Human rights campaigners say US President Joe Biden has broken his pre-election promise to re-evaluate relations with Saudi Arabia over the state-sponsored murder of insider-turned-critic Jamal Khashoggi.
Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate on October 2, 2018.
A subsequent investigation by the US spy agency CIA concluded that the murder had been committed on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
On his 2020 presidential campaign trail, Biden pledged that his administration would seek to make Saudi Arabia “the pariah that they are” and signaled that “they have to be held accountable” for rights abuses.
He also called for justice for the slain journalist and pledged to “reassess” Washington’s relationship with Riyadh and make sure America “does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”
The US president, however, has since performed a volte-face by saying that the United States “will not walk away” from the Middle East and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, or Iran.
Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins, said the accusations that the Biden administration had abandoned its stance on Khashoggi’s brutal assassination were justified.
According to The Guardian, Nasr argued that “realpolitik” had driven Washington to deepen ties after China brokered a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March.
“The US wants to drive a wedge between China and Saudi Arabia,” Nasr said. “The increased involvement of China in the Persian Gulf has been a concern to Washington, and when the Chinese were able to resolve an intractable problem between the Saudis and Iran, it told Washington that China’s involvement in the region was more than just commercial.”
The US is currently pushing for a mega-deal, which could include a normalization pact between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Under the deal, Riyadh would secure American backing for a civilian nuclear program, as well as access to advanced weapons. In exchange, the kingdom would take major steps to distance itself from China and Israel would allow an independent Palestinian state.
Activists said Biden’s latest diplomatic overtures to Saudi Arabia sully Khashoggi’s memory.
“It is a betrayal not just of Jamal Khashoggi and the millions of people of Saudi Arabia whose lives Prince Mohammed has destroyed, but also of the promises President Biden made to the American people to end support for this autocratic, sociopathic government,” said Sarah Leigh Whitson, executive director of pro-democracy group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
“Now he is going a step further by committing America to unprecedented security guarantees that would obligate American servicemen and women to uphold the rule of this dictator… It’s a sad reflection of a misplaced priority that the US must maintain hegemony and pre-eminence in the Middle East at all costs, which is pathetic because we now live in a multi-polar world.”
On Wednesday, 20 Democratic US senators sent a letter to Biden, saying they were concerned about deepening security ties with Riyadh.
“A high degree of proof would be required to show that a binding defense treaty with Saudi Arabia – an authoritarian regime which regularly undermines US interests in the region, has a deeply concerning human rights record and has pursued an aggressive and reckless foreign policy agenda – aligns with US interests,” the letter read.
