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    Biden administration ‘dragged feet’ on Mohammed bin Salman immunity ruling

    Biden administration ‘dragged feet’ on Mohammed bin Salman immunity rulingLegal experts raise questions about run-up to granting immunity in civil case involving murder of journalist When the Biden administration filed a legal brief last week calling for the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case involving the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it said it was strictly a legal determination that did not reflect its views on the “heinous” killing.“In every case, we simply follow the law. And that’s what we did,” Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, later said.But a close examination of the Biden administration’s actions, including interviews with legal experts and people who closely followed the matter, suggest the controversial decision was anything but straightforward.Beginning last summer, the administration’s decision to delay action and seek months of legal extensions before submitting its views on the matter before a US judge offered Saudi Arabia an unprecedented opportunity to protect Prince Mohammed through a legal manoeuvre that put him above the law and out of the reach of the US legal system. Once this had happened, the Biden administration in effect said its hands were tied.“If you look at the sequence of events, it is hard not to see this was a battle between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman playing out,” said one close observer, who asked not to be named so they could speak candidly. “I would hate to imagine that there was bartering over our judicial system and that integrity was up for grabs.”The US government was first invited to get involved in the civil case against Prince Mohammed on 1 July by the US district court judge John Bates. At the centre of the request was a lawsuit filed in 2020 against the crown prince and his associates by Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, which accused Prince Mohammed and his associates of conspiring with premeditation to kidnap, torture and murder Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.Bates’s request was straightforward. He gave the administration 30 days – until 1 August – to submit a “statement of interest” and weigh in on whether the heir to the Saudi throne ought to be granted sovereign immunity in the case, or tell the court that it did not wish to make a statement. He also wanted the administration to weigh in on how the court might reconcile protections that are given to foreign leaders and those who are using a US law that allows victims of torture or extrajudicial killings to hold perpetrators accountable.At that time, Prince Mohammed was – clearly – not a sovereign. In Saudi Arabia, that distinction belonged at the time solely to his father, King Salman.Harold Koh, a former legal adviser to the state department during the Obama administration who is now a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said the US had competing interests at the time. On the one hand, the US asserts reciprocal principles of immunity so that its own head of state will be offered protection from legal courts. But that had to be weighed against Biden’s statements about human rights being at the centre of his administration’s foreign policy and “autocrats understanding that the president means what he says”.“All things considered, silence would have been the better way to balance those competing national interests,” Koh said, adding that there would have been “ample precedent” for the state department to stay silent.On 15 July, Joe Biden met Prince Mohammed in Jeddah, a meeting that started with a fist bump and was meant to “reset” his relationship with a leader he once called a pariah. It would later emerge that the meeting was also the start of a campaign by the administration to try to persuade the Saudis not to cut oil production before the US midterm elections.Back in Washington, just a few days later on 18 July, the US asked Judge Bates for an extension, saying it needed time to consult multiple entities within the administration with respect to “complex issues of international and domestic law”. The court agreed, giving the US until 3 October to respond.Weeks later, on 23 September, Brett McGurk, a Middle East policy coordinator for the US National Security Council (NSC), and Amos Hochstein, a US senior adviser for energy security, visited Jeddah again, ostensibly to discuss energy policies.Days later, on 27 September, the Saudi royal court announced that Prince Mohammed had been named prime minister, a role that had been and usually is held by the Saudi king. Observers noted that the apparent promotion did not confer any major new duties or powers to Mohammed bin Salman. Human rights defenders saw it as a ploy to influence the US recommendation on sovereign immunity, which was due about a week later.The US government, citing “changed circumstances”, requested a second extension to prepare its response and was granted one, until 17 November. A few days after it missed its 3 October deadline, Opec+ announced it was cutting oil production by 2m barrels a day, in what was seen by Democrats as an attempt by the kingdom to interfere with the US election and side with Russia over US interests.Biden promised that Saudi Arabia would face “consequences” for the decision, but has not articulated any specific actions he planned to take against the kingdom. On 17 November, just hours before a midnight deadline, the administration filed a notice that it believed Prince Mohammed, as prime minister, deserved to be treated as a sovereign as a standard matter of international law.An NSC spokesperson told the Guardian that the US president was briefed on the immunity decision, which was based on “well-established principles of common law”.When the Guardian asked the spokesperson if any US official ever suggested to Saudi Arabia that Prince Mohammed could be appointed prime minister before the matter was public, the spokesperson said: “This was an independent decision made by Saudi Arabia.”People familiar with the matter say legal questions about Prince Mohammed’s status were hotly debated inside the state department, where views about the best course of action differed.In debates within the administration, senior officials such as McGurk who have sought to promote the rehabilitation of the Saudi-US relationship have edged out policy objectives focused on human rights.“This administration made the decision it did because Mohammed bin Salman is prime minister. But they dragged their feet so much … This was clearly a policy decision in that they waited and stalled,” said one person who has advocated for human rights to have more prominence in decisions around policy.Leaders like Prince Mohammed were “legitimately worried” when Biden first came into office and vowed to make the Saudi heir accountable for human rights violations.“And when they got into office, the execution was not there,” the person said. Even when Biden made the decision to release a declassified intelligence report that found Prince Mohammed had likely ordered the murder, there were no sanctions against him.The person added: “That set the stage and indicated the rhetoric was not matched by substance.”TopicsMohammed bin SalmanSaudi ArabiaBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS politicsMiddle East and north AfricanewsReuse this content More

