U.S. seeks full reset with Saudi Arabia, moving on from Khashoggi murder

But officials say Biden, who is under immense pressure to crack down on Russia and lower domestic gas prices amid inflation that’s rising at the fastest pace since 1981, has set aside his moral outrage to pursue warmer relations with the Kingdom amid the dramatic global upheaval spurred by the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Both sides have decided that for the sake of achieving peace and stability in the Middle East, we need to move past it,” said one senior US official, referring to Khashoggi’s murder. The Saudis, for their part, consider the Khashoggi case closed—and have made that clear to the US, officials said.

That doesn’t mean forgiving and forgetting, the sources noted. Biden, they said, does plan to raise Khashoggi’s murder directly with MBS, as the crown prince is known, when they meet as soon as next month. And some officials inside the administration still believe more should be done to hold MBS accountable for the crime. But the shift is now well underway after months of meetings in Riyadh between two of Biden’s top national security advisers, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, and Saudi officials, including MBS. And it is already sparking outrage, with Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, accusing Biden of losing his moral compass.