Saudi Crown Prince Was ‘Shouting’ at Biden’s National Security Advisor After He Brought Up Khashoggi’s Murder

AYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images)

The first meeting between U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman apparently did not go very well.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that bin Salman ending up yelling at Sullivan for raising the issue of the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Khashoggi, a Saudi, had been critical of bin Salman’s rule over the country.

The Journal stated the crown prince sought a relaxed setting for his first meeting with Sullivan, so he chose his seaside villa and donned shorts. But the mood didn’t last once Sullivan brought up Khashoggi, whose killing U.S. intelligence concluded in February of 2021 was approved by bin Salman:

The 36-year-old crown prince ended up shouting at Mr. Sullivan after he raised the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The prince told Mr. Sullivan he never wanted to discuss the matter again, said people familiar with the exchange. And the U.S. could forget about its request to boost oil production, he told Mr. Sullivan.

The White House spokesperson denied this account and claimed that “there was no shouting.”

Relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are at a low point, as last month the crown prince reportedly refused to take a call from President Joe Biden. The White House has denied this claim.

Additionally, Saudi state television savagely mocked Biden last week in a skit portraying Biden as a confused old man.

Biden talked tough about the regime on the campaign trail in 2019, stating, “We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.”

Despite those remarks and the behavior of the autocratic bin Salman, Biden has continued to approve weapons sales to Saudi Arabia as it escalated its military intervention in Yemen against Houthi rebels backed by Iran.

The Biden administration has also stopped asking the kingdom to pump more oil to help bring prices down. The Journal noted that the White House “asks only that Saudi Arabia not do anything that would hurt the West’s efforts in Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said.”