Politico Website quoted US President Joe Biden as saying that he will not directly ask Saudi Arabia’s leaders to increase oil production when he visits the kingdom next week, insisting that his trip to the Middle East is not focused on one-on-one engagement with King Salman or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“That’s not the purpose of the trip,” Biden said at a press conference in Madrid in response to a question about direct engagement with Saudi leadership and how he would balance those interactions with his pledge to more directly address the kingdom’s human rights record.
Washington Examiner also commented on Biden’s visit to the region, saying that the US President is counting on both the UAE and Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to mitigate the upward price pressure caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so, if Nahyan is to be believed, Biden is running out of places to find more oil.
“This conversation is more delicious because it was inadvertently made public. But what looks like a silly game of telephone between world leaders is more likely a calculated effort by Saudi and Emirati officials to make Biden pay the maximum price possible for whatever help they’re willing to give him.”
Bloomberg also dealt with the issue, stressing that President Joe Biden’s visit to oil-rich Saudi Arabia might heal frayed US ties with the kingdom, but it’s unlikely to resolve the energy crisis plaguing the global economy.
Even so, Biden has continued to refuse to speak to the Crown Prince, widely known as MBS, despite his desire for lower oil prices to bring down inflation.
However, Middle East Eye said that former Saudi spy chief Saad Jabri’s protection is a sign that the US and its intelligence services intend to play an indirect role in shattering Bin Salman’s dream to sit on the throne. Saudi Arabia, in terms of geopolitics and its resources, remains of vital importance to the global community and the US cannot remain passive.
The website said, while it is easy to sympathise with the emotional anguish of a father who miscalculated the brutality of the current crown prince, many Saudi dissidents regard Jabri as not totally innocent. After all, he was a member of a regime that continues to rule the country with total impunity.
Since he outmanoeuvred more senior rivals in 2017 to become crown prince, MBS has received favourable coverage in international media, with a multitude of reports focused on his economic and social reforms in the conservative kingdom.
However, previous arrests and an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the kingdom, as well as the gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has shifted the focus towards the darker side of MBS’s record. This also includes thousands of civilian deaths in Yemen and a rapid rise of the number of executions since his ascent to power.
