Opinion: Mr. Biden goes to Riyadh (hat in hand)

Sure, Biden as a presidential candidate may have said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s kingdom was a “In March, the regime carried out a mass execution of 81 men, Saudi authorities said, To be sure Biden is not embracing the Crown Prince in the same obsequious manner that former President Donald Trump did. Trump made his first overseas visit as President to the kingdom and strongly endorsed the subsequent Saudi blockade of its neighbor Qatar, even though Qatar houses the largest US military base in the Middle East, which was then playing a key role in the wars against ISIS and the Taliban. Trump also pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, a key Saudi foreign policy goal, even though that deal was working, according to international inspectors and US intelligence agencies.Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was effectively the President’s shadow secretary of state, led the administration’s campaign to cozy up to MBS, whom he texted with regularly on WhatsApp. Kushner’s cultivation of the Crown Prince would eventually provide a handsome payday. Six months after the Trump administration left office, against the advice of its advisers, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is led by MBS, invested $2 billion in Kushner’s equity fund, according to The New York Times.Unlike Trump/Kushner, however, Biden is not a complete patsy for Saudi interests. When Biden came into office, his administration ended the Trump White House’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization, which was complicating aid efforts to the Yemenis, hundreds of thousands of whom have died of disease or malnutrition because of the civil war. On his trip to Riyadh, Biden will surely also have his requests of the Saudis, such as maintaining a recently negotiated fragile truce in Yemen, which is now more than three months old. Another ask will be encouraging closer ties with Israel, which would likely fall far short of any formal recognition of the Jewish state but could involve confidence-building measures such as allowing planes flying to and from Israel overflight rights in Saudi airspace. And, of course, Biden’s main goal will be getting the Saudis to help bring down oil prices, which they already began to do in a modest manner in May. But MBS will also get what he wants, which is a well-publicized meeting with the US President, demonstrating to the world that his kingdom is no pariah.