President Biden defended his decision to meet with the Saudi crown prince who orchestrated the killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying the Saudis must be involved in any effort to stabilize a volatile region. Biden made the statement during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on the second day of a five-day trip to the Middle East. “My views on Khashoggi have been absolutely, positively clear and I have never been quiet about talking about human rights,” he said in response to a question. “The reason I’m going to Saudi Arabia is to promote U.S. interests in a way that I think we have an opportunity to reassert our influence in the Middle East.”
Biden also said alienating the Saudis would contribute to a leadership vacuum and added “I always bring up human rights,” though he never explicitly said he would bring up Khashoggi’s killing.
“There are so many issues at stake, I want to make sure that we can continue to lead in the region and not create a vacuum — vacuum that is filled by both Russia and China,” he said.
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia who is widely called by his initials MBS, ordered the 2018 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist.
The killing was widely condemned, including by Biden on the campaign trail where he publicly vowed to make Saudi Arabia a pariah. He has expressed deep reservations to aides about meeting with Mohammed and said the country’s government has “very little social redeeming value.”
In June, he said “I’m not going to meet with MBS.”
The White House has since confirmed the meeting with MBS, saying that Biden will encounter the crown prince as part of a bilateral meeting with Saudi King Salman and the country’s broader leadership team.
During a Thursday meeting with Lapid earlier in the day, Biden spoke of the collaboration needed to stabilize the region, and to ensure that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon.
Questions about the tense meeting even overshadowed the first segment of Biden’s trip, when he made his 10th visit to Israel and stepped off Air Force One offering fist bumps instead of handshakes.
The White House defended itself against criticism that the new presidential protocol that eschewed handshakes was less about protecting the president from the coronavirus and more about gracefully avoiding the optics of a handshake between MBS and Biden.