MbS should know. Resident Biden did fist-bump him.
Just when you thought the Saudis couldn’t humiliate the Biden administration any more, the Wall Street Journal reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is reportedly talking massive trash about the US president behind closed doors .
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 37-year-old day-to-day ruler, mocks President Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old’s gaffes and questioning his mental acuity , according to people inside the Saudi government. He has told advisers he hasn’t been impressed with Mr. Biden since his days as vice president, and much preferred former President Donald Trump , the people said. – WSJ
What ever would give MbS that impression ?
Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan has denied the report – saying ” These allegations made by anonymous sources are entirely false ,” adding “The kingdom’s leaders have always held the utmost respect for U.S. presidents, based on the kingdom’s belief in the importance of having a relationship based on mutual respect.”
That said, the two leaders haven’t been on good terms since even before Biden took office – with Biden calling Saudi Arabia a “pariah” while on the 2020 campaign trail over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, adding that he saw “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia. “
Then, after refusing to speak with MbS for over a year (teleprompter issues?), Saudi officials present at a July meeting in Jeddah indicated that Biden clearly didn’t want to be there, and was not interested in policy discussions .
“The interactions with the Biden administration were so bad for the first two years that one visit was insufficient to propel Saudi to walk away from” its oil alliance with Moscow, according to David Schenker, a senior State Department official under the Trump administration and now a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.
As the Journal further notes, the US-Saudi relationship has been strained for years , but the animosity between Biden and MbS has ‘deepened the tension, and it is likely to get only messier.’
In his first weeks in office, the president froze Saudi arms sales , reversed a last-minute Trump administration decision to label Yemen’s Houthi rebels a foreign terrorist organization, and published the intelligence report on Mr. Khashoggi’s killing which Mr. Trump had previously dismissed. -WSJ
“Rarely has the chain of broken expectations and perceived insults and humiliations been greater than they are now,” said veteran US Middle East diplomat Aaron David Miller, who now works at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There’s almost no trust and absolutely no mutual respect.”
In perhaps the biggest ‘f-you’ to the Biden administration, the Saudis led OPEC+ in a production cut despite the US asking them to delay the decision until after midterms – which the Saudis revealed in a scathing letter nearly two weeks ago.
