JEDDAH (Dispatches) – The United States “will not walk away” from the Middle East and leave a vacuum, U.S. President Joe Biden has told a summit in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Leaders of six countries of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – plus Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq held talks on regional security and bilateral relations with the U.S. at the summit.
Biden was using the summit to lay out his strategy for the Middle East as he closed the final leg of a four-day trip meant to bolster ties in the region.
Although U.S. forces continue to roam about in the region and remain deployed at bases throughout the Middle East, Biden suggested that he was turning the page after Washington’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Today, I am proud to be able to say that the eras of land wars in the region, wars that involved huge numbers of American forces, is not under way,” he said.
On Friday, Biden met Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler who U.S. intelligence agencies assess “approved” the 2018 operation that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
After a fist bump with Crown Prince Mohammed, Biden said he raised the Khashoggi case and warned against future attacks on dissidents.
Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement, that has been fighting off a war launched by the U.S.-backed Saudi crown prince since 2015, strongly denounced Biden’s trip to the Middle East, stating the visit aimed to push for further normalization of diplomatic ties between the Zionist regime and Arab countries.
“We strongly condemn the American president’s visit of to the Israeli-occupied territories and Saudi Arabia. The purpose of this trip is to serve Washington and Tel Aviv at the expense of regional security and stability,” the political bureau of Ansarullah said in a statement released on Saturday.
It added that the regional tour is taking place within the context of depriving regional nations of their right to freedom, independence and stability.
“The visit is being conducted in the form of a series of normalization stages with the Zionist regime, and is seen as a betrayal to Palestinians and the Palestinian cause,” the statement noted.
It described the consequences of normalization with the occupying regime as calamitous, stating that the Arab countries involved in the process have distanced themselves from their own nations as well as the Palestinian issue.
The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas slammed the Saudi decision to open its airspace to the Zionist regime’s flights.
“We, Hamas, feel sad following the Saudi decision to open its airspace to the Israeli occupation flights,” Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha disclosed in a statement.
Taha indicated, “Opening Saudi skies to Israeli flights reinforces and encourages the aggressive agenda of the Israeli occupation.”
He continued, “Opening Saudi airspace to Israel following the so-called Jerusalem (Al-Quds) Declaration is seen as a reward for the Israeli occupation.”