By Ellen Wald

Now that the Biden team is in place, there is a lot of media buzz around the idea that it is trying to “reset” or, in the words of the Biden administration itself, “recalibrate” relations with Saudi Arabia. This perceived change in policy seems tied to the Jamal Khashoggi situation. However, nothing the Biden team has done or is likely to do indicates a change in policy towards Saudi Arabia’s domestic interests. (The Biden team does seem eager to pause America’s part in supplying war material in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the Yemen conflict).

Columnists like Nicholas Kristoff from the New York Times want the Biden administration to impose sanctions on Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman for his role in killing Khashoggi. They propose such action would signal to King Salman that Saudi Arabia would be “better off with a new crown prince who doesn’t dismember journalists.” Left unclear is whether Kristof uses “better off” as a threat or as well-meaning but unsolicited advice.

However, there is actually little change in how the Biden administration is dealing with the Saudis compared to the Trump administration’s actions. There was much excitement amongst those seeking change in Saudi Arabia when Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that part of the “recalibration” in the U.S.-Saudi relationship would be “going back to engagement counterpart-to-counterpart. The president’s counterpart is Salman.” The implication was that President Biden would speak to Salman about official diplomatic business, not Mohammad. Yet, President Trump made the same distinction, “downgrading” Mohammad on multiple occasions. At one point, the Saudi state issued a press release stating that Trump had spoken with Mohammad, but the White House quickly issued its own press release correcting the Saudis and stating that the President had spoken with Salman.

Likewise, just as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently said that, “the relationship with Saudi Arabia is bigger than one individual” (referring to Mohammad), Trump made a similar statement in November 2018, after the killing of Khashoggi. “It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t! … In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

At this time, there is no indication that the U.S. intends to push Salman to remove his own son from the line of succession, despite the apparent wishful thinking of pundits in D.C. and New York. Americans might cringe when we see the inner-workings of despotic regimes on public display, but the U.S. has never been shy about working with despots. Nicholas Kristoff and others may wish for the U.S. to send a message to the Saudis that entrapping and killing Saudi citizens in foreign countries without due process is morally wrong. They may fantasize that the U.S. would punish Mohammad personally with sanctions, but that would actually be a major shift in the U.S.-Saudi relationship that is extremely unlikely.

As for whether the United States has an obligation to pursue justice for Khashoggi, the facts are less convincing that some media outlets indicate. Khashoggi was not an American citizen, nor was he a lawful permanent resident of the United States, despite recent unchecked claims by the Secretary of State and others. He was a Saudi citizen, living in Virginia on an O-visa. He was not a columnist for the Washington Post either. Rather, he was an opinion contributor, meaning he was not an employee but a 1099 contractor who was paid per column. His status in the U.S. does not change the horrific human rights violation that occurred when he was lured to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul and killed. But it does mean that beyond the obligation to advocate for human rights and oppose extrajudicial killings globally, the U.S. has no legal or moral obligation to Khashoggi.

In fact, there are other human rights cases in Saudi Arabia right now that should be of much greater concern to the U.S. For example, Saudi Arabia recently convicted and sentenced a dual-national Saudi-U.S. citizen. One of his so-called crimes was holding dual citizenship. If the U.S. isn’t doing anything to defend a U.S. citizen imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for being a U.S. citizen, why would it upend its diplomatic and strategic relations with Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi?

Why, then, did the Biden administration release the intelligence report that concluded that Mohammad must have ordered the killing of Khashoggi? According to the report, this assessment was based on already-public information, and it essentially came down to a theory: Mohammad is in charge of such things, so he must have ordered the murder. Simply, it was a conclusion premised only on basic understanding of the Saudi government structure. The Biden team seems to have released this report to appease part of its political base. And this too presents a similarity with the Trump team which released the famous “17-pages”—outlining the involvement of Saudi diplomats in the 9/11/01 attacks—to appease part of its base. The Biden-Saudi policy is not so different from the Trump-Saudi policy after all.

Ellen R. Wald, Ph.D. is a widely cited analyst of the global energy industry. She is the president of Transversal Consulting which provides guidance on energy and geopolitics. Dr. Wald is the author of Saudi, Inc., detailing the history and relevance of the Saudi oil industry and Aramco.

A non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, Dr. Wald earned a Ph.D. in energy history from Boston University and a Bachelor’s degree with honors from Princeton University. Her past academic appointments include positions at Boston University, the University of Cambridge, The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming and the University of Georgia.

She frequently provides analysis for print, television and radio news. Her weekly roundup of timely energy market expectations can be found on Thursday mornings at Investing.com and you can follow her on twitter @EnergzdEconomy