 US President Joe Biden is set to visit West Asia next week, his first to the region since coming to power. Much of the discussion about the visit has centered around Biden's potential meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This has acquired significance since Biden during his campaign had vociferously criticized the Saudis. However, he has been forced to dilute his stance due to the energy crisis following the Russia-Ukraine war. Biden is also scheduled to meet a number of regional leaders during his visit to Saudi Arabia. How is Biden seeking to position the US in the region in light of recent developments? What stakes do various regional powers have? Rania Khaliq of Breakthrough News explains. So Biden is due to visit Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of course known as MBS, as well as leaders from other GCC countries, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq's Prime Minister, Mustafa Akademi. And much is being made of this seeming hypocrisy here, given that Biden had previously said that he would refuse to meet MBS and had in fact been shunning him until now, you know, much to Saudi chagrin. And Democrats seemed, of course, much less offended by the Israeli murder of an American citizen and Al Jazeera journalist, Serena Buakla, a few weeks ago, than MBS's murder of the green card holder, Jamal Khashoggi, who also had been a friend of bin Laden's, and of course the Saudi intel agent turned traitor against the Saudi regime. But you know, far more shocking than, of course, the murder of a dissident has been the American backed Saudi murder of tens of thousands of Yemenis. But now the US needs to reduce oil prices. So it needs MBS's help in producing more oil. So all is forgiven. But the idea behind this meeting is twofold, right? One is to get Saudi Arabia to, like I said, produce more oil to lower oil prices since Russian gas is being sanctioned by the West and it's driven up oil prices around the world and had a real boomerang effect even in the Western countries. But also it's to try to organize what's being called an Arab NATO. So this is, you know, with the imminent failure of the Iran nuclear deal, the US is basically looking for alternatives to the Pax Americana with Iran that they were hoping for back in the Obama days. And so that alternative is this unofficial Arab NATO that we've been hearing about. But this is actually doomed to fail for a few reasons and I'll explain why. First, Arab armies are really incompatible. They have different interests and agendas. And, you know, there's increasingly anyway of rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And also there's no command, you know, I mean, even with NATO, it doesn't work 100%. But at least it's basically under America, right? America's in charge. There's no possibility of doing anything similar in the Arab world whose armies can't even fight the Houthis and don't have a common foreign policy or defense policy and really they never will. So they'll never be under one leadership the way that Europe is under the US and Germany. It's just a fantasy. And we did learn recently from this Wall Street Journal article about a secret meeting organized by the Americans between the military heads of the Gulf States, Jordan, the Israelis, all of them in Egypt and as well as the Egyptians. And it's important to also understand in the context of Biden's visit that there's also this increasing frustration in this Gulf-Israeli alliance with the US, especially with this Democratic administration. For example, the Emirates and the Israelis are very angry at American policy on Sudan. Like they complain that the US wants to sanction Sudan because of the coup. And, you know, they want to destroy the country while Israel and the Emirates, you know, support the coup government. And they're angry at the US for complaining about human rights and for undermining stability in the region. And it may be creating like another Libya and Sudan. That's what they complain about. These are the complaints you hear from the Israelis and Emirates. So that's all to say, you know, there's this divergence of interests increasingly. And we started to see that, I think, too, with their differing positions on Russia and Ukraine. So even when it comes with Iran, you know, the Saudis have been angry at the Americans for, as they see it, not helping them enough when it comes to Yemen. And, you know, the Emirates actually switched their policy on Iran and the Houthis after they got hit by the Houthis and Shia militias in Iraq, and they suddenly became, you know, more pragmatic in order to avoid getting hit any further. But they all feel like the US is an unreliable partner. And this has started to happen even with this had started to happen, even with Trump. You know, Trump would escalate in the region and then bring it, bring it to like the verge of war, but then made it clear that he wasn't going to defend his local proxies like Saudi Arabia when Aramco was hit. And that's when you also started to see increasing talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the UAE and Iran, because like I said, they realized the US would leave them to fend for themselves when the time came for an actual confrontation. So as the US gets weaker in the region and has less direct influence, like this alliance of reactionary regimes is trying to build an alternative security infrastructure, which is less dependent on the US and more dependent on Israel. I mean, the UAE, for example, has refused to allow Israeli military like Israeli military operations or like practice rounds to take place from its territory because it's so afraid of Iran, but Bahrain is cooperating on this issue. And then of course, there's Saudi Arabia, which is the Gulf country that has yet to normalize with Israel. And part of Biden's trip is also, you know, to sort of consolidate the security infrastructure behind the Israelis. But the question is, why hasn't Saudi Arabia, unlike these other countries, normalized? So Mohammed bin Salman, you know, may privately want to normalize with the