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    Saudi Arabia has screwed over the US – and the world – yet again. Enough is enough | Mohamad Bazzi

    Saudi Arabia has screwed over the US – and the world – yet again. Enough is enoughMohamad BazziBy gouging global oil prices, Saudi Arabia has humiliated Biden and boosted Putin. The US must end this unofficial alliance In July, Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia and shared a fist bump with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. As a presidential candidate, Biden had promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for its human rights abuses and its seven-year war against Yemen. But a devastating global pandemic and Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine forced him to set these concerns aside in favor of realpolitik. Biden needed the Saudis to increase oil production in order to lower gasoline prices for American consumers, so he swallowed his pride and treated the crown prince as the world leader he aspires to be.Unfortunately for Biden, that cringe-inducing fist bump photo op has backfired in spectacular fashion.Earlier this month, the Saudi-led Opec+ energy cartel agreed to cut oil production by 2m barrels a day, which will mean higher fuel prices this fall and winter. In the days leading up to the vote, the Biden administration invested significant political capital in its efforts to dissuade Saudi Arabia and its allies from cutting production. In the end, Biden’s wooing of Prince Mohammed yielded nothing but a 2% reduction of the world’s oil supply.In fact, the prince has inflicted political damage on the Biden administration a month before the US midterm elections. After soaring to $5 a gallon in June, US gasoline prices fell for more than three months. Now they are rising once again, increasing by an average of 12 cents a gallon over the past week, to $3.92.Rising prices threaten the Democrats’ hopes of maintaining control over both houses of Congress after the November elections. The prince and his Gulf allies clearly preferred dealing with Donald Trump, whose freewheeling Republican administration gave Prince Mohammed a blank check in exchange for stable oil prices and multibillion-dollar arms sales.The Saudis also sided with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who needs higher oil prices to help fund his war against Ukraine. As part of their economic sanctions against Moscow, the US and EU are trying to impose a cap on the price paid to Russia for its oil exports. But that effort could now collapse as global oil prices rise and Europe heads into a winter season when heating costs are expected to soar thanks to the Ukraine war.While Prince Mohammed may believe he outmaneuvered Biden and demonstrated his influence over the global oil market, his power play has upset the foreign policy establishment in Washington. Even so-called foreign policy “realists”, who for years ignored progressive criticisms of the US-Saudi partnership, must confront an uncomfortable question: if Washington can’t count on a steady supply of oil, what does it get in return for its decades of unwavering support for the House of Saud?Technically, the US and Saudi Arabia are not allies – they’ve never signed a mutual defense agreement or a formal treaty. For decades, the US-Saudi relationship has been largely transactional: the kingdom used its leverage within Opec (and later the larger Opec+ cartel) to keep oil production and prices at levels that satisfy Washington. The US used to import significant amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia, but now that Washington is the world’s largest oil producer, it no longer relies as heavily on Saudi imports. In return for guaranteeing a steady global supply of oil, successive US administrations supported the House of Saud politically, sold it billions of dollars in advanced US weapons, and provided military assistance whenever aggressive neighbors threatened the kingdom.In 1990, after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait, Washington sent half a million troops to Saudi Arabia, which feared it would be Hussein’s next target. The US still deploys hundreds of troops and advisers to train the Saudi military and help it operate American weapons, including advanced warplanes, helicopters, and Patriot antimissile systems, which the kingdom has used to intercept drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.This oil-for-security arrangement