Biden forced into Saudi thaw amid rising oil prices

Biden forced into Saudi thaw amid rising oil prices

When Joe Biden took over the White House from Donald Trump last year, there was no country whose relationship with the US changed more suddenly and more drastically than Saudi Arabia.

As a candidate, Bidenhad vowed to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” amid mounting evidence Saudi officials were behind the 2018 murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi; within a month in office, Biden had declassified US intelligence pointing to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader, as having been behind the killing.

But amid skyrocketing oilprices and record inflation at home, the US president — who had once characterised the “battle between democracies and autocracies” as the central guiding principle of his foreign policy — has been forced into a sharp U-turn.

Biden is now expected to meet Crown Prince Mohammed in person during a visit to Riyadh later this month, a climbdown facilitated by a furious, senior-level diplomatic offensive by the president’s top Middle East adviser and energy adviser.

On Tuesday, the White House was able to show the first fruits of the policy reversal: Opec agreed to accelerate oil production to help replace output lost to international sanctions against Russia, and Riyadh helped extend a truce between Yemen’s Saudi-backed