Opinion: The New Geopolitics Of The Middle East
NDTV
Saudi diplomacy has gone into overdrive these days. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is in France to participate in the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact to be held in Paris next week. He will be in France for around 10 days and hopes to drum up support for Saudi Arabia's candidacy to host the Expo 2030 world's fair.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was in Riyadh trying to re-establish engagement with the Saudis after US President Joe Biden's not-so-successful visit last year. Meanwhile, the Saudis have continued their engagement with Russia and even Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro visited Saudi Arabia and met with the crown prince before Blinken's visit. Topping it all was the Arab-China business conference hosted by Riyadh recently where investment deals worth multi-billion dollars were signed between China and the Arab nations.
Life seems to have come a full circle for Mohammed bin Salman, who was ostracized by the western world after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, ostensibly at the behest of the crown prince himself.
The US has had the most difficult time adjusting to the new realities as Biden had been vociferous in his denunciation of MBS, suggesting during his 2019 election campaign that he would treat Riyadh like "the pariah that they are" if he was elected. Biden was positioning himself against his predecessor Donald Trump's nonchalant attitude toward human rights violations by the Saudi regime and soon after his election, a national intelligence assessment concluded that MBS approved the operation that resulted in the death of Khashoggi, leading to some serious measures against Riyadh, including a visa ban on around 76 Saudi citizens.
