WASHINGTON (Middle East Eye) – The United States’ relationship with its Middle Eastern allies is in “desperate” need of work, Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned at a hearing on Tuesday.
“The Biden administration’s Middle East policies have reinforced a claim of American disengagement and pushed our long-standing partners towards China and Russia,” he said.
Risch’s comments came during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified on the State Department’s 2023 budget request.
The perception of U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East among regional states has been building for some time as the U.S. looks to focus on threats posed by China and Russia, but has accelerated under the Biden administration.
Last summer, the U.S. pulled some of its advanced anti-missile systems from Saudi Arabia just as a spate of retaliatory attacks emanating from Yemen struck the kingdom.
Shortly after, it completed the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The moves alarmed Persian Gulf states over the U.S.’s commitment to its long-standing military presence in the region.
Ties between the U.S. and the Persian Gulf kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been impacted by Washington’s critique of human rights issues in the country.
Biden campaigned on making Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state and signed off on the release of a CIA document that blamed the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, for the murder of Washington Post and Middle East Eye columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Following media reports that ties between the two had hit the “lowest point in decades”, the Saudi embassy in Washington released a statement last week claiming its relationship with the United States is “historic and remains strong”.
Even as the U.S. has sought to combat China on the global stage, Beijing has made economic and political strides in the Persian Gulf region, where it is the biggest buyer of oil and has invested heavily in infrastructure.
China is helping Saudi Arabia with its ballistic missile development and has partnered with it on several nuclear projects. The two countries have also inched closer to pricing some of Riyadh’s oil sales in yuan rather than dollars.