Is Biden ready to let MBS get away with murder?

President Joe Biden will have only himself to blame if he feels a little uncomfortable this week when he sits down with the man who runs Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed ‘Bone Saw’ bin Salman (MBS). After the CIA accused MBS of ordering the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi – dismembered with a bone saw – Biden said Saudi Arabia had ‘no redeeming social feature’ and should be made ‘a pariah’. This was a satisfying bit of moral posturing during a presidential election campaign, but costly now, in a world where Americans are paying $5 a gallon for gas and Russia is funding its war in Ukraine by selling oil at $100 a barrel. The US needs the Saudis to crank up production. For MBS, this means literally getting away with murder.

Biden has the decency to squirm about his reversal. At the Nato summit a couple of weeks ago, he was asked by journalists how he could go to Saudi Arabia after everything he had said. The President explained that he was attending a meeting of Gulf countries that, coincidentally, was in Saudi Arabia, and so, maybe – he didn’t know – he might bump into MBS if he happened to be around. Biden’s exact words reveal an inner conflict. ‘What we’re trying to do,’ he said, ‘is that the G- – it’s the Gulf states plus three, and so, I’m sure – it’s in Saudi Arabia, but it’s not about Saudi Arabia. It’s in Saudi Arabia. And so there’s no commitment that is being made or – I’m not even sure; I guess I will see the King and the Crown Prince, but that’s – that’s not the meeting I’m going to. They’ll be part of a much larger meeting.’

Clearly not caring much about Biden’s embarrassment, the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC helpfully put out a press release saying the US President would be welcomed by King Salman (Saudi Arabia’s ostensible ruler) but would then go on to meet the Crown Prince (Saudi Arabia’s real ruler).