Saudi Arabia is preparing for a more difficult relationship with the new Biden government, after four years in which President Trump
Donald Trump Trump hotel in DC raises room rates for the inauguration of Biden Republican Party Legislator criticizes Trump and colleagues for ‘trying to discredit’ the election Video shows long lines on the last day of early voting in Georgia MORE it gave him a direct line to the Oval Office and offered support even when some of his policies and actions generated controversy and bipartisan contempt.
The Trump-Saudi relationship was a constant source of tension between the White House and many Republicans in Congress, who were angered by the Kingdom’s involvement in the assassination of US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and by the White House’s unbridled support for the effort to Saudi war in Yemen. These actions also drew strong criticism from Democrats.
President-elect Joe Biden
Joe BidenBidens honors frontline workers in NYE speech: “We owe them, we owe them, we owe them” Hotel Trump in DC raises room rates for Biden’s grand opening he called Saudi Arabia an “outcast” and promised a strong hand in relations with the country, especially in the confrontation with Riyadh for its human rights abuses.
The Trump years were a golden period in some ways for the Saudis, as the Republican Party administration strongly directed the US to Riyadh, withdrawing the US from the nuclear deal with Iran. The government’s aggressively anti-Iran policies also led to a military attack that killed the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Saudi Arabia, which saw the Obama administration’s talks with Tehran as an unwanted opening, expects a more strained relationship with Biden’s team. He is already working to calm the turbulent waters between Washington and Riyadh, with the expected release of a prominent women’s rights activist and a possible rapprochement over his blockade of Qatar, which is home to one of the US Central Command headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base .
“They have no friends here,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who advised the Republican and Democratic governments on US policy in the Middle East. “Congress is hostile, the Trump administration is leaving, the Biden government has made it clear what its views are.”
Saudi Arabia is expected in March to release the prominent women’s rights activist Loujain al-Haltoul.
Arrested in 2018 on terrorism charges, al-Haltoul was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Monday for charges that human rights groups criticize for being politically motivated. But the terms of his sentence leave open the possibility of an early release.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Hussain Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Arab Gulf States in Washington, of the sentence.
Biden’s new national security advisor Jake Sullivan
Jake SullivanBiden’s frustration grows with Trump’s lack of cooperation in the transition Incoming national security advisor: Pentagon has not granted a meeting with the Biden transition team since December 18. Saudi women’s activist sentence prepares Riyadh for confrontation with Biden MORE tweeted that the sentence was “unfair and worrying” and that “the Biden-Harris government will stand up to human rights violations wherever they occur”.
Saudi Arabia also appears to be taking steps to resolve its four-year blockade of Qatar, which arose as a result of Riyadh’s frustration with Doha’s relations with Tehran.
Saudi King Salman on Wednesday invited Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar to the Gulf Cooperation Council’s January 5 meeting in what was seen as an effort to start resolving the dispute.
“I think it is something that would attract the Biden government a lot,” said Ibish. “I don’t think they want to inherit the boycott of Qatar.”
The Saudis are skeptical that the Biden government will be Obama 2.0, with many of the same faces as the previous Democratic government returning to various roles.
This includes Sullivan, who was the main negotiator in the initial negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and Antony Blinken
Antony BlinkenFind Biden’s choice to lead the US intelligence community Mnuchin says he spoke to Biden Treasury nominee Yellen Next steps on foreign policy MORE, Appointed Biden to Secretary of State. Blinken served as Biden’s national security adviser when he was vice president and assistant secretary of state between 2015 and 2017.
Blinken, in particular, is considered part of a younger generation of foreign policy advisers who served in the Obama administration and supported pressure from former President Obama for democratic changes in the Middle East.
And while Biden said he would “reevaluate” the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, he signaled that he is looking more to restore balance on the world stage, rather than taking on revolutionary political change.
Biden’s transition team said it was not in a position to comment further than the president-elect said during the campaign and noted his earlier comments on the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Biden issued a statement in October on the second anniversary of Khashoggi’s death, saying that the Biden-Harris government would reevaluate the US relationship with Saudi Arabia and end Washington’s support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. He also expressed support for Saudi activists, dissidents and journalists, saying the United States will not “check its values at the door to sell weapons or buy oil”.
Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior researcher at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said the reassessment is necessary to contain the culture of impunity that Saudi Arabia operated under the Trump administration, while reflecting a changed world.
“Changes in global energy markets mean that Saudi Arabia’s role in global oil prices is not as dominant as before,” she said. “The Middle East in general is less central to America’s global strategy.”
“But you can’t take relationships for granted in general and I think that’s true here,” she added.
This includes reports from the Saudi government that tries to kidnap one of its critics on American soil and FBI assessments that the Kingdom uses its diplomatic facilities to help Saudi citizens escape a lawsuit in American courts. In November 2019, two former Twitter employees and a Saudi citizen were charged by the Justice Department for acting as illegal agents of a foreign government.
“This desire for reevaluation may be triggered by some of the very worrying Saudi behaviors that we have seen in recent years, but it is also driven by these trends that really cannot be ignored,” said Wittes, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for state affairs. Middle East in the Obama administration.
Riyadh holds an important bargaining chip with the Biden government over the possibility of opening relations with Israel, following the Trump administration’s mediation of diplomatic ties between Jerusalem and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Although Saudi Arabia maintains silent security ties with Israel in the face of Iran, and has taken small steps to smooth relations – such as opening airspace for Israeli commercial flights – it has avoided fully opening ties with the Saudi king’s commitment Salman with the Palestinians.
“If and when – I suspect it is a matter of when – the Saudis decide to take another step towards normalization with Israel, they will see … this as a way of energizing their very low relationship with what they anticipate is a next Biden government, ”said Miller, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is considered a tense but necessary alliance, based on common goals about shared values, said Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute.
This includes the US’s need for relations with Saudi Arabia as part of broader alliances to curb China’s global ambitions, destabilizing activities in Russia and maintaining stability in the Middle East.
Riyadh, in turn, needs the security provided by the United States as a global power to ensure its own national integrity.
“For the US, it really is global politics at its highest level,” said Ibish. “The two countries are stuck with each other.”