President Joe Biden rounded off a less-than-convincing tour of the Middle East with a high-stakes visit to Saudi Arabia. This was shortly after having made little diplomatic headway in Israel and the West Bank – Israeli missiles struck a Gaza arms factory hours after the president had left the occupied West Bank (France24).  Biden, with a view to the November mid-term elections, presumably was aiming to shore up fresh supplies of Saudi oil.

At a summit attended by Biden in the country’s commercial heart of Jeddah, the oil-rich nation promised to increase production from eleven to thirteen million barrels a day, its maximum capacity. Although thirteen million barrels of oil a day would provide sorely needed alternatives to Russian fuel, importers of Arabian energy may find there is a political price to pay.

While on the election trail in 2020, Biden labelled the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, a “pariah”. This was primarily for his involvement, as verified by American intelligence, in the assassination of Saudi journalist, Washington Post correspondent, and regime critique Jamal Khashoggi. Biden even refused to pick up the phone to bin Salman during his first four months in office. The president maintained that he would not be meeting with him as recently as four weeks earlier.

Undemocratic and in possession of a poor human-rights record, the Kingdom is embodied in its 37-year-old ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Known colloquially as ‘MBS’, bin Salman was King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s seventh and favourite son in 2017. He then rose to prominence when he replaced his nephew and rival Muhammad bin Nayef as Crown Prince. Shortly after, he cemented his status as de-facto ruler of the Arab kingdom through a purge of wealthy businessmen and princes.

Critics of ‘MBS’ point to his spotty record on women’s issues and the contentious diplomatic episodes he has embroiled himself in such as the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a bombing campaign in an already emaciated Yemen, a spat with Canada, detaining the Lebanese prime minister, severing ties with Qatar and the alleged hacking of Jeff Bezos’s phone – owner of both The Washington Post and Amazon.

Bin Salman’s efforts to improve his country’s image have seen the powers of the religious police curtailed and expanding freedoms granted to women, including moderation of the male guardianship system. During his tenure, women have performed at concerts, attended sports stadiums, and have been allowed into the drivers’ seats of cars, all for the very first time in Saudi Arabia. The country plans to reduce its economic reliance on oil through ‘Saudi Vision 2030’, a programme for improving its offerings in technology and tourism.

Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée castigated President Biden for meeting with the purported mastermind of her would-be husband’s murder, saying that the “blood” of the Crown Prince’s “next victim” would be on his hands (New York Post). Greeting bin Salman with a casual fist-bump, Biden exposed the frailty of his earlier resolve to stand up to autocratic bullies. The Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs provided Western audiences a different interpretation of events past, saying that whom one may call a dissident, ‘we call a terrorist. What you may call somebody expressing their opinion, we call incitement.’ He played down the coarse remarks made about his superior by Biden as something said during the ‘silly season’ of an election campaign (BBC Word News).

While the capacity of the Arabian world to produce oil appears to be reaching its limit, opening up new stores of non-renewable energy in America remains at odds with the Democrat’s Green agenda. Returning home without an apology for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at a time of soaring petrol prices, Biden has opened his presidency to criticism from those who favour increasing fossil fuel production in America and human-rights activists alike. Biden will hope to muscle out the likes of Russia and China in the region by maintaining an American relationship with Saudi Arabia. For now however, the political risks of ineffectual diplomacy in the Middle East appear more troublesome than not.