In his luncheon keynote remarks to the National Council on US-Arab Relation’s annual policymaker’s forum in Washington, D.C., Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir discussed the historical and current status of the Saudi-U.S. relationship and it’s track record of success when facing regional and global challenges. Full video of his remarks can be seen here.
“Our two countries have been very close partners and allies in the war against terrorism. We work very closely together to go after the men, the money and mindset that is behind this,” said Ambassador Al-Jubeir. “Every time the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have come together, we have done wonders in terms of changing our region and by extension changing our world for the better.”
His Excellency Adel al-Jubeir.
Al-Jubeir also addressed the current regional transformation and instability in the Middle East, specifically the need to confront aggression and extremist ideology. The Saudi Embassy noted in a follow-up press release containing some remarks from the Ambassador that, “There is no space in our world for people who justify the killing of the innocent. There is no room in our faith as Muslims for anyone who kills the innocent because our faith teaches us that he who kills an innocent soul is as if he has killed all of humanity.”
In addition to bi-lateral cooperation, the Ambassador noted the importance of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Scholarship Program in building bridges between the Kingdom and the United States.
“I look at the numbers and I’m astonished by how positive and how extensive this relationship has been. Eight years ago, we had 7,000 Saudi students studying in the United States. Today, we have over 120,000 with their dependents,” he said.
Al-Jubeir is an experienced public speaker and communicator with great influence both in the United States and Saudi Arabia. As the Washington Post wrote in 2011, al-Jubeir’s “access to the ear of the king, his ability to speak directly for the monarch and his chair at Abdullah’s side during virtually every high-level contact with world powers have given him a stature few diplomats can claim.”
Al-Jubeir’s counterpart, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Joseph Westphal, spoke after al-Jubeir and discussed the importance of the September 2014 Jeddah Communique and the re-energizing of U.S.-Saudi cooperative efforts to combat the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
