Wall Street Journal: The CIA director had a secret meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince.
A CIA reporter on a secret trip to Jeddah last month met with the Saudi Crown Prince to discuss a range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program, a US newspaper reported.
The Biden administration is trying to improve relations with Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing CIA Director William Burns on an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia last month. The Saudis traveled and met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the trip took place in mid-April, and the meeting between bin Salman and Burns took place in the coastal city of Jeddah, where bin Salman spent most of his Ramadan.
The details of the meeting have not yet been fully determined, but according to US and Saudi sources, they include issues such as oil production, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program and the war in Yemen.
“It was a good dialogue and it was better than the previous US interactions with the Saudis,” a US source said of the meeting.
William Burns has previously served as Deputy Secretary of State, has a degree in Arabic, and has held positions in West Asian countries.
During the administration of former US President Barack Obama, he was involved in talks with Iran over its nuclear program.
Burns’s trip to Saudi Arabia comes as relations between Washington and Riyadh have reached their lowest level in decades. The decline came after US President Joe Biden said in 2019 that Saudi Arabia should be treated as a hated country because of human rights abuses such as the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
