French president Emmanuel Macron is hosting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at a dinner meeting at the Élysée Palace on Thursday night, furthering the rehabilitation of Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader in the west four years after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Like US president Joe Biden, Macron has put human rights concerns and climate change on the back burner as the west seeks to persuade the Gulf states to produce more oil and gas to calm world energy markets following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and western sanctions against Moscow.
Macron was the first leader of a major western state to visit Saudi Arabia since the 2018 murder of Khashoggi, when he met Prince Mohammed in Jeddah in December last year. He was trying then to broker a settlement to a dispute between Saudi and Lebanese leaders over the war in Yemen and the role of Iran in the Middle East.