Blinken visits Saudi Arabia to expand Abraham Accords
(Worthy News) – Three years after the signing of the Abraham Accords, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday on a mission to steady Washington’s relationship with Riyadh after Biden’s insulting 2021 election statements, ongoing oil disagreements, and disputes on Iran policy.
Blinken met with the kingdom’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MbS, and they “discussed deepening economic cooperation, especially in the clean energy and technology fields,” according to a State Department readout. Blinken was also set to meet other top Saudi officials during his time in Riyadh, the capital, and the coastal city of Jeddah, in what will be Washington’s second recent high-level visit.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia on May 7. The top US diplomat’s June 6-8 visit to the world’s largest oil exporter comes days after Riyadh pledged to further cut oil production, a move likely to add tension to a US-Saudi relationship already strained by the kingdom’s human rights record and disputes over America’s Iran policy. US-Saudi ties got off to a rocky start in 2019 when President Joe Biden during his campaign said he would treat Riyadh like “the pariah that they are” if he was elected, and soon after taking office in 2021, released a US intelligence assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed approved the operation to capture or kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. A visit by Biden in July 2022 to the kingdom did little to ease tensions, and increasingly, Riyadh has looked to reassert its regional clout, while growing less interested in being aligned with US priorities in the region. [ Source: Israel Hayom (Read More…) ]
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