Saudis and UAE Won’t Lower Oil Prices Until Biden Helps Them With This Problem
Biden’s America is in free fall and the whole world knows it.
America, in these halcyon days of Old Joe Biden’s foundering regime, is in free fall, and the whole world knows it. As PJM’s inimitable Stephen Green put it recently, “The alleged American president’s response to the Ukraine War has been so detrimental to America’s own interests that everyone sees him as weak. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that two of the Middle East’s richest petrostates wouldn’t even take Biden’s call,” that is, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The reasons for the unprecedented snub are clear: the Saudis and the UAE know that Biden is not a serious character, and they also know that his handlers are not likely to give him the one thing they want most from the United States: help against Iran.
Old Joe was trying to get in touch with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, both of whom are the de facto rulers of their respective countries, to try to get some relief for skyrocketing gas prices. The UK’s Daily Mail reported that “as oil prices push over $130 a barrel for the first time in almost 14 years, the two Gulf countries are the only major oil producers that can pump millions more barrels of more oil to calm the crude market at a time when American gasoline prices are at high levels.”
They’re the only major oil producers who can help, but they won’t, at least not until they get some assistance from Old Joe regarding Yemen. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Shi’ite Houthis are waging jihad against the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Biden’s handlers, anxious to replicate Barack Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear deal, are making concession after concession to the Iranian mullahs. The Saudis and the UAE have noticed and want Biden to play ball with them before they will consider lowering oil prices.
Saudi Arabia can hardly be classified as a totally reliable ally of the United States, particularly given lingering questions about the extent of its involvement at the highest levels in the 9/11 jihad attacks. However, it is a notable bulwark against Iran in the region, and so many on both sides of the aisle see the utility of the American alliance with the kingdom. That group, however, apparently does not include Biden’s handlers. In September 2021, they quietly removed an advanced missile defense system from Saudi Arabia, heedless of the fact that the Saudis were suffering ongoing air attacks from the Houthis in Yemen.
This was yet another attempt to appease the mullahs in Tehran. The Saudi Defense Ministry shrugged it off, saying its relationship with the U.S. was “strong, longstanding and historic,” and adding: “The redeployment of some defense capabilities of the friendly United States of America from the region is carried out through common understanding and realignment of defense strategies as an attribute of operational deployment and disposition.” However, the former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services, Prince Turki al-Faisal, sounded a dissenting note, saying: “I think we need to be reassured about American commitment. That looks like, for example, not withdrawing Patriot missiles from Saudi Arabia at a time when Saudi Arabia is the victim of missile attacks and drone attacks — not just from Yemen, but from Iran.”
In the context of all this, it is important to remember what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on November 5, 2020: that “the next U.S. administration will surrender to the Iranian nation.” This wasn’t just tough talk. In light of Biden’s handlers’ apparent willingness to give the mullahs all they want and more, it was a sober assessment of the geopolitical situation.
And now it is bearing bitter fruit. Biden and the U.S. are in this bind all because Biden’s handlers wanted to vindicate Obama and discredit Trump. Obama’s ridiculously weak Iran nuclear deal was his cornerstone foreign policy achievement, but then Trump skewered it — correctly — as the worst deal any American administration has ever concluded, and got us out of it. Now Biden’s handlers are so desperate to shore up Obama’s sagging legacy that they’re willing to turn their backs on our allies and empower an enemy rogue state that chants “Death to America” to do it. When you’re taking out a second mortgage to pay for a tank of gas, you can thank Old Joe for doing everything he had to do to get his Iran deal.