World Geostrategic Insight interview with Irina Tsukerman on whether Khashoggi’s murder really had a decisive influence in cooling U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, Biden’s political repositioning in the Middle East and possible tensions within his foreign policy, results of the U.S. President’s visit to Saudi Arabia, and foreseeable developments in his relations with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security lawyer based in the US. She is also a geopolitical analyst, President of Scarab Rising, Inc., a media and security strategic advisory firm, and the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider. Irina’s comments and articles have appeared in diverse domestic and international media and have been translated into over a dozen languages.
The U.S. is seeking a complete reset with Saudi Arabia, effectively moving past the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, considered one of the main causes of the cooling of U.S.-Saudi relations. Did Khashoggi’s murder really play an important role in shaping U.S. foreign policy toward Saudi Arabia, or are there other deeper causes?
Irina Tsukerman – The reaction to Khashoggi’s death was a symptom, not a cause of the strain in relations between Saudi Arabia and the US. His death served as a convenient pretext for the outrage machine unleashed against the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by his enemies, which include the Old Guard in Saudi Arabia and in the US and other Western countries. Worth noting, that campaigns against the Crown Prince were already on the rise prior to Khashoggi’s demise; Khashoggi himself was in the middle of masterminding a cyberproject in conjunction with mostly Islamist Saudi opposition, and financially backed by Qatar, which was in the midst of a crisis with Saudi Arabia at the time, that was set to undermine the Crown Prince’s image as a reformer.
Khashoggi was an opponent of reforms, an illiberal Muslim Brotherhood thinker responsible for the censorship of reform-minded Saudi voices before Mohammed bin Salman became the Crown Prince. His ideology which would have prevented most of the reforms from being implemented to begin with is what caused the rift between Khashoggi and the Saudi authorities. Still, to this day, there is no evidence that his copy-pasted Qatar Foundation International attacks on the Crown Prince had any impact inside the Kingdom. Mohammed bin Salman’s concern was not with the movements outside Saudi Arabia but with the domestic sphere.
You can see from his own record that most of his efforts since he became the Crown Prince were domestic; he spent relatively little time abroad and while there his focus was less on his own image and more on trying to build partnerships that would benefit Saudi Arabia’s growing young population. The support for him inside the country from the young people was overwhelming and the articles by Khashoggi in Qatari publications such as Middle East Eye or Washington Post would only strengthen that support.
If anything, the Crown Prince overinvested domestically and underinvested in building strong international support among voters in Western countries such as the US, by allocating relatively little resources on effective lobbying and not having a sufficient presence in the media, among campuses, and other social networks on the ground via his people. His limitations in that regard raised ire among the lobby groups who were expecting much more and they were quickly to turn their back on him once the political scandal over Khashoggi’s murder broke. But the point is, Mohammed bin Salman was not particularly concerned about the impact of Saudi opposition and people like Khashoggi on the West, and so the effort to portray Khashoggi as some sacrosanct dissident who was speaking truth to power and who was galvanizing a huge following and was perceived as a threat by MBS and his circles is just not accurate.
For that reason, there was no reason for Mohammed bin Salman to plot to kill Khashoggi or any other Saudi opposition member. There was concern that Khashoggi may have been selling intelligence to other countries, but as with any suspected traitor, that made him subject to arrest and interrogation in order to identify the more serious sources of the problem – elements inside the country who had been cooperating with adversarial forces in the region or elsewhere. For that reason, it made no sense to do anything BUT make sure Khashoggi was in the best possible position to provide that information. There is no evidence that Mohammed bin Salman did anything but order Khashoggi to be sent back to Saudi Arabia in order to investigate the networks he was involved in and get information about other, potentially more dangerous parties. Khashoggi was necessary to Mohammed bin Salman, but he was dangerous to those who were plotting against the Crown Prince.
Killing Khashoggi would then serve the purpose of shutting down a dangerous source of information about plotters who opposed the reforms and who opposed the Crown Prince and the crackdown on corruption that he was imposing, while also framing the young and inexperienced reformer in a way he was not prepared to address. This served the goal not only of his Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish detractors (all of whom wished to him gone from power for different internal and geopolitical reasons), but for the Western powers – political insiders, elements of intelligence services, the media, and even big companies who had benefited from the corrupt alliances with Mohammed bin Salman’s predecessors, from funding, from lobbying, from access to power, and from financial arrangements that kept Saudi Arabia relatively weak in the region.
