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Riyadh (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia finally congratulated Biden on his election victory on Sunday, after defeating Donald Trump, who has a close personal relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for more than 24 hours.
The former U.S. vice president has vowed in his campaign to assess relations with the state, demanding more responsibility for the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Istanbul consulate in Riyadh, and for the U.S. to fight the Yemeni war. Vowed to stop support.
As other Arab states stepped in to praise the Democrat Challenger, the state’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, remained silent on the U.S. vote, even as he sent warm words to the Tanzanian president over the re-election.
On Sunday 1932 GMT. In, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his son, the Crown Prince, congratulated Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris on winning the presidential election, the state news agency SPAA reported.
The SPA added, “King Salman appreciated the special, historic historical and close ties between the two friendly countries and their peoples, which everyone seeks to strengthen and develop at every level,” the SPA added.
Prince Mohammed’s relationship with Trump provided a buffer against international criticism over Riyadh’s rights record, including the assassination of Khashoggi, Riyadh’s role in the war in Yemen, and the detention of women activists.
Those areas could now become a point of contention between Biden and Saudi Arabia, oil exporters and U.S. arms buyers.
Saudi Twitter user Dr. “The only thing worse than COVID-19 would be BIDEN-20,” Muna wrote, while many other Saudi users of the social media platform ignored the result in the early hours of calling US networks Biden’s election.
A Saudi political source warned of a rift between the state and the United States, drawing attention to Russia’s historic historical ties with Washington.
But Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper expressed a sense of uncertainty about how the future would play out for the state. “The field is waiting … and preparing … for what happens after Biden’s victory,” he wrote in a first-page article.
The state does not have to wait any longer. Neil Quilliam, an associate of Britain’s Chatham House think tank, said the Biden administration would probably try to signal a sign of dissatisfaction with Saudi domestic and foreign policies.
“The Saudi leadership is concerned that the Biden administration and the opposition Congress will conduct a thorough review of relations, including a re-evaluation of defense relations, and therefore possibly make positive voices and move towards ending the Yemeni conflict,” he said.
Saudi Arabia has been a staunch supporter of Trump’s “maximum pressure” of tougher sanctions on regional rival Iran. But Biden has said he will return to the 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Tehran, a deal struck when Biden was vice president under Barack Obama’s administration.
Abu Zaid, cashier at the Riyadh supermarket, said he hoped Biden would take a different approach. “I’m not happy with Biden’s victory, but I hope he learns from Obama’s mistakes and realizes that Iran is a common enemy,” he said.
A Saudi political source said the state “has the ability to deal with any president because the US is a country of institutions and there is a lot of institutional work going on between Saudi Arabia and the United States.”
“Saudi-US relations are deep, sustainable and strategic and are unlikely to change as the president changes,” he said.
Prince Mohammed denied the order to assassinate Khashoggi but in 2019 he accepted some personal responsibility saying it happened on his watch. Riyadh is holding eight people between the ages of seven and 20 in the case.
(Additional reporting by Aziz Al Yaqoubi in Dubai; Written by Michael Georgie; Edited by Edmund Blair and Philippa Fletcher)
