President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden are hosting Jordan’s King Abdullah II ibn Al Hussein and Queen Rania Al Abdullah at the White House on Monday.
Jordan’s Crown Prince Al Hussein Bin Abdullah II is also joining the group at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. During an Oval Office sit-down alongside King Abdullah and his son, Biden noted that he met Abdullah’s father, then-King Hussein bin Talal, when Biden himself was serving in the United States Senate.
Biden and Abdullah have met on numerous occasions, and have seemingly developed a close professional relationship over the past several decades.
“I want to thank you, Your Majesty, for your enduring and strategic relationship with the United States,” Biden said to Abdullah in the Oval Office, ahead of a series of closed-door meetings with key policy advisers. “You have always been there for us, and we will always be there for Jordan.”
Biden also touched on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, saying while the U.S. had already shipped some vaccines to Jordan, his administration “hope[s] to be able to help some more” in the coming months. According to AFP, around half a million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were delivered to Jordan on Saturday from the United States.
King Abdullah noted his decades-long relationship with Biden on Monday, telling the president he wanted to “thank you for the generosity that you have always shown me and my country.”
As Biden and Abdullah continued their closed-door meetings in the afternoon, Dr. Biden hosted Queen Rania for tea.
The daylong event is meant to “highlight the enduring and strategic partnership between the United States and Jordan, a key security partner and ally of the United States,” according to a release from the White House.
The leaders are expected to discuss continued cooperation between their countries on issues of security, economy and political policy, with Biden saying the two will look at “the pressing challenges that Jordan faces” in the Middle East.
The meetings come during one of the most difficult moments of the Jordanian leader’s 22-year rule.
Last week, a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to serve 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullah’s half-brother.
Biden is also facing some difficult issues in the Middle East. He is dealing with stepped-up attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias at the same moment that his administration is trying to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table to revive the nuclear agreement that Donald Trump abandoned during his presidency.
Abdullah had a difficult relationship with Trump, who he saw as undercutting a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians with his 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He also chafed at the Trump administration’s pursuit of what officials called the Abraham Accords — deals with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco that normalized relations with Israel but left out the Palestinians.
Biden has no plans to reverse U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital, and his administration has even offered praise for the Trump-brokered accords — a rare instance of the Democratic administration speaking positively of the former administration’s policy-making.
U.S. officials plan to stress to Abdullah that the accords are not an “end run” on finding the way to a peace deal that includes a Palestinian state, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The two leaders are expected to discuss the situation in Syria — more than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordan — and a wobbly security situation in Iraq, the official said. At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks.
Abdullah is the first Arab world leader to meet face-to-face with Biden. The president is set to host Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi at the White House next week, and Biden has invited Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to visit later this summer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
