REUTERS/Hamad Mohammed
- A former Saudi spy chief slammed Biden for the lacking US response to 2021 terror attacks in the Gulf.
- It’s the most vocal criticism of Biden from a leading member of the Saudi political elite to date.
- US-Saudi relations are currently at a new low, with Biden ostracizing MBS over rights abuses.
The former head of Saudi intelligence publicly slammed President Joe Biden’s administration on Sunday, saying the US let his country down by failing to respond to terror attacks on the Arabian Peninsula last year.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and the US have plummeted since Biden took power: Biden has publicly admonished Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over human-rights abuses — saying on the 2020 campaign trail that he would make the kingdom a “pariah” and declaring the prince not Biden’s counterpart — and ended US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
In turn, MBS has reportedly ignored Biden’s phone calls and said he doesn’t care what Biden thinks of him.
One key point of contention is that the Saudis feel the US offered a weak response to a series of attacks on the Arabian Peninsula from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in 2021, which killed three civilians and injured six.
The US was slow to react and, several weeks later, the Biden administration delisted the Houthis’ terrorist designation, further infuriating Riyadh.
Speaking to Arab News on Sunday, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former chief of the Saudi Public Intelligence Department, said the US had failed Saudi Arabia, the strongest rebuke of the Biden’s administration from a leading elite Saudi figure to date.
“The president of the US, in his election campaign, said that he will make Saudi Arabia a pariah. And, of course, he went on to practice what he preached,” Prince Turki, who previously also served as Saudi ambassador to both the US and UK, said.
“First of all, by stopping the joint operations that America had with the kingdom in meeting the challenge of the Houthi-led rebellion in Yemen against the Yemeni people and, second, among other similar actions, by not meeting [Crown Prince Mohammed].”
“The fact that President Biden delisted the Houthis from the terrorist list has emboldened them and made them even more aggressive in their attacks on Saudi Arabia, as well as on the UAE,” he added.
The US-Saudi relationship stretches back decades, and the US has made attempts to save the relationship.
Axios reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken apologized to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan at a meeting in Morocco late last month for failing to respond fast enough to Houthi attacks.
The US also hurriedly sent Patriot antimissile interceptors to Saudi Arabia in March 2022 to sweeten relations, The Wall Street Journal reported, after repeated requests from Riyadh.
Speaking to Arab News, Prince Turki said Saudi Arabia was “grateful” for recent US statements focusing on its commitment to ensuring Saudi security “but we need to see more” engagement at the top levels.
One issue which may complicate the situation, is Biden’s nomination of Michael Ratney as the new US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
David Schenker, a former senior State Department official, told Insider the appointment could be considered a slight by Saudi Arabia, given Ratney is a career diplomat and not a former US military heavyweight like many past US ambassadors.
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