Hey Barack? Yes, Your Royal Majesty! Look, know what I said about coming to that thing at your place? Of course, oh Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Not going to make it--turns out I have to rearrange my stallion's sock drawer.
On today's Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell acknowledged the undeniable: that the last-minute decision by Saudi King Salman not to attend the White House summit, after previously having informed John Kerry that he would be there, was such an "in your face" snub, so embarrassing to Kerry and the Obama White House, that "I don't see any way that they can spin it."
Mitchell traced the decline in US/Saudi relations to President Obama's failure to honor the red line he had drawn in Syria.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: This is fairly unprecedented. Nick Burns and I were talking about this. Four of six countries not bringing their leaders to Camp David. Fairly unprecedented. Are we entering a new phase in US/Saudi relations?
ANDREA MITCHELL: I think we've entered it. I think we actually entered it with the decision not to go against Assad in Syria over chemical weapons once that red line that the president himself had imposed on Labor Day a couple of years ago and to let that war go unanswered really by any kind of American initiative since then.
So I think that was the first step.Then Iran. Here you've got Iran acting very aggressively in Yemen against the Saudis. The Saudis engaged in a shooting war there. And they believe that what Nick said, I heard what he said earlier that with the lifting of the sanctions, Iran will have so much more disposable income for their foreign policy misadventures, if you will, from the Saudi perspective, from the perspective of those others in the region.
What I think is so extraordinary here is that they confirmed to John Kerry that he was coming. And then the foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, whom we all know very well from his years and years here as the ambassador and before that as national security adviser to the ormer King Abdullah, he was with John Kerry in Paris on Friday saying that the king was coming. So this snub is so, so in your face to not only not come, to say you're coming, then not come, but to have reconfirmed it at the highest levels. It's embarrassing to Kerry, it's embarrassing to the White House. And I don't see any way that they can spin it.
