Report: US Mulling 'Full Reset' With Saudi Arabia Amid Push to Move Past Khashoggi Murder

US President Joe Biden took office intending to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, making the purported change a major U-turn on said pledge. Last year, the administration published an intelligence dossier accusing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of arranging Kashoggi's murder.

Senior US officials have told Saudi Arabia that the US is willing to "reset" the relationship and successfully move on from the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in order to heal ties with the crucial Middle East ally, CNN reported on Friday.

According to the network's sources, Biden has set aside his moral outrage to pursue warmer relations with Riyadh amid the dramatic global upheaval after Russia's special military operation in Ukraine started in February. This alleged move is backed by the fact that Biden is under immense pressure to crack down on Russia and lower domestic gas prices amid inflation that is rising at the fastest rate since 1981, according to officials.

"Both sides have decided that for the sake of achieving peace and stability in the Middle East, we need to move past it," an undisclosed top US official told CNN when speaking about Khashoggi's killing.

According to the report, the Saudis consider the Khashoggi issue closed and have informed the US of its stance.

The sources, however, have asserted that the White House's readiness to move on does not imply forgiving and forgetting. They reportedly claimed that Biden intends to bring Khashoggi's murder up directly with Bin Salman when they meet next month.

Nevertheless, some administration officials believe that more should be done to hold MBS accountable for the crime. After months of discussions in Riyadh between two of Biden's top national security advisers, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, and Saudi authorities, including MBS, the transition in approach is said to be well underway.

The shift in talks has reportedly sparked controversy with Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi's fiancée, who is accusing Biden of losing his moral compass.

"President Biden's decision to meet MBS is horribly upsetting to me and supporters of freedom and justice everywhere," she is quoted by CNN as saying.

According to CNN, Biden's choice to meet with MBS was a difficult one for him since he claimed in 2019 that Saudi Arabia has "no redeeming social value."

Global leaders have reportedly agreed that the murder cannot hold the relationship "hostage," especially considering how drastically the world has changed since late February.

And this is where oil comes into play - and Russia.

One of the US' most important foreign policy objectives now is to politically isolate Russia and cut it off from the global economy, particularly by prohibiting Russian oil exports. US officials purportedly believe it will be nearly impossible to achieve if Saudi Arabia does not support Washington, especially when it comes to increasing oil production to try to stabilize global oil markets.

As a result, the president and his senior national security advisers allegedly agree that "shunning" Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi's death would be unwise.

Another US official reportedly suggested that worrying economic indicators, including record-high domestic gas prices and skyrocketing inflation, have come to dominate the administration's priorities and pushed others aside.

"I do think the desperation of the trajectory of the global economy is driving everything," they said. "They [the White House] are anxious, they are desperate. Their fear, and their anxiety, is making them throw principle out the door. The worst [economic] outcomes on this are really bad and would devastate any hopes the Democrats would have in November."

Even after publishing the report last year that implicated MBS in Khashoggi's death, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN on Wednesday that the administration never aimed to entirely "rupture" US-Saudi relations. He did point out that the United States will continue "to make sure that human rights is fully reflected in our foreign policy."

However, it is the desire to increase oil production to stabilize prices, according to Biden's advisers, that is the biggest motivator of the Saudi reset.

"There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia has to account for what they did with Jamal Khashoggi," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday. However, she noted, "There is also no question that we have to increase global [oil] supply. And OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, is at the head of the pack for that."

And of course, the Saudis want things in return from the US, notably a full strategy for dealing with Iran, which is Riyadh's main regional foe, as the US has become stuck in its attempts to reach an agreement on a new nuclear deal.

Officials interviewed by CNN reportedly claimed the Saudis also seek security guarantees, such as the continuous provision of missile defense systems. White House sources claim Saudi Arabia has been cooperating with the US in good faith for several months, which has increased the Biden administration's confidence in the outcome of a potential meeting between Biden and MBS.

Another factor related to the move, according to several officials, is that Israel has been pressing hard for the Biden-MBS meeting to materialize. Biden is reportedly planning to fly directly from Tel Aviv to Riyadh on Air Force One when visiting the Middle East next month, emphasizing the shifting nature of the Israel-Saudi alliance.

Activists and lawmakers in the US, however, are unlikely to be satisfied by these developments, as they continue to demand more responsibility and justice for Khashoggi.