President Joe Biden will call Saudi King, not Crown Prince: White House

Saudi Arabia’s king will get a phone call from US President Joe Biden and not the younger de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the White House said on Tuesday.

“We’ve made clear from the beginning that we’re going to recalibrate our relationship with Saudi Arabia.Part of that is going back to engagement counterpart-to-counterpart,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

“The president’s counterpart is King Salman,” she said.

Biden is using telephone diplomacy to underline the break with Donald Trump’s Mideast policies.

Although Biden has reached out to US allies in every corner of the world, he has pointedly kept Israeli and Saudi leaders waiting by the phone.

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Psaki once again made clear the Biden administration’s lack of a rush in getting hold of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another of Trump’s closest foreign partners.

“Let me confirm for you that his first call with a leader in the region will be Prime Minister Netanyahu,” she said. “I don’t have an exact date for you but it is soon.”

Psaki said any personal chill did not reflect a shift in US commitment to the “important strategic security relationship” with Israel and the “critical self-defense needs” of Saudi Arabia.