Mohammed bin Salman’s vision sought a more dominant regional role for the Kingdom which included developing an independent defense industry and attracting investors and big companies to Saudi Arabia to cultivate independent talent and native industries. That would undermine the business for thousands of Western consultants and companies who profited from carrying out various services on the Kingdom’s behalf. Mohammed bin Salman strove and continues to strive not just to implement limited reforms and incorporate a greater segment of the population into the workforce but to transform the country altogether and to redefine its global role, make it less dependent on the US, and a leader in various fields in its own right which would completely undermine the premise of dependency on which US-Saudi relations had been built for the decades prior to the Crown Prince’s emergence on the scene.
Prior to his coming, the only basis for US Saudi relations was a guarantee of US defense in exchange for fixed oil prices. But the Crown Prince, seeing the changing geopolitical landscape, had ambitions far beyond the role that was determined for him by the Old Guard that surrounded him when he first ascended to his position – he did not want to simply diversify Saudi economy and make it less dependent on oil or on any particular country, he wanted to redefine the way it related to the outside world and make it one of the world’s top contributors and not just consumers of assorted goods and services.
That imperiled the interests of entire industries that were dependent on the status quo in the US-Saudi relations – ranging from defense, to energy, to big tech. Big tech had been dependent on lucrative and corrupt dealings with other members of the royal family who had used the new platforms to launder their corrupt proceeds while giving cover to the fact that many of the contemporary tech companies, including social media, operate fraudulent schemes based on skewed financial models. We are seeing some of this coming out with Twitter, as an example. The corruption probe into many investors and owners of big media companies in KSA threatened all of that.
The Crown Prince sought to divest the private sector from government control, which also meant doing away with nepotistic processes on which the entire Kingdom, as a tribal society, has been built since its inception, and rebuilding the country on nationalist ground giving every citizen a stake in private business and an opportunity for financial independence away from family connections and government dependency. Needless to say, that meant that many thousands of government employees would lose positions and decades-old mechanisms would be restructured altogether, with new forces of business empowering people who were not privy to the old order and the stronghold of a few families and their assorted descendants on government contract disbursement.
The Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 is not just liberalizing or reformist; it is completely disruptive. Why many people who were addicted to the gravy train from the past would feel panicked by the shockingly quick turn of events is easy to easy. But there is another category of people who wished to see the inconvenient Mohammed bin Salman destroyed at any cost – the Islamist/religious conservative segment of the population which had a stronghold on the country’s ideology for decades.
The most radical change the young Crown Prince offered was not business or financial – but the social infrastructure of the country that had been subsumed by the Islamist model from the banking system to education to the opaqueness of political dynamics. He had worked tirelessly to end the control of soft power institutions by ISlamist clergy, by transforming Saudi education and ridding textbooks of antisemitism, which is CENTRAL to the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine, and by pushing for openness, respect, and coexistence with other faiths as we have seen from the example of a major multifaith summit hosted for the first time in KSA by the Vatican of the Muslim world – the Muslim World League NGO. This is what the West has pushed for all these years – at least in theory – but the Crown Prince has gone much farther and much faster than what KSA’s critics had demanded.
In his Atlantic interview, which had sadly not been shared the full detail of the Crown Prince’s astounding comments on the subject of religious reform, Mohammed bin Salman caused a commotion by pledging to move away from the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab . It’s not just the Islamists who had been married to Wahhab’s school of thought but many of the more mainstream Salafi followers in KSA; Mohammed bin Salman’s new direction was revolutionary in a way that even his political supporters did not predict. I hope the readers consuming this appreciate the level of great personal risk the Crown Prince undertook by formulating his aversion to the adherence to the Wahhab model in the way that he did; the controversy over his full comments, that did not make it into the Western media, was substantial and the shocking nature of his deviation from his predecessors, including King Salman, was significantly underplayed in the Saudi media which only pushed forward a summary palatable to the West but literally paradigm-shifting to the residents of the Kingdom and the entire Muslim world which follows Saudi Arabia.
