Three years after the signing of the Abraham Accords, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday on a mission to steady Washington's relationship with Riyadh after Biden's insulting 2021 election statements, ongoing oil disagreements, and disputes on Iran policy.
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Blinken met with the kingdom's de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MbS, and they "discussed deepening economic cooperation, especially in the clean energy and technology fields," according to a State Department readout. Blinken was also set to meet other top Saudi officials during his time in Riyadh, the capital, and the coastal city of Jeddah, in what will be Washington's second recent high-level visit.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia on May 7. The top US diplomat's June 6-8 visit to the world's largest oil exporter comes days after Riyadh pledged to further cut oil production, a move likely to add tension to a US-Saudi relationship already strained by the kingdom's human rights record and disputes over America's Iran policy. US-Saudi ties got off to a rocky start in 2019 when President Joe Biden during his campaign said he would treat Riyadh like "the pariah that they are" if he was elected, and soon after taking office in 2021, released a US intelligence assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed approved the operation to capture or kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. A visit by Biden in July 2022 to the kingdom did little to ease tensions, and increasingly, Riyadh has looked to reassert its regional clout, while growing less interested in being aligned with US priorities in the region.
The aims of the trip include regaining influence with Riyadh over oil prices, fending off Chinese and Russian influence in the region, and nurturing hopes for an eventual normalization of Saudi-Israeli ties. In the past, Blinken has reiterated Washington's "ironclad" commitment to Israel. Speaking at the pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday, Blinken said Washington had "a real national security interest" in advocating for the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but cautioned that it will not happen quickly.
The 2020 Abraham Accords, where both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recognized Israel's sovereignty, enabled the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the countries. The Accords marked the first instance of Arab-Israeli normalization since 1994, when the Israel-Jordan peace treaty came into effect. Blinken's aim is to get Saudi Arabia to join the Accords and back away from Iranian ties.
Discouraging a closer Saudi-Chinese relationship is one of the most important element of Blinken's visit, said Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at Washington-based think-tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). "[Blinken should explain] why Chinese interests do not align with Saudi Arabia, and why closer relations in a strategic way inhibit closer relations with Washington," Goldberg said.
US citizens and residents with family members detained in Saudi Arabia called on Blinken in a letter on Tuesday to press Saudi officials for an immediate release of their relatives. The list included prominent cleric Salman al-Odah, children of former spy chief Saad al-Jabri, human rights defender Mohammed al-Qahtani, and aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan. The kingdom had released detained US citizens from its prisons but some still remain under a travel ban.
US officials briefing reporters on the trip last week said there was an "ongoing conversation regarding the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms" with Saudi Arabia but they declined to say if Blinken would seek any guarantees from the Saudis on the issue. Blinken "emphasized that our bilateral relationship is strengthened by progress on human rights," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in the readout of his meeting with MbS.
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