Biden heads to Saudi Arabia for what could be a welcome reset

President Joe Biden is headed to Saudi Arabia this week as part of his first Middle East trip as commander-in-chief.

He’s going with a list of goals, including energy security, bringing the Saudis and Israel closer together, advancing a truce in Yemen, and establishing a more cohesive regional front against Iran. 

But it’s a controversial move for this president, and no one is really sure how much he’ll actually achieve.

The planned visit has spurred plenty of criticism, from both the right and left, for being what some are calling an “embarrassing” climbdown and for revealing a clear reversal from the tough talk against the kingdom that Biden had employed during his candidacy and in the early months of his presidency.   

Now, things are different. Gasoline in the U.S. is at its most expensive ever, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has dramatically tightened the global oil supply, and Biden really, really wants Saudi Arabia and Israel to be friends. So will the trip feel like an awkward apology, or a reset for two countries with mutual interests?

“I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t shake his hand,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D, Calif.) said in an interview in June, when asked about the president’s planned meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He then referred to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the administration attributed to the crown prince. The Saudi government has repeatedly rejected the accusation.

While campaigning in 2019, Biden vowed to treat the Saudi kingdom as “the pariah that they are,” and as president, he vocally criticized the country’s human rights abuses. He also insisted on viewing Saudi Arabia’s King Salman as his counterpart, rather than the 36-year-old crown prince, who runs the kingdom’s day-to-day affairs. 

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in March reportedly refused to take a call from Biden, as the U.S. leader pleaded with Gulf states to increase oil production after banning Russian oil imports. 

And in an early March interview with the Atlantic, when asked if he thought Biden misunderstood him, the crown prince replied, “Simply, I do not care. It’s up to him to think about the interests of America.”

On Saturday, the president published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia.” In it, he argued that “from the start, my aim was to reorient — but not rupture — relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years.” He stressed the importance of the…