Remember how Joe Biden defeating the evil Donald Trump in 2020 was supposed to make the United States respected again?

Saudi Arabia Seeks Regional Embrace of Assad in Win for Iran

Kingdom keen to assert itself as regional political leader

Syria has been banished from Arab League for atrocities

By Sam Dagher, Fiona MacDonald and Zainab Fattah | April 5, 2023 | 7:44 AM EDT | Updated: April 6, 2023 | 4:41 AM EDT

(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia is leading efforts to formally bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab inner circle as early as next month, in what would be a win for Iran and Russia and in defiance of US warnings after more than a decade of conflict.

For those of you stymied by Bloomberg’s paywall, you can read it for free here.

The kingdom is taking steps that would allow the Arab League grouping of regional states to end a suspension of Syria’s membership in time for a summit in Riyadh in mid-May, according to three people briefed by the Saudis and one person close to the United Arab Emirates government, which backs the plan.

Those efforts are ongoing and could be stretched out or even fall through, or Arab leaders could settle on an interim plan next month, the people said. The US is aware of the push, has warned against it but has realized it can do little to stop it, several of the people said.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is eager to cast the kingdom as the Arab world’s uncontested political and economic leader.

Following last month’s surprise restoration of ties with Iran, Riyadh now wants to be at the forefront of initiatives to calm regional conflict zones like Syria and ensure nothing disrupts its ambitious efforts to transform its economy, the Saudi daily Okaz said in an Op-Ed last week.

As we have previously reported, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, really doesn’t like President Biden. Mr Biden directly, to his face, accused the Crown Prince of being responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, after Mr Khashoggi called the prince a liar, in public, in the pages of The Washington Post.

So, what did Saudi Arabia do?

U.S. Officials Had a Secret Oil Deal With the Saudis. Or So They Thought.

After Saudi leaders pushed to slash oil production despite a visit by President Biden, American officials have been left fuming that they were duped.

By Mark Mazzetti, Edward Wong and Adam Entous | Tuesday, October 25, 2022

WASHINGTON — As President Biden was planning a politically risky trip to Saudi Arabia this summer, his top aides thought they had struck a secret deal to boost oil production through the end of the year — an arrangement that could have helped justify breaking a campaign pledge to shun the kingdom and its crown prince.

It didn’t work out that way.

Mr. Biden went through with the trip. But earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Russia steered a group of oil-producing countries in voting to slash oil production by two million barrels per day, the opposite of the outcome the administration thought it had secured as the Democratic Party struggles to deal with inflation and high gas prices heading into the November elections.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Saudi Arabia Considers Accepting Yuan Instead of Dollars for Chinese Oil Sales

Talks between Riyadh and Beijing have accelerated as the Saudi unhappiness grows with Washington

By Summer Said in Dubai and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Updated March 15, 2022 11:48 AM ET

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on arriving at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 8. Photo: Saudi Press Agency via AP

Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.

The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.

The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.

China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency. The Saudis are also considering including yuan-denominated futures contracts, known as the petroyuan, in the pricing model of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco.

That was 13 months ago, but maneuvers toward this continue apace. The yuan is not all that liquid right now, but the Chinese are making moves to push internationalization of the yuan to weaken the dollar’s grip on international trade, and as the world’s reserve currency.

The Chinese don’t have to buy in yuan; thanks to America’s seemingly insatiable desire for Chinese products, and the Chinese financing so much of the United States’ debt, they have plenty of dollars. But the inflation of the dollar under President Biden has made our currency worth less, and even if that is something of an international problem, there is significant weakness of the reputation of the dollar.

And now OPEC and its allies, including Russia, agreed on Sunday to widen crude oil production cuts to 3.66 million barrels per day (bpd) or 3.7% of global demand. American inflation has been coming down slowly — though it’s still higher than wages have increased — so Saudi Arabia and Russia, the number three and number two oil producers in the world, have decided to push American inflation higher.

It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it. President Biden insults the ruler of Saudi Arabia, and then wages a proxy war against Russia. China, which has no reason to love the US other than our dollars, makes some noises about Taiwan, and the US then proceeds to warn China about the consequences of trying to retake the island. Shockingly enough, all three start taking actions to hurt the United States and its economy. You don’t have to like Mohammed bin Salman or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping to realize that they can hurt the United States, and that insulting them really isn’t a great idea, but the dummkopf from Delaware did it anyway.