Israelis, but he's limited for, you know, first of all, his father still alive with King Salman, who has made it clear that he won't allow normalization until there's some kind of peace agreement with the Palestinians. And that's really just because he comes from a generation that had to like pretend to care about that issue and, you know, had some Islamic legitimacy concerns. And the US doesn't, but he's not in charge yet. So he's, you know, he's just the crown prince, but he also does want something in return. And there have been minor concessions, like first, you know, it looks like they're going to allow Arab Israelis to fly directly to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj. That's the first step in like building some kind of more direct relationship with the Israelis. But second, there is this outstanding issue between Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia. There are these islands that are in the Red Sea that Egypt is giving to Saudi Arabia. But that requires Israeli security approval because of the nature of the treaty between the Israelis and the Egyptians. And Israel was reluctant. And then the Saudis, you know, are negotiating with the Israelis like indirectly, well, probably actually directly, who knows, but to allow for those islands to be returned with Israeli approval. So all of this is happening in the backdrop of Biden's visit. But it's important to also note, you know, seemingly the odd man out in this coming meeting with Biden in Saudi Arabia will be Mustafa Qadami. Now, Qadami leads Iraq, a country that has not normalized with Israel, or, you know, isn't even indirectly normalizing with Israel, like in the case of Saudi Arabia, and they will not normalize with Israel. Qadami also has a very good relations with the Iranians. And, you know, he has only two successes to claim as premier. You know, first, he resisted the Trump administration's attempt to create like the civil war between the government and Shia paramilitary forces called the PMF. And second, Qadami had been successfully mediating an improvement in relations between the Saudis and the Iranians. And Qadami actually, interestingly, ironically, is also one of America's favorite favorites in the Middle East. The Americans actually installed him as head of Iraqi intelligence and then pushed for him to become prime minister. And the Americans have been obsessed with Qadami obtaining another term in government, in the government formation negotiations that have been ongoing since October 21 when the elections took place. But unfortunately for them, it's not looking good and Qadami is unlikely to make it. Although ironically, the Iranians are among his also among his biggest backers because he served their interests to and made sure that Iraq was given sanctions waivers in order to pay Iran for the electricity it provides Iraq, you know, among other things. So all that's to say this is all taking place in the context of Biden visiting. It's really again twofold. It's to increase oil production against other Saudis to increase oil production as well as try to consolidate this security infrastructure that collaborates with the Israelis this you know, unofficial air of NATO that is really just a fantasy. Before visiting Saudi Arabia, Joe Biden will also meet the heads of the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The US has been a key factor in the continuing of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. However, the US continues to claim to be a neutral arbiter. What has been the US position on these issues under Biden? And what can we expect from these meetings? Well, of course, Biden has to visit the Israelis. I mean, that's the US's closest ally. He was supposed to meet with Naftali Bennett, but Bennett is out of government now. So of course, he's going to bolster Israel's regional security architecture, which is what the US does for the Israelis. The policy on Israel Palestine has not changed under this administration. It continues to support Israel 100 percent, whatever it wants to do. I mean, the Israelis just shot and killed an American Palestinian American journalist. She's an American citizen, Serena Blackley. And the US government's response, the State Department's response was to still cast doubt onto whether it really was the Israelis that killed her. They're not entirely sure, but it seems like they say that it was Israeli forces, but they noted that it wasn't intentional. And we're not on their statement to blame Islamic Palestine, Islamic Jihad and what they call terror attacks against Israelis for creating the conditions for what they called tragic, a tragic outcome, the killing, the murder of this American journalist. So nothing has changed. Israel still gets a blank check to do what it wants. And visiting Israel is a symbolic gesture. Biden's going to go and do what every American leader does, which is say, oh, I support a two-state solution. We support security for the Israelis for two peoples to have security, but of course also continue to give Israel whatever they want. And of course, there's the raw nuclear deal, which Israel's very much against. And I think the Biden administration doesn't really care about the raw nuclear deal anymore. It remains stalled despite Qatari and European attempts to restore it. And what I called the sort of like anti-Iran NATO, it's really in anticipation of this failed deal. I think the Americans are just so distracted with Ukraine. They just don't care if there's a deal anymore, whereas the Europeans want more oil, not because they can use it, obviously they're dependent on gas, but because they want it to reduce the global price of oil to punish Russia. It's gas they actually need. But that said, nothing has changed with the issue for Israel and the Palestinians. And under this administration, nothing will change. I mean, this is a bipartisan American policy that continues to support settler colonialism against Palestinians in the name of having to spart a client state in the Middle East that can act like as a police of the region for America.