White House denies claim Saudi prince refused President Biden’s call on Ukraine 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday that a report published in the Wall Street Journal claiming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman refused to take a phone call from President Biden regarding the U.S. ban on Russian oil imports was “inaccurate.”

“That report is inaccurate, so let me start there,” Psaki said during a White House press briefing. “The president did speak with the Saudi king just a few weeks ago, several weeks ago, it’s all running together at this point in time. There were no rebuffed calls, period.”

Psaki then referred to Biden’s phone call with Prince Mohammed’s 86-year-old father, King Salman, on Feb. 9, and suggested that Prince Mohammed could seek out Biden at international forums if he wanted to speak to him.

“If the crown prince had been at any of the global events that the president recently attended, I’m sure he would have engaged with him, but he was not,” Psaki said.

The Wall Street Journal quoted an anonymous U.S. official who claimed that bin Salman rebuffed Biden over the lack of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, as well as the issue of granting bin Salman legal immunity in the U.S. over the brutal killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

“There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,” the official told the Journal regarding the alleged call, which according to the source was set up to secure Saudi Arabia’s support for the U.S. ban on Russian oil imports. “It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].”

In an interview with the Atlantic published last week, bin Salman said that his aim regarding the Saudi relationship with the U.S. was “to keep it and strengthen it,” however when asked whether Biden misunderstood him, he added, “Simply, I do not care.”