From "Pariah" to Partner: Why President Biden is Going to Saudi Arabia

Joe Biden is traveling to the Middle East for the first time as President, with stops in Israel, Palestine -- and most notably Saudi Arabia.

As a candidate for president, Biden called the Saudi government a "pariah." Just weeks after taking office, he released an assessment from the US intelligence community revealing that US intelligence believes that Mohammad bin Salman approved of the operation that lead to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.  Yet in the face of high oil prices and the perceived need to re-calibrate US alliances in the region, Biden apparently feels compelled to make this trip.

Kristin Diwan is senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC . We kick off discussing the recent history of US-Saudi relations -- going back through key moments of the Obama and Trump administrations before having a broader conversation about what this trip says about both Biden's approach to the Middle East and the Saudi government's key foreign and domestic policy priorities.