Administration officials know they will get harsh criticism from within their own party when the inevitable photos appear of the president meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, less than two years after Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" on the international stage
JERUSALEM — President Joe Biden left Washington for a four-day trip to the Middle East on Tuesday to try to slow down an accelerating Iranian nuclear program, speed up the flow of oil to U.S. pumps and reshape the relationship with Saudi Arabia without seeming to embrace a crown prince who the CIA believes was behind the killing of a prominent dissident who lived in the United States.
All three efforts are fraught with political dangers for a president who knows the region well, but returns for the first time in six years with far less leverage than he would like to shape events.
His 18-month-long negotiation to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal has ground to a stop, stymying the diplomatic effort to force Tehran to ship out of the country most of the nuclear fuel it is now enriching to near-bomb-grade levels.
And while no explicit deal is expected to be announced on raising Saudi oil production — out of concern that it might come across as unseemly, a reward for easing the crown prince’s return to the diplomatic fold — that is likely to come in a month or two, officials say.
Administration officials know they will get harsh criticism from within their own party when the inevitable photos appear of the president meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, less than two years after Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” on the international stage. That promise was prompted by the murder of the dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist, in 2018.
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