WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden's much-anticipated trip to Saudi Arabia has been formally set for next month, the White House announced Tuesday, but officials played down the chances of securing much immediate help in stabilizing energy markets roiled by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
From July 13-16, Biden is planning to visit Israel, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia, according to White House officials who for the first time formally confirmed an itinerary that has been debated for weeks within the administration. It will mark Biden's first trip to Israel as president and will come nearly 50 years after he first visited the country as a young senator.
A formal White House statement announcing the trip mentioned human rights as one of a group of issues expected to come up, along with climate change, Iran's nuclear program and the war in Yemen.
He will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the reported mastermind of the 2018 assassination of a Saudi dissident with U.S. ties.
As a candidate for president, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia "pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are" because of the murder.
When he was pressed recently about his vow to make the country a "pariah," Biden responded by suggesting he was driven by a desire to promote Middle East peace as well as bring down gas prices for Americans.
"I'm not going to change my view on human rights, but as president of the United States, my job is to bring peace," Biden said. "And that's what I'm going to try to do."
After taking office, he ordered the release of an intelligence report tying Mohammed to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, and imposed modest sanctions on lower-level figures. But with gasoline prices marching steadily upward and Russian energy increasingly shunned, analysts said Biden could ill afford to keep one of the world's largest oil producers at arm's length much longer.
Biden and his staff have insisted in recent days that the decision to visit Saudi Arabia -- effectively relieving it of pariah status -- had more to do with security issues than the price of gasoline.
"The commitments from the Saudis don't relate to anything having to do with energy," Biden told reporters Sunday, citing national security concerns. "It has to do with much larger issues than having to do with the energy piece."
While energy will be a point of discussion, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that the relationship between the nations was far more complex than that.
"To look at this trip as it being only about oil is not -- it would be simply wrong to do that," she said.
OPEC Plus, the group of oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia, already announced this month that it would increase production modestly in July and August.
American officials have said they expect the bloc to ratchet it up even more in the fall. But that commitment has had little effect thus far on the price at the pump, which hit $5 a gallon on average in the United States this weekend for the first time.
An administration official who briefed reporters on the president's trip on condition of anonymity according to White House ground rules said Biden would meet in Jeddah with Mohammed, but would not say whether the president would raise the Khashoggi case.
Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday that Biden stood by his previous comments about the Khashoggi killing.
"We're not overlooking any conduct that happened before the president took office," she said.
A statement issued by the Saudi government mentioned many of the same issues as the White House statement, but not human rights or Khashoggi.
"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia looks forward to welcoming President Biden and defining the next chapters of our partnership," the statement said.
"The partnership between our two countries," it added, "is as critical as ever to the promotion of peace, prosperity and stability around the world."
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States and the former intelligence chief for the kingdom, pushed back at Washington last week about its criticism, pointing to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the military abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq War and wrongful convictions in the U.S. justice system.
"These are a few human rights infringements in the U.S. that require not only presidential action but also congressional and Senate adjudication," he wrote in Arab News. "Members of both houses have been vociferously critical of the kingdom on human rights issues. Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones."
VOLATILE REGION
Biden will be traveling to the region at a time of enormous volatility. Negotiations to revive a 2015 pact in which Iran would once again forswear its pursuit of nuclear weapons appear to be faltering, raising fears that Israel might take action on its own, with tacit support from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states that also consider Iran a threat.
But Israel's fragile governing coalition, led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, has been teetering, and there is no guarantee it will last even until Biden's visit. At the same time, the president will try to restore America's place as more of an honest broker between the Israelis and Palestinians after the yearslong pro-Israeli tilt of former President Donald Trump and reaffirm America's support for a two-state solution.
Biden will also meet with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, the first such presidential meeting since Trump's 2017 visit before their relationship fractured. Biden is likely to meet with Abbas in Bethlehem, Israel.
"The president will begin his travel in Israel, where he will meet with Israeli leaders to discuss Israel's security, prosperity and its increasing integration into the greater region," Jean-Pierre said in a statement confirming the trip. "The president will also visit the West Bank to consult with the Palestinian Authority and to reiterate his strong support for a two-state solution, with equal measures of security, freedom and opportunity for the Palestinian people."
He will encourage the growing normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states under the so-called Abraham Accords kicked off in Trump's final months in office.
Aides said Biden would also participate in a virtual summit meeting with fellow leaders of a new bloc called the I2-U2, which stands for Israel, India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
During the trip to Saudi Arabia, Biden will attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. That summit will also include Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.
In defending the president's decision to travel to Saudi Arabia after branding it a pariah state, officials said he always meant to recalibrate the relationship rather than rupture it altogether and insisted he still stood for human rights.
But they emphasized Saudi cooperation in brokering a truce in the long-running war in neighboring Yemen between the Saudi-led coalition and Iran-backed Houthi rebels, which has shattered the country and left millions hungry and impoverished. The truce, now in its ninth week, was just renewed for another two months, and officials said it illustrated the benefits of U.S. engagement with Saudi Arabia.
Information for this article was contributed by Peter Baker of The New York Times and by Matt Viser of The Washington Post.