Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola

The Saudis are playing real hardball these days, because they know they have President Biden and the West over a barrel (of oil).

 

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hit back at Joe Biden after the US President confronted him about the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a meeting between the two leaders on Friday. 

In the meeting, Bin Salman, also known as MBS, denied responsibility for the killing of Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. Biden said he indicated that he disagreed with MBS, based on US intelligence assessments, according to the source. 

In response to Biden bringing up Khashoggi, MBS cited the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison by US military personnel and the May killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank as incidents that reflected poorly on the US, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters on Saturday. 

"The Crown Prince responded to President Biden's remarks on ... Khashoggi after quite clearly -- that this crime, while very unfortunate and abhorrent, is something that the kingdom took very seriously (and) acted upon in a way commiserate with its position as a responsible country," bin Farhan said. "These are issues, mistakes that happen in any country, including the US. The Crown Prince pointed out that the US has made its own mistakes and has taken the necessary action to hold those responsible accountable and address these mistakes just as the kingdom has." 

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir echoed the sentiment in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer shortly after the end of the meeting, which Jubeir was part of. 

"We investigated, punished and ensure that this doesn't happen again," Jubeir said when asked about the Khashoggi murder. "This is what countries do. This is what the US did when the mistake of Abu Ghraib was committed."

 

On top of that,  the Saudis are publicly talking about joining China and Russia and the other BRICS nations...according to Russia and China, anyway...

The president of the BRICS International Forum expects Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to join the group "very soon". In an interview with Russia's Izvestia, Purnima Anand said that China, Russia and India discussed this issue during the 14th BRICS Summit, which was held online last month.

"All these countries have shown an interest in joining and are preparing to apply for membership. I think this is a good step, because expansion is always perceived positively; this will clearly increase the influence of BRICS in the world," explained Anand. "I hope that the accession of countries to BRICS will happen very quickly, because now all representatives of the core of the association are interested in expanding the organisation, so it will be very soon."

She stressed that the accession of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey may not take place at the same time.

Earlier, Li Kexin, Director-General of the Department of International Economic Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that several countries were "knocking on the doors" of the organisation, including Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Argentina.

The BRICS forum is a political organisation that began negotiations for its formation in 2006 and held its first summit in 2009. Its members were the countries with emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, operating under the name BRIC, before South Africa joined the organisation in 2010, making it BRICS.

The organisation's countries are characterised as being among the industrialised developing countries with large and emerging economies. Half of the world's population lives in these five countries, and their combined gross domestic product is equivalent to that of the US ($13.6 trillion). Their total foreign exchange reserves are $4 trillion.

 

If the Saudis, Egypt, and Turkey actually did this, it would mean massive chaos in the oil markets and in NATO itself, which is what Russia and China want. But right now, having them pretend that this is possible serves all of those country's individual interests, especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Realpolitik is a bitch at times.