President Biden offered a friendly handshake to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday — smiling broadly as he chatted with the man he once dismissed as an international “pariah.”
A friendly trilateral meeting with the prince and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was held Saturday at the G20 summit in New Delhi — 14 months after Biden’s infamous fistfight with the de facto Saudi leader, who has been accused of a string of human rights abuses. abuse.
In 2021, the US intelligence community discovered that the crown prince known as MBS directed the 2018 operation that led to the brutal death of prominent critic, opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
During his presidential campaign, Biden harshly criticized MBS over Khashoggi’s murder, threatening that his White House would make the Saudis “pay the price, and make them truly the pariahs that they are.”
Biden and the crown prince, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, exchanged fist bumps — not handshakes — when they first met in July 2022.AP
Biden spoke at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, where he met MBS in person for the second time in his presidency. POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman attend a session on ‘Partnerships for Global Infrastructure and Investment’ as part of the G20 summit.POOL/AFP via Getty Images
But a huge spike in gas prices and an accompanying rise in inflation prompted Biden to tone down his rhetoric — and his body language — during his July 2022 visit to the Saudi capital, Jeddah, where he vainly asked MBS to increase the government’s oil production.
Biden’s reconciliation at the time drew derision from critics.
“The blood of the next MBS victim is on your hands,” said Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee.
Five months later, in December 2022, a federal judge threw out Cengiz’s civil suit against MBS after the Biden administration intervened to argue that the prince should be granted sovereign immunity in the case.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