has lasted through Democratic and Republican administrations, including multiple crises like the Arab-led oil embargo and Opec price increases in the 1970s and the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, where 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals recruited by Al-Qaida.Yet Prince Mohammed has now upended the decades-old understanding. Worse, he’s timed that decision so as to maximize Biden’s humiliation: a month before pivotal congressional elections, and as Washington and its allies are trying to maintain a united front against Russian aggression.If Biden doesn’t respond forcefully, he may embolden the crown prince to take more risks. So far, Biden has promised unspecified “consequences” in response to the Saudi maneuvering. But a growing number of Democrats in Congress, including centrists who hesitated to abandon the partnership despite the kingdom’s atrocious human rights record, are now demanding action.On 10 October, Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who chairs the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, called for an immediate freeze on “all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia”, and promised to block future US weapons sales. Senator Dick Durbin, another centrist and the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, was even harsher, writing on Twitter that the House of Saud “has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation. It’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance”.Even before the ill-fated fist bump, Biden signaled to Prince Mohammed that he would carry out a business-as-usual relationship with the kingdom. In February 2021, weeks after taking office, Biden did follow through on a campaign promise to release a summary report of the US intelligence community’s findings on the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The report concluded that Prince Mohammed had approved the assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. But Biden, worried about harming the US-Saudi partnership, decided not to impose sanctions on the crown prince.By abandoning his promise to hold Khashoggi’s killers accountable, Biden convinced Prince Mohammed that he was too powerful to punish. At the time, Biden aides argued that banning the prince from visiting the US or targeting his personal wealth would accomplish little. But the lack of even symbolic US sanctions or response likely emboldened the prince to overturn the basic premise of the US-Saudi relationship.Since Prince Mohammed rose to power with his father’s ascension to the Saudi throne in 2015, he has presided over a series of destructive policies, including the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen and the kingdom’s campaign to blockade its smaller neighbor, Qatar. But the crown prince keeps failing upward, consolidating more control over Saudi Arabia. And he continues to be wooed by foreign leaders and business titans, thanks to the world’s sustained dependence on oil and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.Prince Mohammed had clearly concluded that he can get away with keeping oil prices high and undermining the US and EU campaign to isolate Russia – and still secure US protection and military assistance because Biden can’t get past the decades-old policy of American support for the House of Saud.This is no longer a case of Biden choosing realpolitik over the stated, but rarely enforced, US ideals of supporting human rights and democracy over autocracy. It’s time for Biden to acknowledge that his supposed realist approach toward Saudi Arabia has failed – and tear up the oil-for-security deal.
    Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now
    TopicsForeign policyOpinionSaudi ArabiaMohammed bin SalmanMiddle East and north AfricaJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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    Turki bin Salman Is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Money Man

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    Saudi Arabia and Lebanon: A Tale of Two Economies

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    President Joe Biden, Crown Prince MBS and Realpolitik

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    Biden’s Saudi Visit Shows Waning US Power in the Region and the World

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    Joe Biden lands in Saudi Arabia seeking to halt shift towards Russia and China

