A ‘welcome reset’

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi analyst close to the kingdom’s royal court, sees Biden’s visit as a tonic for damaged relations. 

“I think the mistake that the Biden administration made was it took its campaign rhetoric into the administration” and that “hit a wall of realism,” he told CNBC. 

The visit, he said, “is a reset. And I think it’s a welcome reset. Because the relationship is important to the kingdom also. And they would like those clouds to pass.”

“I think by virtue of visiting the kingdom he puts that behind him, and that allows things to go back to where they were with America previously,” Shihabi added.

Biden says human rights will still be high on his agenda. But many observers say that’s unlikely, given the other security and energy-related interests in focus. 

“Biden is hardly the first president to run on a ‘human rights will be central to my foreign policy’ platform, only to be confronted in office by the realities of the Middle East,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. 

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the White House did not reply to CNBC requests for comment.

Oil and Israel

Biden has downplayed what many analysts say is his administration’s desperate need to see the Saudis and OPEC members pump more oil, in order to ease record-high gas prices for Americans. 

“Absent the war in Ukraine, the tightening of the oil market and the spiking of oil prices, there would be no rapprochement with Saudi Arabia,” Martin Indyk, a former U.S. diplomat and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview with the Financial Times. 

But Biden has largely rejected this, stressing Israel’s security as a top priority. The trip “has to do with national security for them — for Israelis,” he told reporters in June. This could be an effort to shift the narrative to a topic that’s more broadly supported in Washington: Republicans and a majority of Democrats back Israeli-Arab normalization.

The fact that Biden will be flying from Israel directly to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is one small hint of progress on that goal. Biden’s administration has also been pushing for more military interoperability between Israel and Arab states to form a unified U.S.-guided coalition that would create more leverage against Iran.

But any overt engagement is highly unlikely, with security cooperation between the kingdom and Israel likely continuing “behind the scenes” as it has for several years, according to Torbjorn Soltvedt, principal MENA analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft. 

What does Saudi Arabia want?

While critics have said the meeting will put the ball entirely in the Saudis’ court, there are some things the kingdom very much wants from the U.S. – primarily, an ironclad guarantee of security.

“Enhanced air defense,” said Shihabi. “Air defense is absolutely crucial for the importance of the whole peninsula, the whole [Gulf Cooperation Council], and I think that is where Biden can make a big difference. A more formal commitment of resources that would secure the airspace of the GCC would be the big ask.“

Biden angered the Saudis when he withdrew America’s Patriot missile batteries and other advanced military systems from Saudi Arabia last year, even as the kingdom was being hit by missile and rocket attacks from Yemen’s Houthi rebels and other Iran-backed groups.   

‘Unlikely to lead to a breakthrough’

Despite having a number of shared interests, Biden may still fail to make a breakthrough in relations, says Verisk Maplecroft’s Soltvedt.

“U.S. calls on Saudi Arabia to increase the rate of oil production have fallen on deaf ears. This is unlikely to change,” he said.

Biden’s advisors have also talked about Saudi Arabia committing to stay fully aligned with the U.S. versus Russia and China. But some warn that the rapprochement effort won’t achieve that.

“There’s little to suggest that Biden’s strategy of showering the Saudi crown prince … with concessions will bring about a sustainable Saudi-Emirati commitment to the U.S. side in the great power competition of this century,” Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in an op-ed for MSNBC.

He argued that making a military commitment to protecting the Saudis and other Gulf allies is not in U.S. interests.

“Committing American lives to defend these Arab dictatorships is far more scandalous than an embarrassing presidential handshake with the Saudi crown prince,” Parsi said. “Biden will in one swoop break his promises of bringing troops home from the Middle East, making Saudi Arabia pay a price and ending the war in Yemen.” 

Still, others contend that a strong relationship with Saudi leadership, specifically with the crown prince, is vital to maintaining U.S. influence in the region — and the world. 

“Great power competition with China is not possible by walking away from the Gulf region and hoping for the best,” the Arab Gulf States Institute’s Ibish said. “To the contrary, it means continued engagement.”

“It is a plausible partnership because of broad, shared mutual interests,” he added, “even though the values are not shared or mutual in many cases.”