US President Joe Biden on Friday revealed he had told Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to expect major changes in the US-Saudi bilateral relationship.
In an interview with Univision, Biden said he had spoken to King Salman on Thursday. "I spoke yesterday with the king... Made it clear to him that the rules are changing and we're going to be announcing significant changes today and on Monday. We are going to hold them accountable for human rights abuses," Biden told Univision.
The changes on Friday mentioned by Biden appeared to be a “Khashoggi Ban" announced by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after a report was submitted to the US Congress on the killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.
“We [Biden administration] immediately, when I got in, filed the report, read it, got it, and released it today. And it is outrageous what happened [to Khashoggi],” Biden said.
Soon after the report's submission, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the Khashoggi Ban that imposes visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing.
Blinken said the Khashoggi Ban allows the State Department to impose visa restrictions on individuals who, acting on behalf of a foreign government, are believed to have been directly engaged in serious extraterritorial counter-dissident activities. These activities include those that suppress, harass, surveil, threaten or harm journalists, activists or other persons perceived to be dissidents for their work or who engage in such activities with respect to the families or other close associates of such persons, he said.
The report on the killing of Khashoggi by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) had created a stir before its submission over its purported references to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man who has been driving key Saudi economic and foreign policies in recent years.
The ODNI report noted Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
ODNI said it based the assessment on the prince's control of decision-making in the Saudi Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Mohammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation and his support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.
"Since 2017, the crown prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom's security and intelligence organisations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the prince's authorisation," stated the report.
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ODNI said it has high confidence that nearly a dozen individuals participated in, ordered or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Khashoggi on behalf of the prince. Khashoggi had visited the consulate for documents for his marriage to a Turkish woman. The prince in 2019 had said he took “full responsibility” for the killing since it happened on his watch, but denied ordering it.
The killing of Khashoggi had strained US-Saudi ties even as the previous Donald Trump administration had attempted to downplay the issue in pursuit of US goals to contain Iran.
(With PTI inputs)
