President Biden’s just-completed trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel (and the West Bank) has not delivered concrete outcomes – at least not yet – but the issues for the trip still remain.
It is ironic that many of the complexities, ambiguities, challenges, and possibilities incorporated in US President Joe Biden’s Middle East trip stem from a collection of decisions and statements made by his predecessor.
As the Economist judged it, “The real focus of Mr Biden’s trip would begin on July 15th with his arrival in Jeddah. Even Israelis acknowledge that they are a warm-up act. ‘He’s coming here first because it’s now clear to the Americans they can’t deal with their allies in the region separately, as we’re much better co-ordinated now,’ says a minister.
But more recently, too, the horrific death of Jamal Khashoggi, a US permanent resident and periodic contributor to various publications, especially the Washington Post, The crucial, politically volatile price of petrol has been a major sore point with Americans – with considerable downside implications for Biden’s Democratic Party and their chances in upcoming midterm elections for Congress. The petrol price is a key part of the overall inflation level, now nuzzling up against 9% year-on-year in the US.
“Mr. Biden’s effort here to negotiate greater oil production – jarring enough for a president who came to office vowing to help wean the world from fossil fuels – is driven by the need to make Russia pay a steep price for invading Ukraine. So far, that price has been scant: Not only are the Russians continuing to collect substantial oil and gas revenues, they are even supplying Saudi Arabia, Reuters reported recently, with fuel for its power plants – at discounted prices.
With that in mind, it is also true the earlier six-party agreement Donald Trump had withdrawn the US from – but with continuing US threats that a nuclear line should not be crossed by Iran – had mysteriously been meant to preclude any such a development. So far, the inconclusive and spluttering negotiations restarted by the Biden administration to reach implementation of a modified or new agreement do not yet seem to have any kind of immediate result.
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