Joe Biden is jetting off to Jeddah. He plans to beg the Arabs for more oil but he isn’t going to get a warm reception when he arrives. As CNN warns their readers, “don’t expect sword dances.” Not from a country he recently accused of having “no redeeming social value.” His Wisdom is making a stop in Israel first and he’s already screwing up the official story.
Don’t offend the Arabs even worse
Joe Biden’s biggest challenge will be not offending the Arabs any more than he already has. Nobody expects him to be welcomed with open arms and sword dances as his Mid-East calming predecessor was. He’ll be happy if he doesn’t get stabbed with one of those swords. Even so, things are expected to get politically touchy when Joe gets introduced to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday.
They found an excuse to get him out of shaking hands with the politically unpopular prince by blaming it on the need for Covid fist bumps. Biden already blew it by shaking hands with everyone he knows in Israel, then hugging some ladies later. He’s already had his hands on half the population. That’s not going to go over well in Jeddah.
Oil prices here in the U.S. aren’t at the highest point in eight years because of a shortage in the supply of oil on the market. Our pain at the pump is caused by a shortage of refineries in the United States. We don’t have any because the Democrats made them so unpopular and difficult to build.
Joe is headed to the Mid-East to talk the Arabs out of loosening the valves on production but it’s for different economic reasons.
The Arabs are expected to make polite noises and tell Joe that they will do what they can because it seems the market could handle some more oil. Then, they’ll tell him they need to talk it over with Vladimir Putin first. He’s the newest member of the OPEC club and has a lot of weight to throw around.
He’ll be paying a visit to the Mid-East this month, too. Vlad wants to sit down and kick things around with the Ayatollah in Iran. It seems the countries which have been slapped down hard with U.S. sanctions need to stick together.
Carefully choreographed optics
The palace propaganda ministry staff are popping anti-anxiety pills like skittles as they try to keep Joe Biden from doing a political faceplant. If he says the wrong thing over there, the Arabs could end up throwing rocks at them. The first step in “carefully choreographing the optics” is to keep Biden as far from the Saudi capital of Riyadh as they can.
This, the administration makes crystal clear, “isn’t a state visit.” He’s not even there. To back that up, they will have a little tea party in Jeddah, conveniently located along the Red Sea for photo backgrounds.
As soon as Biden usurped office, the official policy on Arabs changed. “Biden would interact with Saudi Arabia on the head-of-state level.” They “re-calibrated” the Saudi-US relationship so that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, “the de facto ruler of the kingdom – would be shunned and dealings would only be with the king.”
Guess who Biden will be not shaking hands with this weekend. The latest word from the spin doctors is that they plan to “reset” the Riyadh re-calibration.
CNN says its really important to watch out for what happens when the two top dogs get unchained in the same room. They advise to watch out for a “public handshake between Biden and MBS, or a photo-op; Biden directly addressing MBS as a leader of Saudi Arabia.”
The most powerful message which Biden could send the Arabs is a “one-on-one meeting between the two.” American officials note that “Saudi Arabia is seeking a viable strategy to deal with Iran as well as U.S. security commitments should nuclear talks with Tehran fail.“