This turn of events led to panic in certain circles. Mohammed bin Salman had no intention of stopping, no intentions of limiting himself to some circumscribed cosmetic changes that would have sold well in the PR publications in the West but would have left the country largely where it was. He was determined to be a transformative leader who would break through the mentality that kept the country frozen, afraid of radical changes and groundbreaking initiatives, and that would encourage innovation both in spirit and in action.
That is why he had to go – and that is why his enemies determined that using the tool of human rights and PR, the very issue that brought him seemingly quick popularity both at home and abroad – had to be weaponized against him and take him down. To this day, it is astounding that no one asks, how, after Khashoggi’s death, the international mainstream media could get away with failing to conduct an independent investigation, with relying on self-serving Turkish and Old Guard sources, with covering up Khashoggi’s background and recent activities that made him much more of a target for MBS’ enemies than for MBS himself.
No one asked the basic questions that are central to any criminal investigation: who were Khashoggi’s immediate circles? Who would stand to benefit the most from his death and the scandalous circumstances around him? Who would have something to gain from discrediting the Crown Prince? The reason that did not happen is because it was very obvious part of reframing the narrative – turning Mohammed bin Salman’s image upside down from a hero to a villain, a persona non grata that the West could not do business with and an effort to force the royal family’s hand to constrain him, take him under control, limit his reforms – and perhaps remove him from that position. Everything that happened should be seen from the lens of the fact that there was an understanding between the West and MBS’ Saudi rivals to get rid of him and that Khashoggi was but one of the tools to that effect. That is why the trajectory of the events that followed was not only easily predictable – but I had in fact predicted in my other writings, and they had subsequently come true.
WHen MBS continued to operate despite the massive social upheaval and campaign in the US and despite the strain in relations against him, completely fake incidents were masterminded to demonstrate a pattern of bad behavior. Other activists, with ideological leanings in support of the extremists and terrorists MBS opposed with every fiber of his beings – came forward as witnesses or victims to accuse him of other plots against otherwise insignificant opposition members enjoying the fruit of their “asylum” in Western countries after fleeing Saudi Arabia due to the types of violations which would have made them subject to scrutiny in the West had they been born there. The outrage was fake; Khashoggi was never an important man in the West, except among a few institutions that had been opposed to MBS from the start. He was not a liberal thinker; he was not a human rights defender; he was cozy with the royal family who were willing to share common ground with him before MBS , he opposed the very reforms that the West had always wanted to see in Saudi Arabia – and the international intelligence services are fully aware that MBS never gave an order to kill him, and moreover, they all know very well how his death came about.
None of that matters, because this story was never about the truth, and it was never about US-Saudi relations. It was about MBS’ person. Indeed, from a Saudi perspective there should not have been a problem if some symbolic reckoning gave the Biden administration and his circles an opportunity to move past the Crown Prince himself. However, the reality is, from the US perspective, the Democratic party operatives since the Obama era were opposed to the very idea of the Saudi monarchy itself, in whatever iterations. The Old Guard in the intelligence may have very well been ok with “business as usual”, but the younger generation of ideologues that had been pushing for the JCPOA had quite simply been completely anti-Saudi. Obama, and consequently Biden, did not want a “rebalance” of relations in the Middle East; they fully wanted to empower Iran and its proxy network and did not care for KSA in any form.
That tension between the more pragmatic but corrupt echelons of old school Arabists and the new generation of political outsiders who came to Washington with no foreign policy experience was the ultimate contributing factor to why the crisis spun out of control and ended up being more than about the leadership of Mohammed bin Salman, but about US-Saudi relations in general. To this day, Biden and others continue using Khashoggi as an excuse, but some level of tension was already in place since the Obama era, when Mohammed bin Salman was only a Deputy Defense Minister and Mohammed bin Naif, his predecessor enjoyed the full support of the US intelligence community and political insiders. It was under Obama, when most people have not even heard of Khashoggi, that the sales of weapons were frozen to the Kingdom, when the Kingdom was being treated as a pariah state despite already signaling a turn towards reforms on some issues, and where Iran was being fully and unilaterally empowered by the US administration. Yes, Khashoggi’s death was used as an excuse to attack MBS and to cover for the existing problems, but it was the changing tone of the US foreign policy that is to blame for the poor relations overall that precede Mohammed bin Salman and that did not fully recover, despite all the PR, even under President Trump.
