Understanding the Ups and Downs of US-Saudi Relations: QuickTake

Understanding the Ups and Downs of US-Saudi Relations: QuickTake

For more than seven decades, despite differences on human rights and the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US and Saudi Arabia maintained a close alliance based on an exchange of security for oil. Lately, that arrangement has been showing signs of stress. US President Joe Biden initially cooled relations over the 2018 murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. He worked to patch things up in July, in order to cajole the world’s largest crude exporter to ramp up output and thus nudge global oi