Joe Biden told Middle East leaders on Saturday that the US is invested in the region and has no intention of ceding influence to Russia, China and Iran, which have all built up a presence in the region in recent years.
“We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran. And we will seek to build on this moment with active, principled American leadership,” the US president said. The United States isn’t going anywhere.
Biden, who was on his first tour of the region, partly aimed at persuading Gulf states to pump more oil, was speaking at a summit in the Saudi city of Jeddah where the leaders of the Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan had gathered.
His administration has already been at odds with key Middle Eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt over a range of issues, including human rights. Some Arab states, including in the Persian Gulf, where the countries rely heavily on American security assistance, are worried about what they see as an American retreat in the region, which has in turn drawn them closer to Russia and China.
Relations between Washington and Riyadh soured in particular after Biden vowed to make the country a pariah during his presidential campaign, citing the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. The CIA concluded that Saudi crown prince and day-to-day ruler Mohammed bin Salman ordered the operation, something the prince denies.
Biden met the crown prince for the first time on Friday. He said after the meeting that he had raised Khashoggi’s case with the prince and that he expected Saudi Arabia to increase oil production in the coming weeks.
A Saudi official told reporters that the country will increase production if there is market demand.
Saudi Arabia, along with the UAE, has lobbied the U.S. for more military aid to counter Iran’s power in the region and to defend against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have attacked installations in both Gulf countries. It was unclear whether Biden’s visit would lead to an increase in military support and aid to Saudi Arabia.
“We continue to work closely with many of you to counter the threats[in]. . . region from Iran, we are also pursuing diplomacy to return restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. But no matter what, the United States is committed to ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon,” Biden said.
On the sidelines, the president met with the leaders of Egypt, Iraq and the president of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, whom he invited to Washington.
Biden, who visited Israel and the Palestinian territories before arriving in Saudi Arabia, scored a foreign policy victory during the trip, with Saudi Arabia announcing it would open its skies to all flights to and from Israel following US-brokered ties. Israel has agreed to the transfer of multinational peacekeeping forces from two Red Sea islands that Egypt ceded to Saudi Arabia in 2017.
U.S. officials said they expected full diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel to take years to establish and made clear before the trip that they did not expect significant breakthroughs.
The agreements brokered between Saudi Arabia and Israel during the trip fall short of US-brokered peace accords between Israel and four Arab states in 2020. Saudi Arabia has said it will normalize ties with Israel only when it settles the conflict you are with the palestinians.
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