Riyadh has sided with Moscow on oil

More recently, US President Joe Biden was throwing thunder and lightning at Saudi Arabia. First, he removed the secrecy stamp from the report blaming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Then the United States reviewed arms deals with this country. And in a telephone conversation with Saudi King Salman, Biden said that "the rules of the game have changed”, and the United States no longer intends to put up with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia.

After that, the world started talking about the new course of the United States in the Middle East, and that in the upcoming alignment of forces in this region, Riyadh's position will look shaky, although for years it has been a loyal ally of the United States and a kind of fulcrum of their policy in the region.

Why, three years later, the United States decided to use the fact of Khashoggi's murder to worsen relations with its strategic ally in the Middle East is not entirely clear. Some experts tend to believe that this topic was used by the Biden administration in connection with its willingness to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, which broke the previous combination of Donald Trump-Israel-Saudi Arabia.

Recall that an anti-Iranian bloc was being built around it in the region, the Arab-Israeli settlement was being promoted. At the same time, the United States made US-Saudi relations a demonstrative example of how America would build its ties with allies almost all over the world. And suddenly Biden decided to throw everything down the drain because of Iran.

Whatever one may say, there is something left unsaid in this intrigue: the Iranian argument is strong, but unconvincing. Even if we accept the version of American experts who claim that Washington's abrupt U-turn against Riyadh is connected with the arrival in the White House of left-wing fundamentalist liberals who planned to democratise Saudi Arabia.

Then the Saudis reacted harshly and warned about their own retaliatory sanctions - up to the withdrawal of investments from America. But, in our opinion, they were almost the first in the Middle East to feel the big changes approaching both in the world and in the region and began to establish relations with Russia.

Of course, cooperation in the oil market came to the fore: since the end of 2016, the so-called OPEC+ deal (where the Saudis and Russians are the main players) began to operate. But oil is only part of the Russian-Saudi rapprochement.

While the Americans were smashing Iraq and occupying Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia was making various approaches to Moscow, but concentrated mainly on the Iranian topic. It was important for Riyadh to keep its finger on the pulse in Iranian-Russian relations. It gradually began to distance itself from the West as a whole.

Without going into details and plots of the situation in the Middle East that has been developing in various recent times, Saudi Arabia has turned to Russia, ignoring the objections of the Americans. A trusting political relationship has been established between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.

Major military and energy agreements have been reached between the two countries. Now it has even come to the point that the prince has expressed a desire to act as a mediator in the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.

In short, the Russian-Saudi dialogue has largely confused the cards for the Americans, who did not expect the Russian-Saudi partnership to reach such a level. Moreover, within the framework of OPEC, the cards are mixed by the fact that the leader of the organisation and Russia are going to the world oil consortium. And here is the result.

Despite Biden's request to increase oil production in order to lower fuel prices, Saudi Arabia refused. According to the American edition of The Wall Street Journal, "Saudi Arabia faced a dilemma: to help the West cope with the rise in fuel prices or to adhere to the OPEC agreement, which is beneficial to Moscow and increases Washington's spending," and "the world's largest exporter of crude oil decided to side with Russia”.

In this regard, the American website Axios reports that President Biden's advisers are discussing the possibility of his visit to Saudi Arabia in the spring, "to convince Riyadh to increase oil production”. By the way, the increase in supplies is being discussed against the background of the ban on oil imports from Russia being considered by Congress due to its military operation in Ukraine.

If this visit takes place, Biden will be forced to step on his "Saudi song", because he will show the seriousness of the global energy crisis. According to Reuters, the United States is trying to conduct an anti-Russian "game" in the energy market, holding meetings with officials of OPEC countries, weighing the consequences of a ban on the import of liquid hydrocarbons from Russia, the second largest oil exporter in the world. And their conclusion: no one can replace Russian energy resources on the world market. Then what can we expect from Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia?