How Biden’s Naïve Saudi Trip Could Cost Him the Midterms

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia—The origin of the fist bump between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. President Joe Biden is murkier than the estimated 11 trillion gallons of oil oozing beneath this desert kingdom. The ramifications of the collision are more mudded than the particulars of a Central Intelligence Agency report that reckons the country’s future king was responsible for the 2018 murder and mutilation of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

“The fist bump is a very natural gesture between the crown prince and President Biden,” Saudi Ministry of Media adviser Faheem al-Hamid says of the globally televised move some kinesics believe began as a pre-game greeting to avoid blood between dart players clutching a handful of sharpened arrows.

The kingdom’s own 2018 Classified Darts Invitational Tournament, a small part of MBS’s ballyhooed endeavour to bring fun, games and holidaymakers to the place, was staged shortly after Khashoggi’s assassination. As Saudi Tourism Authority CEO Fahd Hamidaddin sells it, “Saudi Arabia is the largest investing destination in the tourism sector.”

Yet reports indicate the darts competition resulted in an unusual amount of “slops,” which occur when a player’s dart hits a number they’re not aiming for.

The bullseye Biden was aiming for in the sweltering heat of Jeddah was to convince the tribal monarch to offer full-throated support for Ukraine in the war against Russia and straightaway pump sufficient petroleum to relieve rising and politically damaging gas prices before the midterm elections back home.

As Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan tells it, Biden’s frosty three-hour bilateral in a refrigerated conference room with MBS missed the mark.

“The U.S. remains our main strategic partner, but that doesn’t mean we’re not able to develop strong partnerships with others around the world,” Farhan says. “OPEC Plus (the 23-nation oil cartel that includes Russia) has reacted to market conditions and will continue to assess.”

Even by what many critics grouse are the base principles of the House of Saud—which oversaw 92 beheadings so far this year—there is something daft when a country with a $620 billion investment fund and an arsenal of sophisticated American weapons finds it necessary to ask the Russians what they think about the kingdom filling the global shortfall Putin’s butchery of Ukraine created.

The scolds of the Biden Administration are equally naïve about Russian realpolitik, which is rooted in the principle that nothing should be left to an invaded people but their eyes for weeping.

“The fist bump between President Biden and Mohammed bin Salman was worse than a handshake—it was shameful,” Washington Post publisher and CEO Fred Ryan said in a statement. “It projected a level of intimacy and comfort that delivers to MBS the unwarranted redemption he has been desperately seeking.”

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth twisted the knife. “The only way Biden could avoid legitimizing the Saudi crown prince despite the fist bump and the business-as-usual meeting would be to publicly and in detail condemn MBS’s ongoing abysmal human rights record,” Roth said over Twitter. “Biden ultimately failed.”

That’s definitely not Biden’s interpretation of what went down during his visit to what he calls a “pariah” nation. When asked how he could be certain another murder like the one Saudi Foreign Minister Farhan called “a terrible mistake” won’t happen again, Biden giggled and said, “God love you. What a silly question. How can I be sure of anything?”

He also refused to answer a question on the fist bump when he touched down on the South Lawn back home at the White House. “Why don't you guys talk about something that matters?”

The reason, of course, is MBS is also new-look Saudi Arabia's hipster-in-chief and really understands the importance of a fist bump. “What's important is that Biden came, that he gave in,” said a Saudi official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Perhaps someone needs to remind Biden to never eat at a place called Mom’s, never play cards with a man named Doc, and never imagine Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to end his war against Ukraine and the Western powers without throttling the former Soviet satrap and continuing his threats against the 27 countries of the European Union.

Biden’s Jeddah slop was his woeful inability to dress realism in morality and get the Saudis and his critics to buy into the haute couture diplomatic deal required to stop Russian aggression, end the war’s lethal cascade effect on the global economy, and stop the inflationary rise in the cost of energy and other commodities that all polls suggest will cost his Democrats the 2022 midterm elections.

The crown prince begs to differ. “Unrealistic energy policies will only lead to inflation,” is MBS’s calculation.

It’s a valid point, but the president and the crown prince, now nearly six months into Putin’s Ukrainian horror show, share an unwillingness to mention that the Russian leader’s belligerence is global and bedecked with all the economic indicators required to plunge both nations into a war economy, the complete reorganization of a country’s production capacity and distribution of commodities during a time of conflict. The kingdom’s fastest growing wheat imports, for instance, come from Poland and Russia, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

To be sure, Khashoggi’s murder was no routine human rights violation; moreover, MBS’s kill-order resonates as a ghoulish reminder of Putin’s flurry of decrees to extraterritorially execute his political opponents. But if Biden is intent on convincing the Saudis to saddle-up for the fight, such distinctions are not lost on MBS. The Saudi heir with a law degree from King Saud University slammed Biden over the torture and killing of Muslim inmates in Abu Ghraib prison during the war in Iraq, as well as the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Palestinian-American correspondent for Al Jazeera, who was allegedly killed by an Israeli sniper while covering a protest in the Jenin refugee camp on the Occupied West Bank in May.

Still, Saudis and Americans throwing darts at each other has always been a blood sport between friends, with the near 80-year-old Biden telling his knockers that “the United States isn’t going anywhere.” No need to remind the Saudis that the 36-year-old MBS isn’t leaving the game, either.