The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Biden promised he wouldn’t pamper dictators. So why did he roll out the red carpet for this Saudi prince?

Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman attends a meeting at the Pentagon in August 2019. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

President Biden promised during his campaign that he would dispense with the pampering President Donald Trump offered to Middle Eastern dictators. There would be “no more blank checks” for the likes of Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, Mr. Biden vowed; as for the leaders of Saudi Arabia, he would “make them in fact the pariah that they are.” There is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

So why, last week, did Mr. Biden roll out the red carpet for Prince Khalid bin Salman, the brother of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman? The former ambassador to Washington was directly implicated in the 2018 murder of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi, yet was treated to a host of high-level meetings, including with Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, secretary of state and defense secretary. That’s not the reception you’d expect for a pariah.

Of course, the United States still has security interests with Saudi Arabia; according to the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Khalid bin Salman about “regional security issues,” including efforts to end the disastrous war in Yemen launched by the Saudis more than six years ago.Yet the prince now holds the relatively lowly post of deputy defense minister. If it were necessary to host a senior Saudi official to address those matters, the White House could have invited the foreign minister. Instead, Mr. Biden chose to rehabilitate a member of the ruling family who left Washington in disgrace in 2019 after publicly insisting that reports of Khashoggi’s murder inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul were “absolutely false, and baseless.” The CIA concluded that Khalid bin Salman played a key role in the killing by inducing Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Post who was living outside Washington, to seek paperwork he needed at the Istanbul consulate, rather than the embassy in D.C.

Mr. Biden has declined so far to meet directly with Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS; the administration released a report concluding that the crown prince was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has spoken with MBS by phone on multiple occasions. By allowing his brother to make the rounds in Washington, the White House has brought MBS a step closer to a full political recovery. The Saudi ruler has done nothing to deserve this: He continues to arrest, torture and imprison peaceful critics of his rule. Despite pressure from Washington, he has refused to sanction or even sideline the top adviser who oversaw the Khashoggi operation, as well as the arrest and torture of women who campaigned for the right to drive. Nor have U.S. efforts to broker an end to the war in Yemen succeeded.

The Saudi’s success in wearing down the administration, and similar progress by the Sissi regime in Egypt, sends a message to the world’s most brutal autocrats: Mr. Biden may talk up human rights and the importance of shunning those who crudely violate them. But, in the end, you’ll still get your White House meeting.

Read more:

Josh Rogin: The Biden team welcomes a Saudi prince connected to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi

The Post’s View: Mohammed bin Salman is guilty of murder. Biden should not give him a pass.

Sarah Leah Whitson: New Khashoggi revelations show we don’t have the full story about his killing. The Biden administration must disclose what it knows.

Jason Rezaian: The Saudis are back. But they never really left.

The Post’s View: MBS markets himself as a voice for progress. Then why is he still silencing these women?

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