Biden chooses not to antagonise Mohammed bin Salman

The unclassified report into the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, released last week, has underlined the limits to Joe Biden’s commitment to human rights in his foreign policy.

The report’s conclusion — incriminating Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of the Saudi journalist in 2018 — was long known by insiders and widely suspected by many. More interesting were the potential consequences of making this conclusion public and official.

The response has disappointed many in Biden’s own party and the proponents of a tougher stance on human rights. Not only did the US president stop short of sanctioning Saudi Arabia’s day-to-day ruler, but he also punted discussion of the issue to spokespeople. When the state department declared that the US “will never check our values at the door even when it comes to our closest security relationships”, some analysts derided the comments as hollow.

The realists leading Biden’s Saudi policy have made clear their lack of enthusiasm at publishing the report on their watch — a task the Trump administration avoided despite its legal obligations, handing the new administration a dilemma.

Biden’s team covets Riyadh’s co-operation on intelligence, Iran, Yemen and human rights. They argue in favour of “recalibration” over “rupture” and imply that sanctions against a head of state would be the fate befalling only countries the US is prepared to cast adrift for a generation — such as Idi Amin’s Uganda or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea.

He’s very vulnerable and he needs American support badly. That doesn’t mean we should provide it.

While Prince Mohammed is not yet the head of state, his father King Salman is 85 and the crown prince is already de facto ruler. Many in Washington’s foreign policy elite believe the 35-year-old is likely to take the throne before too long.

But Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who specialises in Saudi Arabia, says the Biden administration has “an exaggerated sense of the crown prince’s political position”. “They think he’s there for good, that he’s going to be around for decades to come [but] . . . his position is much more vulnerable and he has many enemies in the kingdom.”

Washington has long lost any confidence in its own ability to influence succession in Saudi Arabia, however. While senior US diplomats have privately opined on the Saudi line of succession in the past, the furore resulting from leaks of such musings has taught them to refrain from doing so. The inner workings of Riyadh’s royal palace remain cloistered.

Mohammed bin Nayef, the former interior minister who worked closely with the US in the fight against al-Qaeda, was effectively usurped by Prince Mohammed, his much younger cousin, in 2017. He was detained last year.

Partly because Prince Mohammed bin Salman has what the US report described as “control of decision-making” in the kingdom and has maintained “absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations” since 2017, some experts judge it is also impossible for the US to target the crown prince for sanctions without effectively putting the entire country under sanctions. The economy is dominated by the state, and Prince Mohammed is the overarching power.

But Yasmine Farouk at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says the Biden administration’s decision to signal it will effectively snub Prince Mohammed from now on has still hurt him.

“The report and its aftermath was a big blow to his prestige and it is now a known fact that the US will not have his back in the case of any kind of domestic or regional move against him,” she said.

Congress might push for a harder position still, and Prince Mohammed is very unlikely to visit the US — he won’t be invited and his elite bodyguards are among those now subject to US sanctions.

The Biden administration hopes the move will encourage Prince Mohammed to improve his human rights record. Others also want the crown prince’s modernisation plan — which stands to benefit from US soft power support and investment — to succeed. Riedel is among those unconvinced, however. “He’s very vulnerable and he needs American support badly,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we should provide it.”