Ed Morrissey:
“…Infuriating indeed, but not for the reasons Joe Biden’s defenders claim. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates refused to take Biden’s call as he sought increased oil production to help lower gas prices in the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. Ostensibly, the snub relates to a demand for support against Iranian proxy terrorists, but it goes deeper than that on both ends:
The White House unsuccessfully tried to arrange calls between President Biden and the de facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the U.S. was working to build international support for Ukraine and contain a surge in oil prices, said Middle East and U.S. officials.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the U.A.E.’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan both declined U.S. requests to speak to Mr. Biden in recent weeks, the officials said, as Saudi and Emirati officials have become more vocal in recent weeks in their criticism of American policy in the Gulf.
“There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,” said a U.S. official of the planned discussion between the Saudi Prince Mohammed and Mr. Biden. “It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].”
Biden’s defenders reacted with outrage late yesterday after this news broke. Some demanded an end to US arms sales to both countries and other reprisals, but those apologists have short memories. It was Biden who started this diplomatic-insult cycle by insisting in 2019 that he would turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” state over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. Remember this from the Democratic primary debate in Atlanta, via Jim Geraghty?
MITCHELL: Mr. Vice President, the CIA has concluded that the leader of Saudi Arabia directed the murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The State Department also says the Saudi government is responsible for executing nonviolent offenders and for torture. President Trump has not punished senior Saudi leaders. Would you?
BIDEN: Yes, and I said it at the time. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe on the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. There’s very little social redeeming value of the — in the present government in Saudi Arabia.
And I would also, as pointed out, I would end — end subsidies that we have, end the sale of material to the Saudis where they’re going in and murdering children, and they’re murdering innocent people. And so they have to be held accountable.
Was that a defensible position after the murder of Khashoggi? Sure, as long as the administration that pursued that policy made sure we wouldn’t need the Saudis for anything else — such as the Abraham Accords, intel, and most especially oil production concessions. When your administration’s policy is to restrict American oil and natural gas production and increase the regulatory cost associated with it, alienating one of the friendlier sources for emergency import boosts is, well, rather stupid.
That’s not the only reason why the Saudis don’t want to take Biden’s call:
The Saudis have signaled that their relationship with Washington has deteriorated under the Biden administration, and they want more support for their intervention in Yemen’s civil war, help with their own civilian nuclear program as Iran’s moves ahead, and legal immunity for Prince Mohammed in the U.S., Saudi officials said. The crown prince faces multiple lawsuits in the U.S., including over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
The Emiratis share Saudi concerns about the restrained U.S. response to recent missile strikes by Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen against the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, officials said. Both governments are also concerned about the revival of the Iran nuclear deal, which doesn’t address other security concerns of theirs and has entered the final stages of negotiations in recent weeks.
The Iranians have conducted a low-level war (and sometimes not so low-level) against the Sunni states, especially the Saudis. The Houthis in Yemen are part of an encirclement program by the IRGC to eventually make Iran the dominant power in that region. Rather than recognize that point, Biden and his team are busy giving away the store in talks with Russia and Iran in a bizarre menage-a-trois with America’s worst enemies. Biden’s about to throw the Sunni world under the bus at the precise moment when they took a massive risk in moving toward normalization with Israel.
Now the White House and its fantasy-thinking supporters wonder why the Saudis and the UAE won’t take Biden’s call to beg them to pull his domestic-politics chestnuts out of the fire. Are you kidding me?
This once again demonstrates that Biden and his White House team don’t have a strategic brain cell between them. They were handed a major strategic advantage in accelerating domestic oil production and utterly squandered it to pander to progressive environmentalists. They had a friendly Sunni bloc that had gone to some risk to create an anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East, and Biden decided that he’d rather work with Tehran while making our allies in containment of Iran the “pariahs” — and threw in with Vladimir Putin to make it work. It would be difficult to craft a more idiotic strategic plan on purpose than Biden has put together in just a little over a year in office.
That’s what should infuriate people — that Biden has stiffed our allies while sucking up to the countries that despise us, all to no benefit whatsoever to anyone…”
