Joe Biden is facing accusations of betraying a pre-election promise to re-evaluate ties with Saudi Arabia over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in favour of pursuing a rapprochement with the kingdom aimed at repelling a challenge from China to US primacy in the Middle East.
The charge, from human rights campaigners and some Democrats, follows the fifth anniversary of Khashoggi’s death at the hands of Saudi regime agents and comes amid mounting criticism of a proposed new defence treaty between Washington and Riyadh that could result in Saudi Arabia granting official recognition to Israel.
Biden took office initially intending to downplay the traditional US role in the Middle East, a policy consistent with holding Saudi Arabia at arm’s length following the outcry that greeted Khashoggi’s murder.
But the president has since performed a volte-face by saying on a visit to the region that the US would “remain an active, engaged partner” and adding: “We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, or Iran.”
The Biden administration’s initially cool relations towards Saudi Arabia began to warm, according to analysts, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year triggered international sanctions, forcing western countries to seek urgent alternatives to Russian energy supplies.
Biden visited Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in July last year, where he held talks with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince. The pair were photographed in a fist-bump greeting.
The president said afterwards he told the crown prince that he held him personally responsible for Khashoggi’s murder, adding that Prince Mohammed denied culpability.
The administration later ruled that the crown prince enjoyed head-of-state immunity from any decision by an American court on the murder of Khashoggi, who had been living in exile in the US before his death.
Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins, said the accusations that the administration had abandoned its position on Khashoggi were justified. But he said “realpolitik” had driven Washington to deepen ties after China brokered a restoration of long-severed diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran last March, in what was seen as a major geostrategic coup for Beijing.
“The US wants to drive a wedge between China and Saudi Arabia,” Nasr said. “The increased involvement of China in the Gulf has been a concern to Washington, and when the Chinese were able to resolve an intractable problem between the Saudis and Iran, it told Washington that China’s involvement in the region was more than just commercial.”
Now Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s prime minister and de facto ruler, is haggling for a pact – which could include security guarantees and US technology to develop a nuclear energy programme – in return for establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel, a prized goal of the Biden administration.
The Saudi leader is also pressing for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, a potential stumbling block for the hard-right coalition government of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has pledged to build more settlements in the occupied West Bank on land claimed by the Palestinians as part of a future state.
Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, was tortured and then strangled after being ambushed by a state hit squad on 2 October 2018 after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to obtain paperwork for his forthcoming marriage. His body was dismembered, reportedly using a bone saw, and later disposed of.
A subsequent CIA investigation concluded that the murder had been committed on the orders of Prince Mohammed.
Activists say the latest diplomatic overtures sully Khashoggi’s memory and violate Biden’s campaign promise that his death would “not be in vain”.
“It is a betrayal not just of Jamal Khashoggi and the millions of people of Saudi Arabia whose lives Prince Mohammed has destroyed, but also of the promises President Biden made to the American people to end support for this autocratic, sociopathic government,” said Sarah Leigh Whitson, executive director of Dawn, a pro-democracy group founded by Khashoggi months before his murder.
“Now he is going a step further by committing America to unprecedented security guarantees that would obligate American servicemen and women to uphold the rule of this dictator. This is something that not even the Trump administration did.
“It’s a sad reflection of a misplaced priority that the US must maintain hegemony and pre-eminence in the Middle East at all costs, which is pathetic because we now live in a multi-polar world.”
In October 2020, marking the second anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder, Biden pledged that his administration would “reassess our relationship with the kingdom … and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil”.
“America’s commitment to democratic values and human rights will be a priority, even with our closest security partners,” he said.
Now those same values are being invoked by members of Biden’s own party after 20 Democratic senators signed a letter to him expressing concerns about the proposed defence treaty.
“A high degree of proof would be required to show that a binding defence treaty with Saudi Arabia – an authoritarian regime which regularly undermines US interests in the region, has a deeply concerning human rights record and has pursued an aggressive and reckless foreign policy agenda – aligns with US interests,” the letter says.
The letter also demands that Israel does not annex any part of the West Bank and stop the construction of settlements on the territory to meet Biden’s stated aim of “preserving the option of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.
Nasr said: “The stakes for the US are much bigger than the human rights record of one leader, because it’s trying to play a much bigger strategic game against China while trying to resolve a big conflict between the Arabs and Israel. It’s not going to hold those issues subservient to its position on Jamal Khashoggi.”
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said additional factors prompted the US démarche, including internal reforms which he said had led to progress on the rights and status of women.
“Saudi Arabia is a country with enormous deployable wealth. It’s a country of robust intelligence capabilities, if you are looking at counter-terrorism,” he said. “It’s important to global energy markets. It’s an asset in many other ways.
“You can have a US policy in the Middle East that tries to suppress Saudi Arabia, but everything becomes a lot harder to do and a lot less successful if you cannot get a Saudi Arabian buy-in.”
Referring to the murder of Khashoggi, who he said had been a friend, Alterman added: “I don’t think Saudi Arabia can be defined purely through the prism of that crime. It requires a more holistic view that leaves you not just disgusted with Saudi Arabia but with a more complicated and confused set of assessments.”
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the White House national security council said: “We have made clear, and will continue to do so, that the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi was a reprehensible crime.”
The spokesperson added the US had shared a “strategic partnership” with Saudi Arabia for more than 80 years, crediting it with being “a cornerstone of regional security [and] benefitting the interests of the people of the United States”.
“We will continue to advance our mutual interests and a common vision for a more secure, stable, and prosperous region, interconnected with the world,” the statement added.
“We intend to keep human rights on our bilateral agenda.”
