Biden confronts Saudis

This editorial was excerpted from The Washington Post.

Joe Biden promised during his campaign to withdraw the “blank check” then-President Donald Trump offered to dictators such as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Just three weeks after the change in administrations, the benefits of restoring that principle to U.S. foreign policy are already manifest.

Since the beginning of the year, Saudi Arabia has carried out two policy reversals long sought by the United States: an end to its three-year-old feud with neighboring Qatar, and the release of prominent political prisoners. Last week, two U.S. citizens jailed by the kingdom since 2019, Salah al-Haidar and Bader al-Ibrahim, were freed on bail. A couple of weeks before that, a third dual U.S.-Saudi citizen, Walid al-Fitaihi, saw his looming prison sentence canceled.

On Wednesday, Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, delivered his most conspicuous concession yet: the release of Loujain al-Hathloul, a 31-year-old women’s rights activist who had become the best-known Saudi political prisoner. Hathloul was abducted from the United Arab Emirates in 2018 and later held with other women’s activists in a secret prison, where she was brutally tortured. She and the other women were tried on trumped-up “crimes,” such as discussing human rights with Western diplomats.

This is not to suggest that the serious problems the crown prince has introduced to U.S.-Saudi relations have been resolved. The war in Yemen that he launched, which has killed thousands of innocent civilians, must still be ended; President Biden has rightly announced the end of U.S. support for Saudi bombing and appointed a senior diplomat to pursue peace talks.

Biden promised during his campaign that those responsible for killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and “murdering children” in Yemen would be made to “pay the price” and become “a pariah.” He also said he believed MBS had ordered Khashoggi’s killing; Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, promised to release a CIA report on MBS’s responsibility.

The new administration should now deliver on those commitments. U.S.-Saudi relations should not be normalized until Qahtani and his boss, Mohammed bin Salman, are held accountable for their crimes.