Saudi crown prince canceled China trip to listen to Biden’s call with his father: Report

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) canceled his scheduled trip to China last month because apparently he wanted to listen to US President Joe Biden’s call with his father King Salman, a report says.

Early last month, the Saudi crown prince, also known as the kingdom’s de facto ruler, missed the Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony despite being on China’s official list of attendees.

MBS was one of the most high-profile world leaders due to attend the ceremony, which was diplomatically boycotted by some Western countries including the US, the UK, and Canada.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said at the time that the Saudi prince skipped the event because of “scheduling reasons.”

But CNN Arabic on Friday quoted two sources familiar with the situation as saying that the real reason was so that Mohammed bin Salman could listen to the call between Biden and his father on February 9.

The sources said MBS listened to the call but did not speak.

The network added that the Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

CNN also quoted a US official as saying that the call included a discussion about ensuring the stability of global oil supplies, and paved the way for two senior Biden officials to travel to Saudi Arabia.

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Days later, Brett McGurk, the White House’s top Middle East official, and Amos Hochstein, the US State Department’s energy envoy, traveled to Riyadh to meet MBS and a number of top Saudi officials, including Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.

“[The trip] was set up by the call,” a senior administration official said. “It wasn’t decided in advance.”

Failed re-calibration?

The report comes days after the Wall Street Journal reported that MBS had recently refused to answer the US president’s call.

According to the American daily, the White House unsuccessfully tried to arrange calls between Biden and the de facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, MBS and Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), amid US attempts to contain a surge in oil prices.

“There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,” said a US official of the planned discussion between Biden and MBS. “It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].”

The White House’s desperate attempt to contact the Saudi crown prince comes as the Biden administration declared last year that it sought to “re-calibrate” its relations with Saudi Arabia, and refused to arrange a call between Biden and MBS.

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Under the decision, the White House explained, Biden’s counterpart is King Salman, not his son, and Mohammed bin Salman was told to communicate with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.

Riyadh’s intimate relationship with Washington has turned sour under the Biden administration, which published an assessment by US intelligence agencies that concluded MBS personally ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The Biden administration, however, has neither punished the prince nor halted its support for Saudi Arabia’s bloody war on Yemen.

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