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The Saudi ambassador to the United States, the daughter of a prominent figure in the kingdom’s diplomacy, is seeking direction in a complicated period.
By Kate Kelly
Information from Washington and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
She attended the elite Holton-Arms School for Girls in suburban Washington. On the weekends, I would go for walks with friends on shopping trips to the Tysons Corner Center in Northern Virginia. Three U. S. Secretaries of State – Colin L. Powell, James A. Baker and Madeleine Albright – were regular visitors to their parents’ home.
Today, Princess Reema Bandar al-Saud, 48, daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, one of Washington’s toughest diplomats when he served as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States for more than two decades, takes over her father’s previous post.
It wasn’t easy.
She landed in Washington as the first woman to hold the position in July 2019, less than a year after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents. He faced the daunting task of seeking to rehabilitate the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, according to U. S. intelligence agencies, had approved of Khashoggi’s gruesome murder. In early 2021, he went from the warm embrace of the Trump White House to the hostility of President Biden, who, as a candidate in 2019, had called the kingdom a “pariah. “
In the tumultuous five years since his arrival, Saudi Arabia’s fortunes in Washington and Princess Reema’s have changed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Saudi Arabia’s need in oil markets have led to Biden having a diplomatic clash with the crown prince in Jeddah in the summer of 2022. Princess Reema, with the help of a multimillion-dollar lobbying and lobbying from her kingdom’s exposure machine, played a vital role in reluctantly easing the mood.
“In relations between the kingdom and the United States, there have been multiple ups and downs,” he said in a recent interview in American English with someone who grew up in the U. S. from a young age. “And a component of my duty was to remind everyone in America what the summits were like and to work collaboratively to get back to them. “
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