WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia in July, where he is expected to break with his campaign-trail rhetoric by holding a face-to-face meeting with the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The crown prince outraged Washington nearly four years ago by ordering, according to U.S. intelligence services, the murder of a dissident journalist and Virginia resident.
Biden’s planned visit to Jeddah represents a reversal from his 2020 presidential campaign promise to make the crown prince a “pariah” for ordering the 2018 assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Turkey.
“We can expect the president to see the crown prince,” said a senior administration official briefing reporters in a Monday evening background call on the upcoming trip.
