“I didn’t come here to meet with the crown prince,” Biden said, pointing to his agenda, which included a summit with other Arab leaders. For weeks before his visit to Saudi Arabia, the White House sought to use the summit to deflect criticism of the controversial trip to a nation that Biden has vowed to treat as a pariah. But it is the images of the president bonding with Prince Mohammed – the man US intelligence has concluded authorized the operation that led to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi – that may be the trip’s most lasting legacy. “This visit was mostly about optics, particularly the Saudi part,” said Stephen Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There were a lot of positives for the Saudis and a lot of negatives for the Americans.” Biden and his team knew the trip would come at a political cost — and that Riyadh would use his meeting with Prince Mohammed as a sign of restoring the crown prince to the West, less than four years after Khashoggi’s assassination. But with oil prices at their highest levels in more than a decade, and Washington trying to isolate Russia, aides have pressed Biden to mend ties with the world’s top crude exporter. The challenges, however, of restoring relations with Riyadh were underscored when Saudi officials quickly pushed back on Biden’s assessments of two key US targets: human rights and oil. The president told reporters he raised the assassination of Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi agents in 2018, at the top of his meeting with Prince Mohammed. Biden said Prince Mohammed reiterated that he was “not personally responsible” for the killing – Riyadh has blamed the killing on a rogue operation. The president, who previously refused to speak with the crown prince, said he “indicated that he probably was” in response. But Saudi officials said Prince Mohammed pushed back, insisting those responsible be tried and jailed. US President Joe Biden bumps into Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman © Royal Court of Saudi Arabia Officials said the crown prince then cited the abuse of prisoners by US troops at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison as he sought to challenge Washington’s human rights record. The exchange was brief and the leaders moved on to other topics, they added. Similarly, Biden told reporters he felt he had secured Saudi Arabia’s agreement to produce more oil in the coming weeks. But Saudi officials, who have long argued that simply pumping more crude will not lower prices, were quick to downplay that. They reiterated Riyadh’s position that any decision to produce more oil would be based on demand. “If you say we promised more oil, it means we are seeing a shortage of oil,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said. “If we see a shortage of oil, more oil will be produced.” Biden secured some foreign policy victories during his first visit to the Middle East as president, which began with Israel. This included Saudi Arabia agreeing to open its airspace to all flights to and from Israel, a country with which Riyadh has no official relations. Washington and Riyadh also agreed to work together to build 5G and 6G in Saudi Arabia, a deal the US hopes will wean the kingdom off Chinese communications technology. However, Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the success of the visit would only become clear in the coming weeks and would depend on Saudi follow-through. “If Biden gets relief at the gas pump and is seen as getting some relief for the American people on inflation through this visit. . . that will pay more political dividends than the price that comes from people popping up on Twitter,” he said. Even before it began, the trip had been criticized by human rights activists and US lawmakers, and Biden had struggled to articulate why he was going to Saudi Arabia. At various times he has suggested he was to push for greater regional integration, boost efforts to end a seven-year war in Yemen and stabilize energy markets. The message grew sharper during the visit and concluded with a speech on Saturday to the leaders of the Gulf states and Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, in which he insisted the US would remain an “active, committed partner in the Middle East”. “We’re not going to walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran,” Biden said. These comments were designed to counter a perception among Arab states that successive US administrations have sought to disengage from the region. That sentiment has pushed Gulf states in particular to deepen ties with Russia and China, the region’s biggest oil buyer, and offset their traditional ties with Washington. Yemeni security guards inspect damage to the telecommunications ministry after overnight airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition targeted the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa in February © Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images Gulf states and Israel are also worried about Biden’s efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers, fearing it would embolden their arch-rival. Riyadh has been irked by criticism of its human rights and policies in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia leads a coalition fighting Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. John Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said “Biden’s general instinct is that the Middle East will be a source of trouble, not opportunity.” But factors such as the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and concerns about China’s deepening footprint in the region mean it cannot ignore the region. “He’s reluctant to integrate too much, but he also understands that he can’t give it up,” Alterman said. Whatever the view in the White House, Biden ended up delivering a “huge victory” for Prince Mohammed, said Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator familiar with the royal court’s thinking. “The visit was a vindication for MBS and a visit that proved that you certainly cannot ignore Saudi Arabia and MBS let alone isolate them,” Shihabi said. But for critics of Saudi Arabia, the trip dashed any long-held hopes that Biden would follow through on his earlier promises and hold the kingdom to account. Khashoggi’s fiancee Khatiche Cengiz tweeted condemnation of the trip using a fake account of the former journalist and a photo of Biden and Prince Mohammed fist bumping. “Hey @Potus, is this the accountability you promised for my murder?” she wrote
