Desperate Biden will beg the Saudis for oil, Trump claims
The president faces an outcry from Democratic Party members for choosing to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Donald Trump has taunted President Joe Biden for deciding to visit Saudi Arabia despite once vowing to make it a pariah for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mr Trump, who made Riyadh the first overseas trip of his presidency, said Mr Biden’s visit on Friday would show that the US was becoming a “beggar” for energy.
Mr Biden, 79, faces an outcry from Democratic Party members for choosing to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after releasing an intelligence assessment last year that said the prince had approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi.
The US President also will meet King Salman, 86, whom he initially tried to make his interlocutor in the kingdom.
Some staff in the White House have considered resigning over the change of direction.
Mr Biden used an article in The Washington Post on Saturday, in the same section Khashoggi wrote for, to argue that the visit was an opportunity to “reorient – but not rupture – relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years”.
“In Saudi Arabia, we reversed the blank-check policy we inherited” from Mr Trump.
It will feature as part of Mr Biden’s first Middle East tour from Wednesday to Saturday to promote peace and seek help from oil-rich Saudi Arabia in reducing energy prices for US consumers.
The Saudis, Mr Biden wrote, were “working with my experts to help stabilise oil markets with other OPEC producers”.
He added: “I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. My views on human rights are clear and longstanding and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad, as they will be during this trip, just as they will be in Israel and the West Bank.”
Air Force One will make an unprecedented direct flight between the Jewish state and the conservative Gulf kingdom that does not recognise its existence.
Mr Trump had made a historic trip, in 2017, in the other direction.
In Israel, Mr Biden will receive its highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Honour. President Isaac Herzog said it was “to thank him for being a true friend of Israel” and for Mr Biden’s “decades-long support for Israel’s security, deepening our alliance and fighting anti-Semitism”.
Mr Biden has struggled to reorient US policy in the Middle East. He has not reversed Mr Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and open an embassy there, nor changed the Abraham Accords under which United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recognise Israel.
He has retained the terrorist designation for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and has been unable to revive the Iran nuclear deal that Mr Trump pulled out of.
Mr Trump told a rally in Achorage, Alaska: “He didn’t like Saudi Arabia. I did. I always liked them. But he didn’t like them and now he’s going there and he’s asking for oil.”
Mr Trump, 76, is hosting the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour at his course in New Jersey this month. A host of leading golfers have pulled out over the breakaway tournament’s Saudi links.
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