Biden meets controversial Saudi prince ‘MBS’

The White House on Tuesday put an end to several weeks of speculation by announcing Joe Biden’s tour of Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia from July 13 to 16. The US President will make a historic flight directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, where he plans to meet the Crown Prince. Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS”), despite allegations of assassination of a Saudi journalist Jamal Kashogi.

This is his first trip to the Middle East since becoming US president. Expectations are high that Joe Biden will seek to increase Saudi oil production to prevent fuel prices and inflation from rising in his country, where elections are due in November. A vote risk for his Democrats.

Whatever the outcome, his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince “MBS” will mark a controversial shift in US diplomacy, the state’s current ruler. During the campaign for the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden claimed that Jamal Kashoghi, a Saudi journalist who had taken refuge in the United States, had been assassinated in 2018 and his body mutilated. Washington Post “- Transformed Saudi Arabia into” Baria “.

The findings of the US intelligence agencies leaked by the Biden administration identified the Crown Prince as the sponsor of the entire operation in Turkey.

A senior US official told reporters: “The president is expected to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his state visit. “But US policy is to re-establish relations” but not break down after Kashogi’s assassination. He pointed out that Saudi Arabia has been a strategic partner of the United States for eight decades, with about 80,000 Americans living there.

According to the White House, “energy security” will be the central theme of the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia, but U.S. officials have argued that his entire tour covers broader diplomatic purposes.

Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with a dozen leaders during this brief but intensive tour, a senior U.S. official told the Associated Press. The trip will begin with a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naphtali Bennett. The US president first visited Israel fifty years ago when he was a young senator.

They are expected to discuss US support for the Israeli military, especially as its Iron Dome anti-missile air defense system fails to revive a key power deal with Tehran over its nuclear program. An unnamed senior official said Joe Biden would “reaffirm his firm commitment to Israel’s security.”

The source said that the US President is scheduled to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority in Bethlehem. He reiterated his “lasting commitment to a two-state solution” for the Palestinians and Israelis and will work to restore relations with the “almost severed” Palestinian authorities under Donald Trump’s previous administration.

The trip should make history at the end of the tour and add more ink: the direct flight between Israel and Jeddah will be the first flight in Saudi Arabia unrecognized by an American president to an Arab country. Jewish state from Israeli soil. His predecessor Donald Trump traveled in the opposite direction in 2017.