JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - JULY 15: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY MANDATORY CREDIT - "ROYAL COURT OF SAUDI ARABIA ... [+]
The image of President Joe Biden fist bumping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman captured why many of the U.S. president’s critics urged him not visit Saudi Arabia. They reminded him that, as a candidate in 2020, Biden had vowed to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” state, at least in part because of grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But Biden went anyway, bestowing a Covid-era greeting, in hopes of encouraging the Saudis to produce more oil and help lower fuel prices in the U.S. and around the world. MBS, as the crown prince is widely known, meanwhile is desperate to repair the reputation he tarnished by orchestrating Khashoggi’s killing by a Saudi hit squad in Turkey in 2018.
International obervers seized on the fist bump as undermining efforts to promote human rights. But in my view, the president’s candid words following his meeting with the Saudi leader were more significant than any photo-op. Biden emphasized that he had followed through on his promise to engage on the Khashoggi case in private talks with MBS, when photographers weren’t around.
Biden told reporters that Khashoggi’s murder by a Saudi hit squad was “outrageous.” He said that he had raised the episode at the beginning of his meeting with the crown prince, “making clear what I thought at the time and what I think of it now.” Biden reported that MBS had tried defusing the issue. “He basically said that he was not personally responsible for it,” Biden said. “I indicated that I thought he was.” Think about the significance of these comments. The president of the United States confronted the de facto leader of an important strategic ally and told him that he bears direct responsibility for ordering a cold-blooded murder — and then publicly reported that he had done so.
Biden’s direct language apparently hit home. First, the Saudis denied Biden’s post-meeting claim that he firmly confronted MBS on Khashoggi. Then on Saturday, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan told reporters that when the American president raised the case of the murdered Washington Post columnist, the crown prince countered by condemning U.S. abuses of Iraqi prisoners Abu Ghraib Prison in 2004 and the shooting death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank in May, when gunfire from the area where Israeli military Forces were positioned likely killed Abu Akleh. Bin Farhan observed that “mistakes” happen in every country and asserted that the Saudis have held the men who killed and dismembered Khashoggi accountable, just as the U.S. punished troops implicated in the Abu Ghraib abuse.
More broadly, bin Farhan reported that MBS told Biden that “respect for human rights is a core value of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia based on our Islamic beliefs and our Arab heritage.” But MBS warned, “You cannot impose your values by force… We have our own values, and those are not going to align 100% with U.S. values ever because we are very, very proud of our own traditions, our own values, our own faith.”
This defensiveness is part of the Saudi government’s effort to deflect attention from its grim human rights record, which goes well beyond the premeditated murder of Khashoggi. According to the U.S. State Department’s most recent human rights report, there continue to be credible accounts of Saudi government responsibility for torture, forced disappearances, cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners, arbitrary arrests of political dissenters, and serious restrictions on free speech and a free press. Making matters worse, the Kingdom’s financial support of the Wahhabi fundamentalist version of Islam in religious schools and mosques worldwide continues to fuel radicalism in places like Pakistan and Indonesia.
By raising Khashoggi’s murder as forcefully and directly as he did, Biden laid down a marker for current and future U.S.-Saudi diplomacy on the broader human rights agenda. Effective human rights advocacy requires direct private and public engagement at the highest levels of government. This is why President Biden’s keeping the Khashoggi case in the spotlight, not the much-discussed fist bump, should be remembered as the lasting emblem of his meeting with MBS.
