All three efforts are fraught with political risks for a president who knows the region well but returns for the first time in six years with far less leverage than he would like to shape events. His 18-month negotiations to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have stalled, blocking a diplomatic effort to force Tehran to ship out of the country most of the nuclear fuel it is now enriching to near-bomb levels. And while no explicit deal to increase Saudi oil output is expected to be announced – out of concern it could be seen as inappropriate, a reward for facilitating the crown prince’s return to the diplomatic fold – it is likely to come in a or two months, officials say. Administration officials know they will face fierce criticism from within their own party when the inevitable photos of the president’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman emerge, less than two years after Mr. Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia ” pariah” on the international stage. . That pledge was prompted by the 2018 assassination of dissident Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi. Mr. Biden has often described this era in history as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, and he banned Cuba and Venezuela from a recent summit of the Americas in Los Angeles for their repressive practices. But he has justified the visit to Saudi Arabia as an exercise in realism. “My goal has been to reorient — but not sever — the relationship,” Mr. Biden wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece last weekend. Saudi Arabia’s “energy resources are vital to mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine,” he said, in the only acknowledgment of the reality that Prince Mohammed’s strategy — wait until the United States needs Saudi again Arabia – it paid off. There’s also an element of super-powered maneuvering to the journey. Mr Biden made it clear when he took office that he wanted to weaken the US focus on the Middle East and focus on China – a reflection of his belief that Washington had wasted 20 years when it should have focused on a true peer competitor. But the trip is also partly about stemming China’s incursion into the region. Last week, Riyadh and Washington quietly signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to build a next-generation 5G mobile network in Saudi Arabia. This is designed to take on Huawei, China’s 5G champion. The politics of the war in Ukraine will also be in the background. Mr. Biden’s aides made clear they were annoyed in the spring when the Israeli government insisted on a largely neutral stance on the war, insisting that was the only way for its prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to keep an open line to the President Vladimir. B. Putin. On Monday, as Mr Biden prepared to leave, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, revealed for the first time that intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran – Israel’s main rival – was planning to help Russia in its battle against Ukraine. He said Iran was preparing to hand over to Russia hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, some capable of carrying out attacks. “Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapon-capable UAVs, on an accelerated schedule,” Mr. Sullivan said as an almost useless line at the top of his remarks on Monday afternoon . “Our information further indicates that Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs with initial training sessions to begin in early July,” he said. Mr. Sullivan cautioned that “it’s not clear if Iran has already delivered any of these UAVs to Russia,” but said “this is just one example of how Russia is looking at countries like Iran for capabilities that are also being used” in attacks on Saudi Arabia. Mr. Sullivan’s main motive in revealing the Iranian operation was to warn Tehran and Moscow that the United States was watching. But with Mr Biden’s visit expected to begin with a demonstration of new Israeli capabilities to use laser weapons against drones and missiles, it also appeared he intended to send a message to the Israeli government for more assertive support for Ukraine . It also gives Mr. Biden and the caretaker prime minister who will be his host, Yair Lapid, a common point of agreement on how to deal with Iran, amid continued behind-the-scenes wrangling over how to handle a critical turnaround in Iran’s nuclear power. program. UPDATED July 13, 2022, 6:25 am ET Israel strongly opposed the 2015 nuclear deal, and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress about the need to block it. (Many of his intelligence and military chiefs disagreed and later said they believed the deal, which forced Iran to ship 97 percent of its fuel stockpile out of the country, had bought them off for years.) When President Donald J. Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, sparking a new surge in Iran’s nuclear program. It has now produced a significant amount of near-bomb grade uranium – something it never did before the 2015 deal – and Israel has stepped up its sabotage campaign, blowing up Iranian facilities. In response, Iran is accelerating the development of new, underground facilities. Officially, Israel opposes renewing the agreement — though it appears to be a moot point. Talks have stalled for months, with Mr Biden refusing Iran’s request to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from Washington’s list of terrorist organizations. Robert Malley, the chief American negotiator, whom the Iranians have refused to meet face-to-face, recently told NPR that “whether they’re interested or not, they’re going to have to decide sooner or later, because at some point the deal will be a thing of the past.” . It may already be beyond the point of resuscitation. In early spring, Mr. Malley and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said it took just weeks, perhaps a month, to reach a deal before Iran’s advances and knowledge gained as it installed advanced centrifuges to produce uranium at high volume, it would make the 2015 deal obsolete. Now, four months later, Mr. Biden’s aides refuse to explain how they let that deadline pass — and still insist that reviving the deal is more valuable than abandoning it. Rafael Grossi, the director of the world’s nuclear watchdog, said earlier this month in Australia that he believed Iran’s program had now advanced so far that others in the region would be tempted to copy it. Saudi Arabia has said it reserves the right to build any nuclear infrastructure Iran builds. “We are now in a situation where Iran’s neighbors could start to fear the worst and plan accordingly,” Mr Grossi said. “There are countries in the region today that are looking very closely at what’s going on with Iran, and tensions in the region are rising.” He added that political leaders had at times said they would “actively seek nuclear weapons if Iran posed a nuclear threat.” For public consumption, the White House has argued that Mr. Biden’s decision to go to Saudi Arabia was driven by a range of national security issues, not just oil. But oil is actually the most urgent reason to travel in an era of high gas prices. Sensitive to the appearance of sacrificing a principled stance on human rights for cheaper energy, the president does not plan to announce any oil deals during his stop in Jeddah. But the two sides understand that Saudi Arabia will increase production once the current quota deal expires in September, just in time for the fall midterm election campaign, according to current and former US officials. Martin Indyk, a former Middle East diplomat for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said the exact amounts were still uncertain, but that Saudi Arabia was expected to increase production by about 750,000 barrels a day and the United Arab Emirates would follow their example by an additional 500,000 barrels per day, for a combined 1.25 million. How much that would push prices at the pump in the United States is unclear, and it may not be quick enough or deep enough to change public sentiment before November. “That’s going to be the kind of deal that justifies the trip, but because they’re not going to announce it, it leaves the president in a situation where he has to justify it in other terms, and therefore the focus on Israel and defense normalization and integration.” said Mr. Indyk. “The president’s defensiveness on this is wrong. He should embrace it.” Instead, Mr. Biden has tried to argue that he is not visiting Saudi Arabia so much as meeting several leaders from the region in the form of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of six states led by Saudi Arabia, as well as the leaders of three other Arab nations, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. But White House officials are resigned to the fact that Mr. Biden won’t be able to avoid Prince Mohammed entirely, and there will be that disastrous photo — damaging, to say the least, to Mr. Biden. For the heir apparent the image will be invaluable as he tries to restore his international image. Some analysts said that alone might be enough for the Saudis. “I think the chances that the Saudis will try to embarrass the president on this trip are relatively low, because I think it would hurt exactly the kinds of strategic things they’re trying to do,” said Jon B. Alterman, a ..
