JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia – As President Biden told the story, it sounded quite dramatic.
After meeting with crown prince Mohammed bin Salmande facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, the president insisted on Friday for the first time since taking office that he blamed him emphatically for the murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
“He basically said he wasn’t personally responsible for it,” Biden told reporters. “I stated that I thought he was.”
The White House did not withdraw on Saturday. “The president was very clear about the conversation and we stand by his statement,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council.
President Biden’s Visit to the Middle East
The US president traveled to Israel and Saudi Arabia after calling the latter a “pariah” state after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist.
It was in the interests of both parties to allow the meeting to take place behind closed doors. Biden has been denounced by human rights groups, media organizations and politicians in both parties for a meeting with the Crown Prince, who, according to the CIA ordered the 2018 operation involving Mr Khashoggi . perished, a native of the United States and a columnist for The Washington Post. By promoting how tough he was behind closed doors, the president clearly hoped to allay some of the criticism for abandoning his campaign promise to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah.”
The Saudis, for their part, were eager to present the meeting as a return to normalcy between the leaders of two longtime allies, and had every hope of minimizing the lasting impact of the Khashoggi case. Mr Jubeir confirmed to reporters that Mr Biden had raised the issue but characterized it in less confrontational terms. The last thing the Saudis wanted was the image of a president lecturing their young leader.
Indeed, both sides were keenly tuned in to the choreography of the encounter. American news photographers traveling in the White House motorcade didn’t get a chance to capture the image of the president greeting the crown prince on his arrival at a palace here, a photo Mr. Biden’s aides feared. The Saudi government, for its part, made sure its official photographers were everywhere and took numerous photos of the two together, which were immediately posted online.
Mr. Biden similarly described a blatant showdown in 1993 with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian nationalist leader who unleashed an ethnic war in the Balkans. “I think you’re a fucking war criminal and you should be tried as such,” Mr Biden, then a senator, said he had told Mr Milosevic, according to a 2007 memoir, to “keep promises”. Some other people in the room later said they didn’t remember that line.
Mr. Biden likes to present himself as championing dictators and crooked figures. Another favorite story came from a meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in 2008, when the Afghan leader denied that his government was overrun with corruption. Mr Biden said he got so annoyed that he knocked down his napkin, declaring: “This dinner is over”, and stormed out.
Often, others in the room before such sessions say that a version of what Mr. Biden described happened, just not with so much camera-ready theatricality. During his presidential campaign, for example, he told a touching story about honoring a war hero, which fact-checkers at The Post later concluded. merged elements of three actual events in a version that didn’t happen.
By offering their softer version of what happened Friday between Mr Biden and Prince Mohammed, the Saudis were trying not to call the president out for misrepresentation. In fact, they seemed intent on avoiding any perception of difference or tension. Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, told reporters the conversation was “candid” when it came to the Khashoggi case.
The question was: how candid?