President Joe Biden on Saturday will meet with leaders of Arab Gulf countries in Saudi Arabia as he closes out of the final leg of a four-day trip meant to bolster U.S. positioning and knit the region together against Iran. His meetings in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, will include heads of state from six Arab Gulf countries, plus Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. Hours before the summit, the White House released intelligence showing Russian officials have twice visited Iran in recent weeks for a showcase of weapons-capable drones it is looking to acquire for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine.
His first Middle East trip comes 11 months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and as Biden aims to reprioritize the U.S. away from the Middle East’s ruinous wars and ongoing conflicts stretching from Libya to Syria.
Overall, there’s little that the nine Mideast heads of state agree on when it comes to foreign policy. For example, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are trying to isolate and squeeze Iran over its regional reach and proxies. Oman and Qatar, on the other hand, have solid diplomatic ties with Iran and have acted as intermediaries for talks between Washington and Tehran.
On Friday, Biden fist-bumped Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto leader, as he arrived at the royal palace in Jeddah. But he rejected the notion that he was ignoring the kingdom’s human rights abuses as he tries to reset a fraught diplomatic relationship. As for U.S. concerns over China’s expanding reach, China appears willing to provide Saudi Arabia with missile and nuclear technologies that the U.S. is much more hesitant to do. China is also the kingdom’s biggest buyer of Saudi oil.
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