• As the debt burden increases on the US, Biden begins agreeing to numerous big money deals with Saudi
• Saudi now being allowed to conclude deals without the need to normalise with Israelis
Before October 7th Saudi and the US were on the verge of finalising an agreement that would allow the normalising of ties between themselves and the Israelis. Following the events after October 7th, Saudi placed that deal on hold.
Over recent weeks however, Saudi Arabia has also been a hive of activity but not for reasons that every Muslim would expect. Yes, Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has had obligations as the custodian of the holiest sites in Islam to ensure Hajj is accessible to all; there has also been a flurry of huge deals that have taken place worth billions of dollars of the $43 trillion MBS planned to spend as part of Vision 2030– a stark contrast between the immaterial and material.
In that same period, US President Biden had been under pressure to produce a deal that would force Netanyahu to come to the table and accept a ceasefire with Hamas for the sake of the Palestinian people. It turned out that although the offer was accepted by Hamas and ratified by the UN, the offer from Biden was hollow and meaningless as Netanyahu again undermined him, the deal and the US.
Biden and US Debt
Could Biden too now be tired of Israeli back-peddling? Or is the US now in such dire straights financially that they are forced to look at ways to service their national debt which has now risen to supposedly $34 trillion? It certainly isn’t concern towards the Palestinian lives suffering or being killed that’s pushing them to make a ceasefire offer.
The money desperately needed to offset America’s funding of the illegal Israeli occupiers’ unnecessary invasion of Palestine, and the Russian War with Ukraine is causing America’s national debt to spiral out of control, which is forcing interest rates up to make taxpayers foot the bill, but it isn’t enough.
MBS With Cash to Spend
Enter Mohammed Bin Salman. Over the last few weeks, Saudi Arabia has all but completed several multi-billion-dollar deals involving the acquiring of materials and support needed to install nuclear power plants and possibly build warheads through uranium enrichment, as well as the purchase of weaponry as part of a defence pact with the US.
Saudi Aramco had also signed a non-binding head of agreement (HOA)with NextDecade for a 20-year supply of Liquefied natural gas (LNG).
(From left): NextDecade chairman and CEO Matthew Schatzman, Aramco upstream president Nasir Al-Naimi and Aramco executive vice–president of gas Abdulkarim Al-Ghamdi. Credit: Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
This deal will involve NextDecade supplying LNG from its facility in Texas, where Saudi Aramco will purchase 1.2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG on a free-on-board basis where pricing will be indexed to the Henry Hub, a benchmark for natural gas prices in North America.
Not only that but also as reported by H Sarwari, Saudi exited a 50-year-old Petrodollar Deal with the US recently. This means that Saudi can now make more strategic investments with the US. The influx of Saudi state funding has Biden’s attention and crucially to obtain funds he has had to forego the ‘normalisation’ with the Israelis route.
Why Do These Deals Even Matter?
The original nuclear and defence deals were originally supposed to include normalisation ties with the Israelis however, Saudi Arabia backed away from this after pressure was put on them when the mass murder of the Palestinians began. Throughout the entirety of the attacks on Palestine, Saudi Arabia stayed quiet and spent that time working to reach an agreement on their existing deals without the need to normalise with Israel – MBS’s silence eventually paid off.
This has now allowed MBS to formally criticise the Israelis’ role in the genocide of Palestinians, but also to appease the Americans for the sake of future business deals he pushes for a ‘two-state solution’.
Much of what MBS has done thus far has proven to be more secular to strengthen ties with the West rather than his brothers in neighbouring nations, than anything else.
A fraction of those billions spent by Saudi could have been used to replace America’s UNRWA funding of approximately £350 million. Funding which America decided to cancel until March 2025 – as part of a bi-partisan US House Bill that passed in March 2024 – to instead provide billions to the Israelis and Ukraine.
