US President Joe Biden speaks to the traveling press after participating in a working meeting with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia at the Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah, July 15, 2022.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden aimed to tout policy progress Friday after several highly criticized meetings with Saudi Arabia’s royals, but the kingdom’s human rights abuses overshadowed all other topics.
Biden said his team had done “significant business” in Jeddah after months of what he described as quiet diplomacy. Among the topics of progress, Saudi Arabia and Israel — which Biden also visited this week — have indeed taken tangible steps toward normalizing relations, according to the president.
Visiting oil-rich Saudi Arabia as high gas prices contribute to low approval ratings at home, Biden also said he discussed oil supplies during the meetings. He also pointed to 5G, climate policy and countering China’s influence in the region as topics of discussion.
But Biden’s address from Saudi Arabia came hours after the president punched Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is believed to have ordered the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. His decision to engage with the crown prince cast a shadow over the political progress Biden had aimed to demonstrate.
US intelligence has concluded that the crown prince, known as MBS, ordered Khashoggi’s murder. He previously denied any involvement in dismembering the journalist.
Biden said he raised the issue of human rights and Khashoggi’s killing early in his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed.
“For an American president to be silent on the issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am,” Biden told reporters in Jeddah. The president added that the crown prince told him he had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance and murder.
Biden added that he did not regret saying in 2019 as a presidential candidate that he wanted to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” after Khashoggi’s assassination.
“What happened to Khashoggi was outrageous,” Biden said.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman punches US President Joe Biden upon his arrival at the Al Salman Palace, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 15, 2022.
Bandar Algalud | Courtesy of the Saudi Royal Court | via Reuters
Last week, Biden published an article in The Washington Post, where Khashoggi works as a columnist, justifying his visit to Saudi Arabia.
“From the beginning, my goal has been to reorient — but not sever — a relationship with a country that has been a strategic partner for 80 years,” Biden wrote in that article, which once mentioned the slain journalist by name.
“I know there are many people who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia,” the president wrote. “My views on human rights are clear and long-standing, and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad, as they will be on this trip, just as they will be in Israel and the West Bank.”
In a statement Friday, Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan said Biden’s punch “projected a level of intimacy and comfort that affords MBS the unwarranted redemption he desperately seeks.”
Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz retweeted a photo of Biden punching the prince, with a message from Khashoggi’s Twitter account: “Hey @POTUS. Is this the responsibility you promised for my murder. This blood of MBS’s next victim is on your hands.”
When asked to respond to Khashoggi’s fiancee’s tweet, Biden said he was sorry she felt that way.
“I’m sorry he feels that way. I was straight then. I was straight today,” Biden said.
The oil-rich monarchy of Saudi Arabia is a major strategic partner of the US and the largest buyer of US-made weapons. That role shielded the kingdom from retaliatory sanctions over Khashoggi’s death and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.