Biden’s Confrontational Approach With Saudi Arabia Backfires

Biden’s Confrontational Approach With Saudi Arabia Backfires

Published |Updated

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images

President Biden’s personal war with Saudi Arabian royalty has pushed the Kingdom further into the sphere of Chinese and Russian influence and closer to Iran. Prior to his election, candidate Biden labeled Saudi Arabia a “pariah state,” vowing that he would make the Saudis “pay the price” for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Of the Saudi royal family, Biden said there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”

Once in office, Biden revoked former President Donald Trump’s branding of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and the White House announced “an end to offensive support to Saudi Arabia’s campaign against the Houthis.”

Then, in October 2022, angered by a decision from the Saudi-led OPEC+ to cut oil production as gasoline prices in the U.S. soared, Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia.” Afterward, the White House announced he would “reevaluate the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia and expressed openness to retaliatory measures offered by congressional Democrats such as curbing arms sales or permitting legal action against the cartel.”

Riyadh did not take the public dressing down lightly.

Saudi Arabia signed a three-year currency swap with China estimated to be worth $7 billion in non-oil trade — meaning they will trade in yuan, and not dollars. For now, the scale is symbolic, but the message to Washington was clear regarding “consequences” for verbally attacking Saudi Arabia.

Beijing brokered a March 2023 deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore bilateral relations — a process that symbolized a diplomatic win for Chinese President Xi Jinping and a loss for Washington. Pointedly, Riyadh was signaling to Biden that it very much is not a pariah state and that it has geostrategic options. Meanwhile, during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Riyadh in December, Saudi Arabia and Russia called for all OPEC+ members to join the oil production cuts to drive up prices.

Last week, in Davos, Switzerland, the Kingdom signaled at the World Economic Forum that it is still considering an invitation to join BRICS, an economic trading bloc dominated by Beijing and Moscow.

The U.S. cannot afford to further alienate Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is key to efforts to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East between Israel and Arab Muslim nations. The Saudis remain AWOL for now, largely because of Biden’s positioning. The president may need to eat a little crow to mend the long-standing relationship between the two countries — especially if Washington is to regain the support of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, in its fight to stop the Houthis from disrupting Red Sea shipping.

For now, MBS apparently is urging restraint. Having found a way out of Yemen’s civil war with the Houthis, the Kingdom is not eager to re-engage. It is likely, too, as Veena Ali-Khan points out in Foreign Policy, that Riyadh is hopeful that “its communication channels with Iran … and the Houthis will shield it from regional turmoil and future Houthi attacks.”

Consequently, the U.S. and the United Kingdom are going it alone, without Saudi support — or, for that matter, without Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar or Egypt. Coincidence? Not likely.

On Monday, the U.S. and U.K. struck Houthi targets again, including “missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, radars, and deeply buried weapons storage facilities.” It was the eighth such strike on Houthi targets by the U.S., and the second joint strike with the U.K.

U.S. Central Command said the strikes were “intended to degrade Houthi capability to continue their reckless and unlawful attacks on U.S. and U.K. ships, as well as international commercial shipping in the Red Sea, Bab El-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.”

And so, the U.S. fights while Saudi Arabia stays on the sidelines. But in the absence of Saudi support, American lives are at risk. That became a stark reality on Jan. 11, when two Navy SEALS were reported missing at sea while conducting boarding operations in the Gulf of Aden on a falsely flagged ship that was smuggling missile components and other weapons to Yemen from Iran. Search-and-rescue efforts for the two Americans were suspended on Sunday and the mission became a recovery operation.

Biden must reset his Saudi foreign policy. The Kingdom needs to understand that Washington has its back, or Riyadh will continue to hedge its bets with Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and yes, perhaps even the Houthis.

MBS inherently understands that the Iranian regime under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a cancer metastasizing across the Middle East. He also understands the value that Washington could bring as Saudi Arabia transitions to a high-tech economy as part of his Vision 2030 economic initiative.

Saudi Arabia has been willing to work with the Biden administration, as evidenced by an Israeli-Saudi normalization process that was underway until the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists and Israel’s resulting war in Gaza. But until the Biden administration confronts Iran and the IRGC, Saudi Arabia may not be willing to expose itself to Houthi reprisal attacks.

If Biden’s national security team doesn’t change course on Saudi Arabia, we risk losing them and the Sunni Muslim countries of the Middle East altogether.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.

Mark Toth, an economist and entrepreneur, is a former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis.