Nuclear weapons, oil and the redemption of a prince: a journey fraught with danger for Biden

JERUSALEM – The President Joe Biden left Washington for a four-day trip to the Middle East on Tuesday to try to curb an accelerating Iranian nuclear program, increase the flow of oil to the United States, and reshape relations with Saudi Arabia without appearing to be embracing a crown prince who CIA believes he was behind the murder of a prominent dissident who lived in the United States.

All three efforts are full of political dangers for a president who knows the region well but returns for the first time in six years with much less influence how much you would like to shape the events.

Their 18-month negotiation to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal stalled, hampering a diplomatic effort to force Tehran to ship out of the country most of the nuclear fuel that now enriches Iran. neighboring levels to the degree of a bomb.

And while no explicit deal should be announced on increasing Saudi oil production, worried it might seem inconvenient, a reward for facilitating the crown prince’s return to the diplomatic fold, he is likely to arrive in a month or two. officials say.

Administration officials know they will be targeted from within their own party when the inevitable photos of the president’s meeting with the crown prince surfaced. Muhammad bin Salmanless than two years after Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” on the international stage.

That promise was motivated by the dissident’s murder jamal khashoggiWashington Post reporter in 2018.

Biden has often portrayed this era of history as a competition between democracy and autocracyand excluded Cuba and Venezuela from a recent Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles for their repressive practices.

But he justified visiting Saudi Arabia as an exercise realism.

“My goal was to refocus, but not break, the relationship,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post editorial last weekend.

Saudi Arabia “energy resources are vital to mitigate the impact on global supplies of the Russian war in Ukraine,” it said, in its only acknowledgment of the reality that the Muhammad’s strategy (waiting for the US to need Saudi Arabia again) was paying off.

There is also a superpower maneuvering element to the ride.

Biden made it clear when he took office that he wanted to demean the United States from focusing on the Middle East and focusing on China, a reflection of his belief that Washington 20 wasted years when you should have focused on a real competitor.

But the trip is also partly about stopping China’s progress in the region.

Last week, Riyadh and Washington quietly signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate in building a next-generation 5G cellular network in Saudi Arabia.

This is designed to eliminate huaweiChinese 5G champion.

The politics of war in Ukraine will also be in the background.

Biden’s aides made it clear they were upset in the spring when the Israeli government insisted on taking a largely stance neutral on war, insisting it was the only way his prime minister, Naftali Bennettcould keep an open line with the president of RussiaVladimir Putin.

As Biden prepared to leave on Monday, his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, revealed for the first time that intelligence agencies had concluded that IranIsrael’s main opponent, he intended to help Russia in its battle against Ukraine.

He said Iran was preparing to surrender to Russia hundreds of dronesor UAVs, some capable of carrying out attacks.

“Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to supply Russia with up to several hundred unmanned aircraft, including weapons-capable UAVs, in an accelerated schedule,” Sullivan said as an almost inadmissible line in the statement. Monday afternoon.

“Our information also indicates that Iran is preparing to do so train Russian forces to use these unmanned aircraft with initial training sessions scheduled for early July, “he said.

Sullivan warned that “it is unclear whether Iran has already delivered any of these unmanned aircraft to Russia”, but said that “this is just one example of Russia looking in countries like Iran for capabilities that are also being used. “in the attacks on Iran. Saudi Arabia.

The main reason Sullivan revealed the Iranian operation was to warn Tehran and Moscow that the US is watching.

But since Biden’s visit is expected to begin with a demonstration of Israel’s new capabilities to use laser weapons against drones and missiles, he also seemed intent on Send a message to the Israeli government for more vigorous support for Ukraine.

He also gives Biden and the interim prime minister who will serve as a guest, Yair Lapida common point of agreement on how to deal with Iran, amid ongoing behind-the-scenes meetings on how to manage a crucial turning point in Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel strongly opposed the 2015 nuclear deal and the prime minister of the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke before Congress about the need to block it.

Many of its military and intelligence leaders disagreed, later saying they believed the deal, which required Iran to send 97 percent of its fuel reserves out of the country, had bought them years.

When the former president Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, caused a new surge in Iran’s nuclear program.

has now produced a significant amount of uranium with near-bomb purity, which it had never done before the 2015 agreement, and Israel stepped up its sabotage campaign, blowing up Iranian facilities.

In response, Iran is accelerating the development of new underground facilities.

Officially Israel opposes the renewal of the agreement, although it seems a moot issue.

The talks have stalled for months, with Biden rejecting Iran’s request to remove its Revolutionary Guards from Washington’s list of terrorist organizations.

Robert Malley, the US chief negotiator, with whom the Iranians refused to meet face to face, recently told NPR that “whether they are interested or not, sooner or later they will have to decide, because at some point the deal. it will be a thing of the past “.

He may have already passed the rebirth point.

In early spring, Malley and the Secretary of State, Anthony BlinkenThey said there was only a few weeks left, perhaps a month or so, to reach an agreement before Iran moved on and the knowledge gained during the installation of advanced centrifuges to produce large volumes of uranium would have made it obsolete. 2015 agreement.

Now, four months later, Biden’s aides have refused to explain how they missed that deadline, still insisting that reviving the deal is worth more than abandoning it.

Raffaello Grossithe head of the world nuclear agency said in Australia this month that he believed the Iranian program was now so advanced that others in the region would be tempted to copy it.

Saudi Arabia he said it reserves the right to build whatever nuclear infrastructure Iran builds.

“We are now in a situation where Iran’s neighbors may begin to fear the worst and plan accordingly,” Grossi said.

“Today there are countries in the region that are watching closely what is happening with Iran and tensions in the region are mounting. At times, political leaders have openly stated that they would actively seek nuclear weapons if Iran posed a nuclear threat. “

For public consumption, the White House argued that Biden’s decision to go to Saudi Arabia was driven by a wide range of national security concerns. not just for oil.

But oil is, in fact, the reason more urgent to travel in a time of high gas prices.

Sensitive to the appearance of sacrificing a principled human rights stance for cheap energy, the president does not plan to announce any oil deal during his stop in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

But the two sides understand that Saudi Arabia will increase production once the current quota agreement expires in September, just in time for the autumn mid-term election campaign, according to current and former US officials.

Martin Indyk, former Middle Eastern diplomat for former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obamasaid the exact amounts were not yet clear, but Saudi Arabia is expected to increase production by around 750,000 barrels per day and for the United Arab Emirates to do the same with an additional 500,000 barrels per day, for a total of 1.25 million.

It is unclear how much it would push prices down in the US and it may not be fast enough or deep enough to change the mood of the public before November.

“This will be the kind of deal that justifies the trip, but since they won’t announce it, it leaves the president in a situation where he has to justify it in other words, so the focus on Israel and normalization of defense and integration, Indyk said.

“The defensive attitude of the president about this is wrong. He should accept it. “

Instead, Biden has tried to argue that he will not visit Saudi Arabia, but rather meet with more leaders of the region in the form of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of six states led by Saudi Arabia, in addition to the leaders. from three other Arab nations, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.

But White House officials are resigned to the fact that Biden won’t be able to avoid the Crown Prince entirely, and there will be that damaging photo. Harmful, at least, to Biden.

For the crown prince, the image will be priceless while trying to rehabilitate its international image.

Some analysts have said that alone may be enough for the Saudis.

“I think the odds of the Saudis trying to embarrass the president on this trip are relatively lowbecause I think it would hurt the very kind of strategic things they’re trying to do, “said Jon B. Alterman, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“So I think their incentives for cooperation are high.”

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