– A safer and more integrated Middle East will benefit the United States in so many ways, writes US President Joe Biden in the article “Why I travel to Saudi Arabia” in the Washington Post. The president is on his first visit to the Middle East, and has especially defended his trip to Saudi Arabia today. “From the beginning, my goal has been to reshape, not destroy, the relationship with a country that has been a strategic partner for 80 years,” he wrote further. President Joe Biden chose to argue for how he travels to Saudi Arabia in a column in the Washington Post newspaper, where the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi worked when he was killed by the oil country’s authorities. Photo: Facsimile: The Washington Post Fuel prices have skyrocketed in the United States after the Ukraine war. By traveling on a courtship trip to the world’s most powerful oil nation, Biden can persuade Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to pump up more oil and thus stabilize the oil price. – So why is President Biden now traveling on bent knees to Jeddah and “an outcast state” with blood on his hands? Once again, he is looking for votes, writes editor Fred Ryan in the Washington Post in a column. PR campaigns and sports laundering Editor Ryan believes Biden is concerned with collecting votes for the US midterm elections in November. After the meeting, the mighty Crown Prince will be back in the heat after years of freezing and criticism from the West. – It will give the Saudi leader exactly what three years of PR campaigns, lobbying expenses, and even a new golf league have not managed: to be respected again, Ryan writes. Another goal for Joe Biden is to create a common alliance that can withstand Iran’s influence in the region: between Israel, Arab countries and the United States. The controversial Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman receives President Joe Biden in the country’s second largest city Jeddah today. Here during a meeting with the President of Turkey in June. Photo: Burhan Ozbilici / AP “Our moral authority is weathering” Joe Biden’s tone is completely different from the one he had during the election campaign in 2019. Then he promised to treat the Saudi Arabs as the “pariah state it is”. As president, he pointed to the country’s human rights abuses. Biden wanted to re-establish the United States’ “moral leadership” in the world, and stopped arms sales to Saudi Arabia. – Our moral authority is eroding, writes editor Fred Ryan in the Washington Post further. – Biden’s meeting shows that the United States’ values are up for negotiation. A few years ago, the president would not support the kingdom’s war in Yemen, and when it became known that Saudi Arabia was behind the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the United States immediately banned the Saudi elite’s entry permits to the states. Journalist Jamal Khashoggi goes into his own death. October 2, 2018 when a group of Saudi assassins were waiting for him inside the consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi was to collect papers to be able to remarry. Photo: AFP Jamal Khashoggi was killed and parted by a killing squadron inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in 2018. As a journalist, he was a regime critic and worked for the Washington Post. According to the CIA, it is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who ordered the liquidation. Rhymes about US sanctions While critical voices believe Biden will not achieve anything in Saudi Arabia anyway, the president himself believes that he has done a lot to criticize the oil nation. – I published the intelligence report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, introduced new sanctions, also against the Saudi Arabian forces involved in the murder of him, writes Biden and adds: – I introduced a ban on 76 people with entry visas to the United States during a new law that prevents people involved in the harassment of dissidents abroad from coming. Facts about Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East – Joe Biden travels this week on his first visit to the Middle East as president. – The visit begins in Israel on 13 July. There he will visit the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem in West Jerusalem and have talks with, among others, acting Prime Minister Yair Lapid. Biden will also visit the Israeli-occupied West Bank and will meet with President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in Bethlehem. – The American president then continues to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where he will attend a meeting of the so-called Gulf Council, where leaders from Egypt, Iraq and Jordan are also invited. – During his visit to Saudi Arabia, he will also have bilateral talks with Saudi Arabian leaders, among them the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (NTB) Today came the news that Saudi Arabia is opening the airspace for Israeli aircraft. This removes the long-standing flight ban and Joe Biden can fly directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia. With the “historic decision”, the problematic relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia is suddenly better. The peace agreement in Yemen, after seven years of brutal war on the part of Saudi Arabia, is also being honored by the President of the United States. – In Yemen, I set up a committee and committed leaders in the region, including the King of Saudi Arabia, to lay the foundations for a peace agreement, Biden writes.
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Joe Biden gets criticism for his controversial visit to Saudi Arabia – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
