Biden's trips to Saudi Arabia, "Israel" postponed: NBC News
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The US president's visit to Saudi Arabia - whom he deems a 'pariah' - and Washington's spoiled child, "Israel", has been postponed, according to officials.
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Joe Biden, feeling happy.
US President Joe Biden's visits to Saudi Arabia and "Israel" have been postponed till July, NBC News reported. The postponed trip will see an expansion, a "broader trip to the Middle East," according to the sources.
“We are working on a trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia for a GCC+3 Summit,” a senior administration official told NBC News. “We are working to confirm dates. When we have something to announce, we will.”
One foreign diplomat, in addition to two US officials, revealed that the visit to Saudi Arabia will no longer be carried out in June. Two other US officials said that the "Israel" visit was being postponed, although both visits were scheduled along with visits to Germany and Spain this month.
The motive behind the postponement was not clear, however. The dates, furthermore, could even change again. The White House declined to comment, and the Israeli and the Saudi embassies in the US did not respond to any questions.
Biden is about to set all his 'moral' reasonings aside as he makes his visit to Saudi Arabia, despite dubbing the country a 'pariah' state for killing Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The US will be setting its positions aside for the energy and oil crisis which has risen as a result of the NATO-fueled war on Russian oil and exports.
Read more: US-Saudi relations reach 'breaking point' - WSJ
The US president is expected to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman -the man behind Khashoggi's assassination- once he lands in Riyadh, despite his assertions that his meetings would exclusively be with King Salman bin Abdulaziz as he is his proper counterpart.
He will also meet with the heads of several Arab nations, including Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan.
The visit will see Biden abandoning many of the "morals" he has been trying to uphold before the public, and it all goes back to the Ukraine war, as Washington deems it necessary to have other energy producers on its side after it sanctioned Russia out of the global oil market.
Reports about the visit - ironically - come the same day as White House Spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre said Biden's "pariah" remarks about Saudi Arabia still stood.
Jean-Pierre was asked how after US intelligence assessed that MBS was behind the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, to which she replied that a visit to Saudi Arabia would be consistent with Biden's remarks last year that Saudi Arabia would "pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are."
