“No reset of our nation’s relationship with Saudi Arabia can or should be possible without proper reconciliation for the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” the group said in the letter.
The two countries have been trading envoys in recent months. Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, was in Saudi Arabia last week to discuss the presidential visit and other issues. Khalid bin Salman, the deputy defense minister and a brother of the crown prince, visited Washington last month and met with Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments
Card 1 of 4On the ground. As the war in Ukraine approaches its 100th day, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian forces now control one-fifth of the country. Though battered and depleted from their failed drive to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Russian troops are grinding closer to their goal of taking over the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.


Russian oil embargo. European Union members finally reached an agreement on a Russian oil embargo and new sanctions against Russia. The long-delayed deal effectively exempts Hungary, which had opposed the embargo, from the costly step the rest of the bloc is taking to punish Russia.




While Mr. Biden was already moving to recalibrate relations with Saudi Arabia, the imperative became more pronounced with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Russia and Saudi Arabia are close to tied as the world’s second-largest oil producers, meaning that as Biden administration officials sought to cut off one, they concluded they could not afford to be at odds with the other.
The administration was pleased that Saudi Arabia joined an American-backed United Nations resolution condemning Russia in March and that more recently Riyadh sent a message pressing Moscow to release food exports blockaded at the Ukrainian port of Odesa.
The Saudis remain embittered by the Biden presidency, however. In addition to releasing the Khashoggi report and the Sept. 11 documents, the Biden administration removed the terrorism designation of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, reversing a Trump-era policy valued by the Saudis.
Riyadh has also bristled at Mr. Biden’s focus on accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, a process that would undermine its business model. And looming in the background has been the administration’s push to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which the Saudis fear could empower their regional nemesis.
In an interview last month with Arab News, a Saudi news outlet, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the royal family and son of a former king, laid out a number of the kingdom’s grievances against their most important ally, saying that the Saudis felt “let down” by the United States.

Source: New York Times

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