Let me elaborate. Although President Trump chose KSA for his first foreign visit, and although the optics of the relations throughout his tenure were much warmer and enthusiastic, and even the US policy appeared to be much more in line with KSA’s security priorities, nevertheless, Trump was not seen as a reliable president and his administration showed every sign of moving US out of the Middle Eastern orbit, which led to a great deal of concern and consternation in the Saudi and other policy circles. His withdrawal of forces from the region was actually opposed by the Saudi leadership (that included the reduction of US involvement in KSA); his failure to respond to the ARAMCO attack sent a very bad signal to Iran and was a shock to the Saudis; the failure to engage with Saudi civilians after a series of devastating HOuthi attacks did not go by unnoticed; Trump’s pressure to normalize with Qatar despite Qatar’s closeness to Iran and assorted security concerns for KSA ultimately empowered the elements of the Old Guard that were opposed to MBS, and also weakened Saudi Arabia’s position on Iran.
Trump also failed to take MBS up on his genuine outreach in advancing US-Saudi relations away from reliance on the oil-for-defense model and showed little interest in expanding the parameters of that relationship. Although Trump did push for greater regional defense integration, his efforts were undermined by his closeness to Qatar, unwillingness to pursue a more coherent policy on Iran beyond sanctions, and clear indication of moving out of the Middle East. Moreover, Congressional end to US involvement in Yemen ended up being a significant blow to that security relationship, and Trump did not undertake much effort to reverse the course of the anti-war lobbyists. In other words, the relationship did function much better under Trump, but it lacked and never gained the strategic depth it needed for our times, nor did it recover from the Obama-era blows due to Trump’s isolationist instincts.
Biden, as a candidate, promised to treat Saudi Arabia as a ‘pariah’ state for human rights violations; then disseminated, as U.S. president, the CIA report that fingered the crown prince as the instigator of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Meanwhile MbS in an interview said “I don’t care what Biden thinks of me.” So for Biden, his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, unpalatable to the American public and the more liberal wing of the U.S. Democrats, is a pragmatic, if bitter, political repositioning?
Irina Tsukerman – For Biden, the trip to Saudi Arabia was nothing more than a distraction from the disastrous foreign and domestic policies, which at the time of his visit contributed to a 40-year record high inflation, including on gas prices, a significant factor for voters in the upcoming midterm elections, the non-starter Iran nuclear deal, which was supposed to be Biden’s signature accomplishment, the failure to earn any success from the undoing of Trump’s legacy – such as the removal of Houthis from the FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) list, the terrible optics of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the policy failures that led to the bloody war in Ukraine, and food crisis around the world, and the multi-trillion dollar spending in the US which did not bring about any visible improvements in infrastructure, climate, or other areas of concern. Biden did not have a clear plan for the trip, but he thought that it would be in his interests to force his way into an encounter with MBS, who was refusing to pick up the phone for him in the months prior to the visit, and to “trick” the Saudis into a meeting which he could use to pander to his base by playing tough.
The visit turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Biden did not accomplish his goal in terms of getting a significant energy output by the Saudis; if anything, after the visit the Saudis are looking to cut oil output. There was no major positive announcement or breakthrough on security, peacebuilding, or any other issue. Biden did not bring any “peace offerings” to the Saudis that would have broken the ice; he failed to invited MBS to the White House which would have signaled full reset, instead he used the opportunity to insult his host by refusing a handshake and going with a speed bump, by getting into an embarrassing argument about the US position on the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death, by holding MBS personally responsible for the murder despite earlier statement putting aside this event, and by reiterating that he views KSA as a pariah state, none of which had done anything to thaw relations. In fact, it put even the Saudi Old Guard into the awkward position of having to at least pretend to rally around the Crown Prince, because Biden managed to insult the country as a whole.
Biden’s visit ended up being criticized by everyone. The Saudis complained about Biden’s disputed comments attacking the Crown Prince, and the failure to address Saudi security and economic concerns. Biden’s leftist base did not think he went far enough in criticizing MBS and attacked his fist bump as giving the Saudi Prince an “out” or a PR win. Much of the media claimed that by visiting KSA, Biden greenlighted engagement with Mohammed bin Salman and absolved him of responsibility for Khashoggi’s death. No one thought that the visit ultimately accomplished anything for the US or for Saudi Arabia in practical terms; the big winner of this arrangement was UAE which received an official invitation to visit the White House for its leader Mohammed bin Zayed immediately after withdrawing from the US-led anti-Iran regional air defense pact and shortly before normalizing relations with Tehran, which is what probably led to Biden’s invitation behind the scenes. The optics of the way that was handled also were not good because the administration appeared to be seeking to create or exacerbate policy divisions between UAE and KSA and humiliated MBS in front of the neighboring country’s President.
