Biden expected to visit Saudi Arabia later this month

(Image credit: Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 2 June 2022

President Biden, wanting to rebuild ties with Saudi Arabia, plans on visiting Riyadh later this month, three administration officials told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Biden is expected to add Saudi Arabia to a travel itinerary that already includes stops in Israel, Germany, and Spain. His visit also will likely include a meeting with the country's crown prince and de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman.

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Saudi Arabia is an oil-rich country, and this turnaround is part of efforts by Biden to lower soaring gas prices in the United States, officials told the Post. They also shared that members of the administration were divided on whether the visit should include a forum with bin Salman. "A meeting with bin Salman was eventually seen as a necessary act of realpolitik to lower energy prices and inflation, despite a campaign promise to further isolate Riyadh," the Post's Tyler Pager and John Hudson write. "Whether this move will substantially lower the price of oil is far from clear."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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