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Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institute, told CNBC “The News with Shepard Smith” that President Joe Biden would not make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” because it would mean cutting off economic and military ties that the United States talks with the Saudis.
“The world economy still needs this Saudi oil even though we don’t need it here in the United States per se, and the Saudis need our military protection, and we don’t want them to lose a war. against Iran, ”O’Hanlon said in an interview Thursday night. “We are not going to make the Saudis a pariah nation if what you mean by that word, like me, is North Korea or Iran itself or some other extremist government.”
In 2018, NBC News learned that the CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) ordered the strike team that lured Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the had killed and cut his body to pieces. In November 2019, Biden vowed to make the Saudis “pay” for Khashoggi’s murder during a Democratic debate.
“We were actually going to put the price on them and make them the outcasts that they are,” Biden said.
O’Hanlon explained that US-Saudi relations had undergone previous tests, including the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“It’s a relationship, after all, that went through 9/11, when we know the Saudis tolerated the Wahhabi strain of Islam and an approach of preaching in many of its mosques that actually motivated many hijackers and other extremists, but the two sides need each other, ”the foreign policy expert said.
Joel Rubin, former Assistant Under Secretary of State in the Obama-Biden administration and executive director of the US Jewish Congress, told “The News with Shepard Smith” that Biden understands that US-Saudi relations are “too important” to be lost.
“Biden will strive to maintain that connection at the strategic level, with the respect that an ally of nearly eight decades deserves,” Rubin said. “But it is also highly likely that he will communicate the kinds of concerns about Saudi activities in Yemen, human rights and the murder of Khashoggi that prompted him to call Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ on the presidential campaign trail. “
The White House has confirmed that President Joe Biden spoke with Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud as he prepared to declassify and release a U.S. intelligence assessment that allegedly implicated the son of the king, MBS, in the brutal murder of Khashoggi.
O’Hanlon told host Shepard Smith that Biden’s phone call with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud was a form of “token pushback” as opposed to speaking to MBS. He noted, however, due to the king’s age, “the king may not last that long, so he’s going to have to figure out how to handle Mohammed bin Salman again.”
Rubin warned that it would be very difficult for the United States to have direct diplomatic relations with MBS.
“With the release of the intelligence report on his guilt in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Congress will only increase the pressure – in a bipartisan fashion – to block US engagement with him, his assets and institutions that he controls, ”Rubin said. “This is just the beginning of the tough questions, and now that Donald Trump is no longer president, he will no longer have anyone in the White House to protect him.”
The former president refused to release the intelligence report and publicly sowed doubt that MBS or the Saudis were involved in Khashoggi’s murder. Trump has touted arms sales between the two countries. In 2018, he even held up a graphic in the Oval Office displaying the billions of dollars in military hardware the Saudi government planned to purchase.
O’Hanlon told Smith that the “token price” against MBS should be as high as possible.
“I would try to treat him, personally, as a little bit persona non grata,” O’Hanlon said. “He’s a guy who likes to rub elbows in the corridors of power and the financial high economy, and I think we should at least deprive him of that.”
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