What is clear is that Biden’s visit was bitter and ungracious, and that Biden, knowing that he could not get much out of it in terms of policy accomplishments, far from using the visit as a reset signaled in fact that there would be no change or improvement in the US-Saudi relations. Indeed, although at around that time the US announced the sale of additional defensive weapons such as the Patriot missiles, it did not act on the recommendation of removing the offensive weapons ban sale nor on taking any actions to prevent KSA from growing closer to China.
While for Mohammed bin Salman, is it a payback?
Irina Tsukerman – “Payback” is hardly the word that comes to mind to describe what this visit meant for MBS. First, the decision not to give Biden a huge energy win came from practical considerations rather than from childish vengeance before elections. Huge output would hardly strengthen Saudi Arabia’s position at the moment where the US is pushing to empower its regional adversary Iran without taking any measures to mitigate that reality. Second, US-Saudi relations relies on US guarantee of KSA’s defense in exchange for oil output cooperation – but US is simply not living up to its end of the bargain under Biden, undermining the course of that relationship. Giving up that leverage for regional strength would weaken KSA against its enemies, and appeasing Biden would not lead to any significant benefits as Biden has not offered or promised anything of value in exchange.
Finally, it is hardly likely that Mohammed bin Salman enjoyed the humiliating encounter with Biden, who, even when he came to beg for oil and optics, could not be gracious enough to let the bygones be bygones and shake the Crown Prince’s hand or to stay away from flogging the rotting corpse of the Khashoggi horse. The body language throughout the summit showed distance and tension between the two parties, not triumphant celebration of a victory. From the Crown Prince’s perspective the “payback” would have been either an independent accomplishment by KSA that would show up Biden – which at the time of summit did not yet happen – or having a friendlier political force back in power. Anything short of that does not get him or the country anything, and can hardly be considered a political “win”. Nothing changed or improved as a result of that visit. Another issue to note is that the Crown Prince is genuinely a pro-Western leader who would much prefer to have a warm, mutually beneficial relationship with the US. This state of affairs is not a reason for schadenfreude on his part, but is likely seen as a lose-lose for the two old allies.
Given that in the Gulf monarchies, personal relationships are at the heart of diplomacy, do you think relations between the two leaders can really have a positive development?
Irina Tsukerman – Without a question, the relationship between Biden himself and Mohammed bin Salman is unsalvageable – at least without a great deal of self-reflection, humility, and atonement on Biden’s part. Thankfully, Saudi Arabia understands that the United States is a country of laws, not of men, and that Biden and his immediate associates will not control US foreign or domestic policy forever. They also understand that the US does not solely operate on the level of the head of state. Biden is not an absolute dictator who dictates every aspect of US institutions; the relationship with the US still matters, and can still be run through agencies and through the officials who deal with the implementation of various agendas. The administration sets the tone for these institutions; it is likely that the next two years will be difficult for US-Saudi relations on all levels, but that does not mean that occasional breakthroughs and accomplishments cannot be accomplished with the assistance of US officials dedicated to their work, and not just to ideology.
Just as importantly, US policy does not lie solely with the executive branch, but the Saudis surely understand that Congress plays a key role in coordinating with the administrations, disbursing funding for foreign policy and domestic initiatives, pushing lasting sanctions, and determining cooperation on key issues. For that reason, the Crown Prince had a very successful meeting with a Congressional delegation a little while before Biden’s visit, which included the House Armed Service Committee member Congresswoman Lisa Maclaine (R-MI) among others where assorted defense and security cooperation topics were discussed. Hopefully such positive visits help forge other vital relationships, which, while they cannot fully substitute for a positive working relationship with a country’s head of state, still play a key role in getting things done and helping the citizens of both countries. These sorts of vibrant exchanges will not be forgotten by either side and can help navigate the existing challenges and smooth over the edges until there is room for higher level breakthroughs.
