Joe Biden Gives Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince A Terrifying Gift: Invulnerability

As president, Donald Trump reportedly bragged about the gift he gave Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia: “I saved his ass.”

But on Friday, President Joe Biden gave the prince an even greater gift than Trump ever could: an aura of invulnerability.

Biden traveled to Crown Prince Mohammed’s home turf, greeted him with a fist bump that immediately made global headlines and then sat down for a meeting with the crown prince that was structured to present him as the president’s equal, despite the White House’s past insistence that Biden would largely deal only with King Salman. Both men and their teams ignored a reporter who shouted out: “President Biden, is Saudi Arabia still a pariah?”

Biden’s approach to the crown prince conveyed the sense of normality in U.S.-Saudi ties that he has sought since 2018, when he faced global outrage and unprecedented fury from Washington after Saudi agents murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi on a mission that he had ordered. Trump repeatedly defended the crown prince, but public pressure forced him to end some U.S. support for the Saudi military campaign in Yemen, and senators from both parties voted to condemn Crown Prince Mohammed.

The embrace Friday sent a message of complete rehabilitation for the crown prince, known as MBS, precisely because it came from Biden.

Biden and his allies, including nearly all top Democrats, spent years bashing Trump for resisting accountability for the Khashoggi murder and ignoring MBS’s other alarming behavior, such as kidnapping Lebanon’s prime minister and launching a vicious domestic crackdown. As a Democratic presidential candidate, Biden pledged “to insist on responsible Saudi actions and impose consequences for reckless ones.” And once Biden entered office ― accompanied by Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress ― the Saudis took him seriously enough to make concessions, partially releasing some dissidents and moving toward ending their brutal Yemen operation.

Though the crown prince had used business links, lobbying and diplomacy with fellow autocrats to somewhat restore his standing globally, he still seemed vulnerable to censure from his most important partner, the U.S.

Lawmakers, foreign policy analysts and activists who wanted to reform the U.S.-Saudi relationship saw an unprecedented opportunity for progress. They believed the Biden administration could secure concrete Saudi commitments to respect human rights and limit U.S. entanglement in Middle East tensions by becoming more cautious about arms sales and other military support.

Yet by last fall, they were already disappointed. Biden seemed to have reached the limits of his willingness to challenge Riyadh and America’s historic policy of overlooking Saudi abuses. With his current trip, the president has clearly signaled that he is not seeking a major change.

Biden’s choice sets him apart from top Democrats and bolsters the crown prince: The most significant united front of skepticism toward him has splintered, and he publicly seems to have outplayed his critics while giving them nearly nothing in return.

Meanwhile, Biden may soon give in to more of his demands. A congressional source told HuffPost that the administration seems close to lifting its year-old ban on selling offensive weapons to the Saudis.

The Biden administration tried to justify the visit with a weeks-long public relations campaign that largely failed to convince skeptics that it would shore up U.S. leadership in the region, lead to better treatment of Saudi dissidents or lower gas prices courtesy of increased Saudi supply. In a news conference in the kingdom on Friday, the president claimed that, due to his meeting with MBS, the price of oil might fall “in a couple of weeks” and described what he saw as other key outcomes of the trip, like warmer Saudi-Israel ties and greater hopes for peace in Yemen.

Yet among observers who worry about what MBS might do with his new sense of impunity, Biden’s moves have spurred fear for the future and deep disappointment.

Earlier in the week, Saudi activist Lina Alhathloul told a Capitol Hill audience that the U.S. was endorsing a dangerous vision of the Middle East. “This is not what stability looks like for me as a Saudi citizen. I don’t want a country that is governed by someone who tortures women, including my sister. Someone who cuts journalists into pieces. Someone who starts wars all over the region,” she said.

While Biden gave MBS the photo opportunities that analysts believe he most wanted from the trip, his team appears to have ignored a recommendation from watchdogs: that the president set up high-profile meetings with Saudi government critics to show support for reform in the kingdom.

“It has been crushing for the activists in Saudi and Israel and Palestine who believed Biden. They feel completely abandoned,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of DAWN, a nonprofit that Khashoggi founded before his assassination. “In my opinion, they shouldn’t have believed him because of the incentive structure in our country… the only message the Biden administration is sending us is might makes right, money makes right.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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