President Biden is planning to provide offensive weapons to a Middle Eastern regime that has been massacring innocent civilians, according to news reports. Yet no protest tents have been set up on college campuses, no members of the congressional “Squad” are making angry speeches, and no hecklers are calling him “Genocide Joe.”
How can this be? Aren’t the protesters who have captured our nation’s attention motivated by humanitarian principles, which apply no matter who the offender is? Aren’t they concerned about all human suffering? Don’t they want America to hold back weapons from every regime that might kill civilians?
Apparently not.
According to news media reports, the Biden administration plans to resume providing offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia after a four-year ban that the president imposed because the Saudis used American munitions in airstrikes that killed some Yemeni civilians.
While campaigning for the presidency in 2018, Joe Biden vowed he would treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” because of its many human rights violations, including dismembering one of the regime’s prominent critics.
And last year, the Saudis gave the United States additional reason to hold back weapons: human rights groups revealed that Saudi Arabian border guards had slaughtered “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of unarmed African civilians.
The migrants had approached the Saudi border in the hope of finding work or receiving asylum from persecution. The Saudis responded with gunfire, mutilations, and sexual atrocities.
Yet the Biden administration has been looking for ways to improve its relations with Riyadh. As early as the autumn of 2022, “American diplomats received grim news that border guards in Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. partner in the Middle East, were using lethal force against African migrants,” the Times revealed—yet throughout the entire year to follow, the Biden administration never criticized the Saudi massacres.
The most any U.S. official said, according to the Times, was “an oblique reference” to the issue: the deputy American representative to the United Nations said during a UN briefing in January 2023 that the Biden administration was “concerned” by “alleged abuses against migrants on the border with Saudi Arabia.” He called on “all parties” to permit an outside investigation. That was it.
It gets worse. During the past year, the Saudis have openly strengthened their relations with two of America’s worst enemies—yet the Biden administration has remained silent.
In March 2023, Saudi Arabia renewed diplomatic relations with Iran after a seven-year rift. Ambassadors were exchanged, embassies were reopened, and then-Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi visited Riyadh.
Iran is not the only anti-American regime that Saudi Arabia is embracing. Earlier this year, the Syrian embassy was reopened in Riyadh, and last week, the Saudis sent an ambassador to Syria after a twelve-year break in relations with the Assad regime.
The Syrian regime is not just anti-American in its rhetoric—it is still actively trying to kill Americans. There are at least 900 U.S. soldiers in Syria, fighting against terrorist groups that are backed by Iran and the Syrian government. So, while Syrian-supported terrorists are trying to murder Americans, Riyadh is embracing the Syrians.
Yet neither Saudi massacres of black Africans nor Saudi friendliness toward Iran and Syria have moved the Biden administration to even verbally challenge Riyadh.
The only time President Biden has publicly criticized Saudi Arabia was in 2022—for cutting oil production. The president was worried that—as the New York Times put it—such cuts might “lead to a rise in global oil prices before the midterm elections.” The president even threatened there w