Reassuring, (re)lacing, reframing, seem to have been the underlying guidelines of Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia, under the impetus of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China’s penetration in the region, concern for energy supplies and security and need for an Arab-Israeli anti-Iranian coalition. Can we say that Biden’s decision to go to Saudi Arabia in July, as part of his first Middle East trip as president reveals the tensions at the heart of his foreign policy?
Irina Tsukerman – All these issues are undoubtedly real and central to US concerns, but alas the trip has done nothing to address or improve these circumstances; if anything, Biden’s mishandling of relations with the Gulf monarchies only exacerbated contradictions inherent to his foreign policy.
For instance, his pressure of Arab states over the Ukraine sanctions came in a tone deaf form. Relationships are give and take; what is of central importance to Biden may not be so to his counterparts. Just as important, Russia has cleverly played off domestic US policies to alienate Gulf States from the US on that issue. UAE had been the biggest win for Moscow on that front; with Qatar generally coordinating actions with Russia from the get go. Russia had assisted Qatar on cybersecurity and in formulating intelligence and active measure policies; in exchange, Qatar had invested heavily into Russia’s energy sector, withdrew from OPEC, forming a gas cartel jointly with Moscow, and is now benefiting handsomely from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the resulting gas crisis.
Russia also benefited from the Khashoggi outrage and may have played a role in contributing to the outbreak of the Gulf Crisis and to the continuity of the Khashoggi scandal in the media by training Qatar-and Muslim Brotherhood backed voices in amplifying the media campaigns. Russia sought to create resentment against the US reaction in Saudi Arabia and to weaken Mohammed bin Salman who had coordinated with the Trump administration in the energy wars against Russia on more than one occasion. Biden failed to recognize Russia’s role in all of this and to acknowledge Saudi Arabia’s current concerns. Had he shown flexibility with regards to KSA’s security situation, perhaps the outcome would have been different. During the Cold War KSA was the seminal US partner in countering the Soviet Union, but decades of taking one’s ally for granted took their toll.
Likewise, Biden had a very easy opportunity to counter China’s penetration into the Kingdom and its neighboring countries by lifting the ban on the sale of offensive weapons to KSA. Yet, despite the rhetoric on the primacy of China’s threat to US concerns, all of Biden’s policies in the Middle East ultimately empowered China. Withdrawal of forces, lack of strategy in hotspots such as Iraq and Syria, the lifting of various sanctions on Iran, and the alienation of Gulf allies and Israel, not to mention domestic policies which led to the domestic collapse of the dollar value, all signaled US ineptitude and self-isolation to China which took notice and went after the very allies US had abandoned. China simultaneously is working with Iran and Saudi Arabia despite the direct conflict of interest between the countries, and yet, besotten by Houthi attacks and threats of other terrorist organizations, KSA has now no choice but to work with China on missile and drone development, as US refuses to either provide the sale of these weapons or to take actions to curtail terrorism in the region.
Even if the Gulf states understand the danger of dealing with China, with the US either absent or actively hindering their defense efforts, they hardly have a choice. But by positioning itself as a harping and unreliable ally, the US made a choice of giving the Middle Eastern countries an incentive to look for other options on security coordination and trade.
With regards to the energy supply issue, Biden far from reframing or reassuring anyone on anything, pushed the same demand for months before finally forcing himself into Saudi Arabia – and knowing fully well that his position would not be met with success as he had received a consistent answer in that regard, as did Boris Johnson on his prior visit. Biden offered no new arguments in favor of output boosting; he left the countries confused as to why he was demanding that they should curtail their own economic interests while US, which had ample supplies of oil and gas, refuses to extract and produce them, and that furthermore, to the extent US has dealt with the sale of emergency reserves, they ended up benefiting countries like China, which is one of the top environmental violators in the world. That position was not explained by Biden at the summit, and the inherent contradiction was not resolved. The result was the failure to procure significant concessions.
The greatest contradiction that Biden failed to reframe, explain, relace, or reassure the allies on was the Arab Israeli anti-Iranian coalition – in light of the ongoing and fruitless negotiations with Iran, where neither Israel nor the Arab states were included. Biden had also pushed UAE into the normalization agreement with Iran and has also been likely the force behind equally befuddling KSA talks with Iran in Iraq, backed by China. Given the formation of the i2u2, the Negev Summit gathering, and the air defense pact which immediately collapsed due to failure of the US to sell the F-35 to UAE and due to UAE path towards normalizing with Iran, it is unclear whether the US under Biden understands how military alliances work and what happens in the event Iran ultimately succeeds in procuring a nuclear weapon. Biden’s messaging to allies continues to imply that a “military solution” is not off the table, but practical examples of that policy in action contradict the implication.
