All the anti-Biden moves of Saudi Arabia and Russia
How Saudi Arabia and Russia are moving on different dossiers. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
The trip recently made by the president of the United States to Saudi Arabia was not a success both in relation to the global energy policy and in relation to the Khashoggi case.
Let's start with the last question. Despite the extensive and detailed documentation provided by the American security services, there will be no official or unofficial charge against bin Salman, as was widely expected.
As for the requests made by Biden in relation to energy policy, the increase in oil production that was decided by OPEC +, of 100,000 barrels per day, is of very little significance because it corresponds to about 0.1% in percentage terms. This means that the demands made by President Biden have not been effectively taken into consideration, despite the fact that US inflation is very high.
The decision taken by the Arab country also depends on the fact that there are very close ties with Russia that cannot be compromised, despite the current war in progress. Even the approval made by the US Congress for the sale of defensive missile systems for both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia of about 5.3 billion dollars will hardly change the choices made by bin Salman.
How much Russia weighs in terms of both energy policies and international choices is also clear from another even more explicit fact, and this time relating to relations with Israel in relation to the Syrian question. The ambiguous choices made by Israel in relation to the war between Russia and Ukraine – ambiguous choices dictated by the alliance with the United States – could lead Russia to facilitate Syria.
Let's go into detail. The fact that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov had a frank discussion with Alexander Ben Zvi about the closure of the Jewish Agency not only demonstrates the deterioration of relations between Russia and Israel, but could change the "deconflict" mechanism applied by Russia and Israel in Syria since 2015, which allowed Israel to conduct attacks in Syria.
And it could jeopardize Israeli military actions. In fact, we must not forget that the Syrian space is under strict Russian control, and that consequently the margin of maneuver put in place by the Israeli defense forces depends on Russian decisions. If Russia decides to change its posture, this could allow the Syrian regime to activate the S-300 anti-missile system delivered by Russia to Syria; this system which, if activated, would be able to eliminate Israeli planes.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/biden-arabia-saudita-russia-israele/ on Mon, 08 Aug 2022 10:49:36 +0000.