A fist bump at the palace: Biden squares off with MBS

President Joe Biden came face-to-face with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday and exchanged a fist bump with the kingdom’s de facto ruler, marking perhaps the most closely watched moment yet of the American president’s trip to the Middle East this week.

Neither Saudi Arabia’s King Salman nor the crown prince were in attendance at King Abdulaziz International Airport to meet Biden following Air Force One’s landing in the port city of Jeddah. Instead, Biden was received by various other Saudi officials including the governor of the country’s Mecca Province and the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

But upon Biden’s arrival at Al Salam Royal Palace, where he was scheduled to participate in a meeting with the king, the crown prince was on hand to greet the president as he stepped out of his vehicle. Biden and bin Salman then fist-bumped one another before walking inside.

That brief public interaction between the two leaders had been highly anticipated ahead of the Saudi leg of Biden’s Middle East trip. It was all the more notable after White House officials told reporters on Wednesday that Biden would seek to limit his handshaking while abroad as a precautionary measure amid an increase in cases of Covid-19 variants.

Still, Biden shook hands with and embraced several Israeli and Palestinian officials prior to arriving in Saudi Arabia, prompting speculation over how the president planned to address the crown prince — whom Biden pledged to make an international pariah during the 2020 presidential campaign.

After entering the palace, the crown prince led the president and the U.S. delegation to an ornate, parlor-style reception area where Biden took his seat beside the king. On Biden’s side of the room, Secretary of State Antonty Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan sat stationed along the wall, while bin Salman flanked his father across from them.

Biden has weathered significant scrutiny for his decision to visit Saudi Arabia considering his past criticisms of the kingdom and the 2018 assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Last February, the Biden administration made public a U.S. intelligence report which found that bin Salman approved the operation that led to Khashoggi’s killing in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Saudi operatives brutally murdered the U.S. resident and dismembered his body.

At a news conference in Jerusalem on Thursday, Biden defended his upcoming travel to Saudi Arabia and did not explicitly commit to raising Khashoggi’s assassination in conversations with bin Salman.

“I always bring up human rights,” Biden told reporters. “But my position on Khashoggi has been so clear. If anyone doesn’t understand it in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else, then they haven’t been around for a while.”

Although Biden vowed to take a tougher line toward Saudi Arabia than former President Donald Trump, his visit to the oil-rich country comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a global energy crisis and a spike in gas prices in the United States.

On Saturday, the president will attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt, Iraq and Jordan — known as the GCC+3 — where Biden is expected to discuss ramping up oil production with the member states.

Biden told reporters last month that he would not directly ask Saudi Arabia to boost its production during the visit, but he acknowledged that he had “indicated” to the GCC+3 nations “that I thought they should be increasing oil production generically.”

“It’s in Saudi Arabia. It’s not about Saudi Arabia. It’s in Saudi Arabia,” Biden added of the summit. “There’s a whole range of things that go well beyond anything having to do with Saudi Arabia.”