    Joe Biden lands in Saudi Arabia seeking to halt shift towards Russia and ChinaAnalysis: US president aiming to convince Jeddah to increase oil supply in order to calm global energy markets00:24Joe Biden landed in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah to a tepid welcome from the Saudi crown prince whose country he once pledged to make a “pariah” on the world stage.While Saudi Arabia announced it would open its airspace to flights from Israel, making Biden the first US president to fly directly from Tel Aviv to the kingdom, expectations of further gains during his visit remained low. The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told journalists onboard Air Force One not to expect any bilateral announcements in response to American demands that Saudi Arabia pump more oil to calm global energy markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Fist bumps as Joe Biden arrives to reset ties with ‘pariah’ Saudi ArabiaRead moreSaudi Arabia is keen to prove its independence from US interests as it increasingly courts Russia and China.“From the start, my aim was to reorient – but not rupture – relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post prior to his visit, sidestepping his pledge on the campaign trail to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah”, and the later release of a US intelligence report stating that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, “approved” an operation to capture and murder the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.“It’s a completely different Saudi Arabia, one that in many ways has modernised and opened up a bit, but is also seeing greater crackdowns – and the Biden administration is brutally aware of all this,” said Dina Esfandiary of the NGO Crisis Group.Biden’s visit means carefully stage-managing relations with Prince Mohammed, the Kingdom’s powerful de facto ruler, who observers say has the upper hand as Biden courts his goodwill at a time of rising global oil prices mounting a challenge to his presidency domestically.The two shared a fist bump on Biden’s arrival, although the president later warmly shook hands with the king, Salman bin Abdulaziz. At the start of the president’s Middle East trip, officials said he would avoid close contact such as shaking hands as a precaution against Covid.The US president is under intense pressure to repair the fragile relationship between two nations, one that traditionally relied on the kingdom liberally supplying oil to the global market in exchange for the US’s backing in areas of security and defence.This has increasingly shifted in recent years, exacerbated as the relationship between Biden and Prince Mohammed has soured and Saudi Arabia looks to Russia and China to diversify its interests.“The message from Saudi is you can’t tell us what to do, we’ll help you as far as it suits us but we won’t go against our own interests,” said Esfandiary.Cinzia Bianco, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, agreed. “The Saudi leadership has learned to do without seeking validation from the United States, and Bin Salman in particular – he’s learned to survive and maybe even thrive within the region and to some degree internationally, without getting validation from the US administration,” she said.Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said that, with the visit to Saudi Arabia, Biden was reneging on previous promises to prioritise human rights. “It’s a very huge backing down actually,” Cengiz told the Associated Press. “It’s heartbreaking and disappointing. And Biden will lose his moral authority by putting oil and expediency over principles and values.”Saudi Arabia’s recent cooperation with Russia has included an agreement for Rosatom, a Russian state company, to build a nuclear power plant in the kingdom, as well as signing an agreement last year to “explore ways to develop military to strengthen the military and defence cooperation” between the two countries according to the deputy defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman.China is historically the largest importer of Saudi Arabian oil, while the kingdom has bought Chinese arms including drones and fighter aircraft. Last November, US intelligence agencies concluded that Saudi Arabia is manufacturing its own ballistic missiles with the help of China, according to satellite imagery.Bianco stressed that the US administration saw Biden’s visit as a vital opportunity to intervene and warm relations before Saudi Arabia moves ahead with Chinese and Russian deals that largely remain in their infancy. “The US administration sees an opportunity to undo all of that or take a step back and create some space,” she said. “There’s a lot on paper rather than in reality, and there’s still space for the administration to try to create some distance between Saudi Arabia, Russia and China.”Yet as Biden landed in Jeddah to discuss how to increase the global supply of oil in order to bring down prices, doubts persisted as to whether he would fly home with anything to show for his visit at all. Shortly before his arrival, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had more than doubled its imports of Russian oil in order to free up more of its own crude for export, shunning demands for sanctions from the west while increasing profit margins amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.“Maybe the US administration had good intentions when it began setting up this trip, but ultimately it’s making them look bad – they’re losing the public relations war,” said Esfandiary. “It’s not clear that they’re going to make any gains, my sense is that everyone will walk away disappointed.”TopicsUS foreign policyJoe BidenUS politicsSaudi ArabiaMiddle East and north AfricaBiden administrationMohammed bin SalmananalysisReuse this content More

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    Saudi King Salman, His Sons and Airbus

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More