In June, the Saudi Arabians snubbed Biden again. What happens in the Kingdom is not a top-line item, though it should as it's a region where we have pressing national security interests. The Iranian nuclear program remains a top concern, and Saudi Arabia, for better or worse, is one of our allies in curbing Tehran's influence in the region. You can argue that our 2003 invasion of Iraq was a blessing for Iran, as it removed the only strongman who kept them on their side of the border, but that's for another time. Saudi Arabia's nuclear program is moving ahead, and they couldn't care less about how Washington feels about it.
Relations between Washington and Riyadh have been strained, and why should they care about what the Biden administration thinks after Joe labeled them butchers during the 2020 election? That line was over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Biden promised he would make the Saudis the world's pariahs and then visited the country as president.
He also got humiliated during his visit because the press threw Biden's harsh words back at him. Biden also said he brought up the Khashoggi killing with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, only for the Saudi foreign minister to deny any such conversation took place. The Democrats got too emotional and burned themselves. The intense reaction had nothing to do with freedom of the press or human rights. Journalists have been killed for years, and the United States has economic security interests on the table; we never blew up over it. Some Democrats didn't like how Trump reacted to the news.
But back to the issue at hand: Saudi Arabia and nuclear energy. They see weakness. Like Biden being a creep and sniffing women's hair, they smell frailty from DC. They saw it when Biden tripped and fell during the US Air Force's commencement ceremony and also when he was unable to attend the opening dinner at the NATO Summit last week because he was too tired after a couple of days of work. Remember, Joe was at the Delaware Shore two days before his old, tired, creepy a** got gassed. The Washington Free Beacon not only covered this snub but Israel's state of ambivalence toward the Biden White House on these security issues (via Free Beacon):
"It’s no secret that we are developing our domestic civilian nuclear program and we would very much prefer to be able to have the U.S. as one of the bidders," Foreign Minister prince Faisal bin Farhan said. "Obviously we would like to build our program with the best technology in the world."
The statement comes as the Biden administration struggles to broker a deal with the Arab nation to normalize its relationship with Israel. Reports circulated before Blinken's trip to the oil-rich country that Saudi leaders were conditioning the agreement on "boosted U.S. defense sales and assent for a Saudi civilian nuclear program."
While Faisal did not say … if the nuclear issue was linked to normalization, he added that a deal with Israel would have "limited benefits" without "finding a pathway to peace for the Palestinian people," the Associated Press reported.
Faisal's comments are only the latest Saudi snub to President Joe Biden, who has struggled since the beginning of his term to hold any clout in the region. Blinken visited the country … in hopes of soothing the strained relationship brought on by mounting disagreements on China, regional security, and oil prices.
[…]
Even Israel's leadership is "in a fog" on any progress the Biden administration has made in its talks with Saudi Arabia, Israel's national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said … Blinken told a pro-Israel lobby group … that while Washington had "a real national security interest" in normalizing Israeli-Saudi relations, it would not happen quickly.
That's comforting. The Kingdom is getting cozier with Beijing, and the person who is our QB1 aboard, the president, happens to be an individual whose been wrong on every major foreign policy issue for the past four decades. I hope Iran also slipped in during this June drop-in because Iran has said unequivocally that if Tehran gets the bomb, they will also start building nuclear weapons. An Arab nuclear arms race is the very definition of instability. And we have a man with dementia helming the ship during these tense diplomatic times in the Middle East.
