Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told U.S. President Joe Biden that Saudi Arabia had acted to prevent mistakes like the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi but that the United States had made mistakes as well, including in Iraq, a Saudi official said.
The official, in a statement sent to Reuters about Friday’s conversation between the two leaders, said the kingdom’s de facto ruler said that trying to impose certain values by force on other countries could backfire.
Prince Mohammed also raised the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid in the West Bank and mentioned Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he raised the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
He said he a “good series of meetings” with Saudi leadership, making significant progress on security and economic issues, but that human rights was also a major topic.
“I made clear that the topic was vitally important to me and the United States,” Biden told reporters at a news conference.
Biden gave a fist bump to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday, state television showed, during a trip to Saudi Arabia that is being watched for body language and rhetoric as Washington seeks to reset relations.
White House officials had worked hard on the optics of the meeting between Biden and the crown prince, known as MbS, who Biden has criticized for his role in the killing of Washington Post journalist and political opponent Jamal Khashoggi.
In the end, it was a fist bump and wordless exchange in front of the king’s royal palace in Jeddah that is likely to be the defining image of the visit by the U.S. president, who once promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state.
The president’s aides suggested before he landed in Israel – the first leg of his trip – that Biden would avoid handshakes during his trip due to the rapidly spreading new coronavirus subvariant — but within minutes of his arrival in Israel Biden dispensed with the rules and was shaking hands.
He continued shaking hands during the Israel visit before heading to Saudi Arabia.
“For some reason, Biden’s political team thinks a fist bump is less of a statement of friendship than a handshake and planned to have him fist bump everyone in order to make it less notable that he wasn’t shaking MbS’ hand,” said Kristen Fontenrose, a fellow of foreign relations at the Atlantic Council and a former Trump administration official.
The United states and Saudi Arabia agreed on the importance of stopping Iran from “acquiring a nuclear weapon”, during a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden, a joint statement carried by the Saudi state news agency (SPA) said.
The statement said Biden also affirmed the United States’ continued commitment to supporting “Saudi Arabia’s security and territorial defense, and facilitating the Kingdom’s ability to obtain necessary capabilities to defend its people and territory against external threats.”
Tehran and Riyadh, the leading Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim powers in the Middle East, severed ties in 2016 over backing opposing sides in proxy wars across the region, from Yemen to Syria and elsewhere.
Saudi Arabia and the United States underscored the need to further deter Iran’s interference in “the internal affairs of other countries, its support for terrorism through its armed proxies, and its efforts to destabilize the security and stability of the region,” the statement said.
Both sides stressed the importance of preserving the free flow of commerce through strategic international waterways such as the Bab al-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz.
In 2015, Iran signed a deal with six major powers to limit its nuclear programme to make it harder to obtain a weapon in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. Iran says its nuclear programme seeks only civilian atomic energy.
In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the pact, saying it was insufficient to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Iran has since ramped up some nuclear activities, putting a ticking clock on an attempt to return to a deal in talks between Western powers and Tehran in Vienna.