For instance, in response to Iranian proxy attacks on US forces in the region, US bombarded empty US infrastructure in Syria, though several US servicemen were injured. That is hardly a reassuring sign to the allies that the US is ready to push back with force in the event the deal fails. Furthermore, having Abraham Accord countries rebuild relations with Iran is inherently contradictory to the underlying defense goal of these countries in countering IRan’s threat. QUite simply the effect of Biden’s policies overall is not just contradictory, it isolates Arab states from each other, undermines the Abraham Accords, and ensures Iran’s dominance in the region. If UAE or other countries are forced to choose between Iran and Israel, they will ultimately have to deal with Iran, and they will likely not directly back Israel in any military confrontation.
During the visit Biden had not shared any information that would reassure the countries of how the administration planned to defend them from the growing Iran aggression or from its proxies. The reliance on the truce with the Houthis is an illusion, which can be broken by Iran at any moment and there is no plan in place to prepare for that eventuality. The existential concerns of Riyadh, and others was not taken into consideration, and therefore the visit did not reset these relations in any meaningful way. Following the summit, we have not seen any improvement in coordination, communication, or capacity-building jointly with the US. If anything, we have seen a reduction in visits and increased difficulties in Saudis wishing to visit the US.
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Gulf is returning to a preference for realism by depowering the idealist thrust?
Irina Tsukerman – Neither the realist nor the idealist thrust has served the US well in the past. Realism relied on extremely short-sighted and short term thinking more befitting of smaller countries and tribes maneuvering among ever changing conditions than of great powers. Idealism relied on knee-jerk interventionism and misapplication of domestic policies to foreign context which resulted in tragedies, misunderstandings, and disasters. A more practical and thoughtful path is needed, but we are not seeing it from the Biden administration, which instead continues to obsessively focus on destroying Trump’s legacy, views the Iran deal as an unconditional political win despite the impracticability of such an arrangement politically and otherwise, contradictory reactionary policies, and the idealistic twist of selective human rights application which serves only to empower the worst state and non-state actors while ultimately undermining the real reformists.
IN short, the Biden administration has neither the international relations theoretical consistency, nor the practical foreign policy experience, nor the ability to learn from past errors, nor a cohesive strategy or a vision for the Middle East and the Gulf. Relying on punditry, foreign propaganda, and “feel goodism” will not good you very far in the Middle East, or for that matter, anywhere at all. Biden’s reassurances of a full reset with Saudi Arabia clashed with the practical steps taken by the president – who took no action whatsoever that would improve the relations, whether on the security or on personal level; if anything, he made the situation worse. The high hopes evident in the many breathless articles in the media in the days leading up to the summit did not materialize; though it is still possible to take steps that would help our allies regain footing and earn back at least some of the broken trust, there appears to be no plan in place to do so.
Finally, how do you assess the results of the U.S. president’s visit to Saudi Arabia?
Irina Tsukerman – Biden embarrassed himself on the international scene by begging and nagging for the visit and then coming to it with insults and nothing to offer. He discredit his own standing by behaving rudely to his hosts; he failed at the very many opportunities to engage and reset relations with others present at the meeting such as Egypt’s President Sissi, who would have appreciated greater US engagement on defense issues and the internal security problem with the violent terrorism plaguing the country. No action has been taken since then to return to a more positive engagement with Egypt; the relations with UAE are only “positive” in so far that UAE is being forced to adhere to Biden’s bidding on Iran in exchange for positive publicity. That hardly serves UAE well, and is being watched with growing concern by other countries. Overall, the general sense is that the visit was an opportunistic one for the sake of domestic US audiences, and that Biden continues and will continue to appease and reward Iran despite its many violations, while ignoring, isolating, or punishing its allies. Saudi Arabia’s engagement with the US which seemed to be growing via commercial delegations in the weeks prior to the visit had once again went essentially dead, and there is little talk of new turning points or any joint accomplishments.
Irina Tsukerman – Human rights and national security lawyer.