The conversation came as the White House plans to release a damning report calling out Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his role in killing Jamal Khashoggi.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN ON Thursday spoke with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman amid an expectation the White House will release a damning report blaming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the grisly 2018 killing of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.
Biden “affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law,” according to a White House readout of the call. The president reiterated U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s regional security concerns and he “positively noted” the kingdom’s recent decision to release jailed human rights activists. The Saudi readout of the call makes no mention of human rights concerns but rather focuses on “the importance of strengthening the partnership” of the two countries.
The call – the first between the two heads of state – precedes the Biden administration’s pressure campaign on the kingdom for its human rights record and places intense pressure on the White House for how it will punish its wealthy and influential Gulf ally.
Multiple sources familiar with the White House considerations say the report – which was rumored to be released on Thursday – contains dramatic revelations but relatively few surprises. Rather, the greater significance is that it represents a clear break from prior administrations that prioritized the practical benefits of the partnership, brushing aside the kingdom’s troubling history of human rights abuses and potential links to groups the U.S. considers terrorists.
“This report is uncharted territory. We’ve never seen this type of criticism from a U.S. administration,” says Sajjan Gohel, international security director for the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation. “The closest is the 9/11 Commission Report, but even then, they held back formally blaming the House of Saud.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke with his Saudi counterpart on Thursday. A State Department readout of the exchange said the two discussed “the importance of Saudi progress on human rights, including through legal and judicial reforms” among other items.
Leaked assessments from the CIA show the U.S. intelligence community linked the crown prince to the Khashoggi killing almost immediately after it happened in October 2018, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines pledged during her confirmation hearing in January to release an unclassified report about Khashoggi’s murder.
However, some senior intelligence officials have been reluctant to call out Riyadh publicly for fear of losing the vital intelligence the kingdom provides on terrorist threats there and nearby.
A source close to Biden administration officials tells U.S. News that the National Security Council pushed for the release of the Khashoggi report – overseen by the Office of the Director of National Security – over the objection of some top intelligence officials, though others say much of the damage to the U.S.-Saudi relationship has already been done by the kingdom’s actions and the American reviews of it.
Publicizing the issue has been of central importance to Biden, who reportedly turned down repeated invitations from the ruling family to speak with the crown prince directly in the days before becoming president and in the weeks since. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki this month said the administration would “recalibrate” its relationship with Saudi Arabia and that any conversations would take place between Biden and King Salman, the head of state, not his son and chosen successor. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond immediately to requests for comment. The CIA declined to answer questions on-record.
Biden on the campaign trail was deeply critical of Saudi Arabia, saying he would see that they “pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” The Saudi ruling family and government it oversees has “very little social redeeming value,” he said.
The statements represent a clear break from the administration of then-President Donald Trump, who rarely criticized Saudi Arabia and considered the kingdom a key part of his ambitions for the region – namely containing Iran and achieving high-profile peace deals. His son-in-law, Jared Kusher, also developed a strong personal relationship with the crown prince.
Now that Biden is president, the White House must determine how he can follow through on holding Riyadh accountable.
The pressure the White House faces to respond is not limited to the complex relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, home to thousands of U.S. service members housed on at least five sprawling military facilities that have become critical hubs in the two decades of active war in the Middle East. But relations with Riyadh are inextricably linked also to other affairs in the region that hold central importance for the U.S., to include the spreading influence of Iran and its proxies and the grinding civil war in Yemen – from which Biden has attempted to distance the U.S.
Career diplomat Gerald Feierstein, who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen, anticipated prior to the report’s release that its findings would not provide any major revelations regarding what the U.S. knew about the killing.
“The real question will be what the administration will do in response,” Feierstein, now senior vice president at the Middle East Institute think tank, said in an email. “There will be a great deal of pressure on President Biden to respond.”
The U.S. may still apply sanctions on Saudi Arabia under the Global Magnitsky Act – the 2016 expansion of 2012 legislation initially designed to allow the U.S. to punish Russia for the death of former tax advisor Sergei Magnitsky, who exposed widespread theft and fraud before his gruesome death in a Moscow prison. That law affords the president significant flexibility in exacting targeted sanctions or other forms of financial and diplomatic punishments for human rights abusers.
Other activists and close associates of Khashoggi were eager for the administration to exact harsh punishments on the Saudi leader.
“President Biden should now fulfill his promise to hold [Mohammed bin Salman] accountable for this murder by, at minimum, imposing the same sanctions on him as those imposed on his underlying culprits and ending the weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia that would be controlled by an unelected, brutal murderer,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, said in a statement. The Washington-based group, which launched in September, was founded by Khashoggi.
Khashoggi’s killing sparked a crisis in 2018 as details slowly leaked about his disappearance on Oct. 2 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where the noted critic of the Saudi ruling family was seeking documents related to his pending marriage. News reports emerged that a Saudi assassination team had killed Khashoggi inside the facility and dismembered his body to help dispose of his corpse. Investigations that emerged in the subsequent weeks, including from the CIA, Interpol and the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights, placed blame for the attack squarely on Saudi Arabia and affirmed that the crown prince was at least complicit.
Riyadh changed its story about Khashoggi’s disappearance several times, including initially claiming he had left the consulate despite no evidence to support that claim, before ultimately confirming his death but attempting to distance it from the royal family. A Saudi court in late 2019 sentenced five officials to death for their reported involvement in Khashoggi’s murder, though the conclusion was widely interpreted as an attempt to whitewash the event.