(Jeddah) Joe Biden left Saudi Arabia on Saturday after a controversial visit during which he tried to reassert the influence of the United States in the Middle East, while promising a new “vision” for the region, where he surrendered for the first time as president.
Posted at 8:20 a.m.
Updated at 11:04 a.m.
The 79-year-old US president, who began his Middle East tour on Wednesday with a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, spent less than 24 hours in Saudi Arabia where he met with several heads of state and heads of the region, including King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).
In a speech delivered in Jeddah, western Saudi Arabia, at a summit bringing together the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain), as well as Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, Mr. Biden promised that his country “would not turn away” from the Middle East leaving “a vacuum that could be filled by China, Russia or Iran”.
Emphasizing that he was the first American president since the attacks of September 11, 2001 to visit the Middle East without the American army being engaged in a large-scale military intervention, he affirmed before an audience of Arab leaders that “The United States was investing to build a better future in the region in cooperation with all of you.”
Criticized for his visit to the Gulf monarchy accused of serious human rights violations, he said that “the future belongs to the countries […] whose citizens can question and criticize their leaders without fear of reprisal”.
“Integration, interconnection. These are the underlying themes of our meeting,” he said.
“Tragedy for Saudi Arabia”
The Biden administration says it wants to promote a new “vision” for the Middle East, based on dialogue and economic and military cooperation. Against the backdrop of the normalization processes between Israel and the Arab countries.
This did not prevent him from promising, in a transparent allusion to Tehran, to which Russian President Vladimir Putin is soon to visit: “We will not tolerate that one country tries to dominate another in the region through reinforcement military, incursion, and/or threats. »
The trip, however, remains marked by the image of a president exchanging the “check” of the fist with MBS, accused by American intelligence of being the sponsor of the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi in 2018. Joe Biden had to elsewhere promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah”.
PHOTO EVELYN HOCKSTEIN, REUTERS
US President Joe Biden met his United Arab Emirates counterpart, Mohammed bin Zayed in Jeddah on Saturday.
The American president assured Friday, in a hastily organized press briefing in the evening, to have mentioned this affair “at the very beginning” of his meeting with the crown prince, in fact at the controls of the rich monarchy, ensuring that he had been “we do not can clearer”.
According to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, interviewed by CNN, the crown prince “explained on Friday (to Mr. Biden) that this was a tragedy for Saudi Arabia”.
He told him that “those responsible had been investigated, faced justice and were now paying for the crime,” Mr. Jubeir added, indicating that for the kingdom it was of a closed case.
“All I can”
Several major American newspapers featured the photo of the greeting between Joe Biden and MBS, while activists accused the American president of reneging on a few barrels of oil.
The increase in the gallon of gasoline is a considerable issue a few months before the midterm elections in the United States.
“I am doing everything possible to increase production for the United States,” Joe Biden said on Friday, claiming to have had fruitful discussions with the Saudis, the concrete results of which will be seen “in a few weeks”.
Saudi Arabia and the United States have concluded 18 cooperation agreements in a wide variety of fields (space, finance, energy, health), according to a press release from the Gulf monarchy.
In addition, Washington seeks to draw a path towards normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which do not have official relations.
Joe Biden praised Riyadh’s “historic” decision to open its airspace to “all carriers”, including Israelis, and announced progress on a strategic island in the Red Sea, located between Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Israel.
The White House also reported an agreement by Saudi Arabia to connect the electricity grids of the Gulf countries to that of Iraq, which depends heavily on energy imported from Iran, a pet peeve. Americans like Saudis.
The American president has also “solemnly” invited his counterpart from the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, to visit the United States, after icy relations in recent months.
The United States has also pledged $1 billion in support for “short- and long-term” food security in the Middle East and North Africa.