Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman proved more than willing to play ball, writes TianatheFirst. 'But with the largest profit margins in history on the line, Saudi Arabia has no reason to bail out anyone, much less Biden.'
Joe Biden has once again resorted to begging his former foes to bail him out of this costly crisis. First on the list for Biden to broker a visit to, according to Axios, is Saudi Arabia. Hans Nichols reports that the president's advisers are planning a potential visit to"repair relations" with the Middle Eastern nation and"convince the Kingdom to pump more oil.
Like other young reformers sparring with radical Islamists in the region, MBS is a wannabe enlightened absolutist — an authoritarian with noble enough goals of modernizing his nation's customs and material quality of life but with little regard for the brutality required to achieve such goals. Key to his success are oil exports, which fund three-quarters of the current national budget.
So why would MBS intentionally limit his own career-defining profits, especially when circumstance has handed OPEC more control of the oil market than the Saudis could have ever dreamed of?