Achieving the release and right to travel of high-profile critics would strengthen the relationship and improve the Saudis’ position in Washington.
When President Joe Biden visits Saudi Arabia next month, he’ll be moving past the antipathy he expressed during the presidential campaign toward the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He’s right when he says that whatever his personal feelings about the Saudis’ human-rights record, the US partnership with Riyadh is indispensable, for reasons ranging from oil prices to the containment of Iran to great-power competition with China.
But Biden shouldn’t avoid raising human rights with King Salman and the crown prince, known as MBS. A serious conversation about ongoing abuses should be a win-win for the US and the Saudis.
During a campaign debate, Biden spoke for the anger of many Democrats, and even some Republicans in Congress, when he vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state. Democrats were enraged by the Saudi government’s excessive enthusiasm for then President Donald Trump. That was compounded by concerns over the civilian deaths and devastation of the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Antagonism coalesced over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The killing was heinous, and Khashoggi had a lot of outraged friends in Washington (including myself).
The grim fact, though, is that justice for the dead is almost never possible, and certainly not for Khashoggi. Even Turkey has given up on the issue and transferred the trial of the accused parties over to Saudi Arabia. Europe has long moved on. Washington, alone, had been struggling to turn the page. Biden recognizes now is the time.
But human rights remain a significant issue, and Biden can raise them in a forward-looking manner that can produce results, rather than a quixotic, backward-looking request for unavailable justice.
Biden ought to bring up specific current cases with MBS and the king when they meet on July 15. He ought to start with asking for the release of the jailed adult children and son-in-law of former top Saudi intelligence official Saad Aljabri, who is in exile.
They are imprisoned on money-laundering and conspiracy charges that seem obviously trumped up, and are in effect being held hostage because their father was an associate of MBS’s most potent rival in the Saudi royal family, former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Nayef and Aljabri were key figures in cooperating with Washington on counterterrorism at the height of the al-Qaeda threat.
Biden should also appeal on behalf of the group of recently freed women’s-rights advocates, including restoring the right to travel of Loujain Alhathloul, a key campaigner for women’s right to drive. He should push for allowing the recently released blogger Raif Badawi to use social media as well as travel. And he should press for the release of jailed government critics including the aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan and activist Mohammed al-Rabiah.
Biden is right that statecraft involves unpalatable choices. He’s not the first president to have campaigned on a human-rights platform only to meet the realities of the Middle East. So did Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country on the itinerary that recently saw the death of a prominent journalist critic. His first stop, on July 13, will be in Jerusalem. Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank have been strongly implicated in what looks like a deliberate killing this May of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Biden should raise that issue and see what he can do about curtailing other Israeli abuses in the Palestinian territories.
But the more politically sensitive journey is to Saudi Arabia. If Biden can come away with some progress on outstanding human-rights cases, it will help justify his decision to go forward with the relationship. And MBS and company will gain a more sympathetic hearing for not only their strategic partnership with Washington but also the social and cultural liberalization underway in the country, which has been overshadowed by the Khashoggi murder.
There will still be critics on the left and right who want to terminate the US-Saudi partnership. But they’re basically neo-isolationists opposed to US global leadership. Washington and Riyadh have been partners for decades because they share a common interest in maintaining the global and regional status quo. That hasn’t changed. By pressing on human rights, Biden can make the partnership stronger.