote in the United States, but on the other hand, I think there’s something to it,” Cole told Al Jazeera.
