CIA Director William Burns recently visited Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, the Wall Street Journal reported on the 3rd (local time). Although the United States and Saudi Arabia are traditional allies, it is noteworthy that the visit was evaluated as the coldest since the signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty in 1951.
According to the WSJ, Burns met Crown Prince Mohammed in private in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in mid-March. It is not known what kind of conversation the two men had, but it is speculated that they were discussing the restoration of the Iranian nuclear agreement (JCPOA), which is hostile to Saudi Arabia, and the issue of increasing oil production due to the Ukraine war.
Director Burns’ visit is interpreted as an attempt to restore relations with Saudi Arabia. The beginning of the cooling of relations between the two countries was provided in 2018 by the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Turkey. After Joe Biden took office in January last year, the US government publicly criticized Crown Prince Mohammed as being behind the incident. When White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who visited Saudi Arabia in September last year, brought up the issue, Crown Prince bin Salman said, “It would be better to forget regarding the request to increase oil production.”
Since then, the United States has tried to normalize relations, but Saudi Arabia has been blatantly opposed. As oil prices soared due to the recent war in Ukraine, the United States requested an increase in oil production, but Saudi Arabia refused. There is also an interpretation that the United States might not only watch Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which were experiencing economic boom due to high oil prices, move away from the United States and become closer to Russia and China. According to the WSJ, the US government said that Burns’ visit had softened the mood of the Saudi royal family. A US government official said, “The content of the conversation was informative and there was a good atmosphere.”
Saudi Arabia’s economic growth in the first quarter of this year increased by 9.6% compared to the same period last year, the highest in 11 years. The UAE’s economic growth rate is expected to grow at 4.2% this year, the highest since 2015. On the other hand, the inflation rate is stable. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that consumer price inflation in Saudi Arabia and the UAE will be only 2.5% and 3.7%, respectively.
Cairo = Correspondent Hwang Seong-ho hsh0330@donga.com
