Biden claimed that reports that claimed the Saudis refused to take his call—Well, a former head of Saudi intelligence exposed that lie. He also explained why the crown prince refused to take Biden’s call and Slammed Biden for his weak response to attacks on Arabian Peninsula last year.
According to Business Insider, the relations between Saudi Arabia and the US have plummeted since Biden took power: Biden has publicly admonished Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over human-rights abuses — saying on the 2020 campaign trail that he would make the kingdom a “pariah” and declaring the prince not Biden’s counterpart — and ended US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
One key point of contention is that the Saudis feel the US offered a weak response to a series of attacks on the Arabian Peninsula from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in 2021, which killed three civilians and injured six.
Speaking to Arab News on Sunday, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former chief of the Saudi Public Intelligence Department, said the US had failed Saudi Arabia, the strongest rebuke of the Biden’s administration from a leading elite Saudi figure to date.
But what about that call? According to al-Faisal, the crown prince intentionally ignored his call and reportedly said that he doesn’t care what the hell Biden thinks.
“The president of the US, in his election campaign, said that he will make Saudi Arabia a pariah. And, of course, he went on to practice what he preached,” Prince Turki, who previously also served as Saudi ambassador to both the US and UK, said.
“First of all, by stopping the joint operations that America had with the kingdom in meeting the challenge of the Houthi-led rebellion in Yemen against the Yemeni people and, second, among other similar actions, by not meeting [Crown Prince Mohammed].”
“The fact that President Biden delisted the Houthis from the terrorist list has emboldened them and made them even more aggressive in their attacks on Saudi Arabia, as well as on the UAE,” he added.
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