Antony Blinken meets Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on Mideast crisis tour

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a crisis tour of the Middle East, met Sunday with the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, which has put on hold normalisation with Israel. The top US diplomat began meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at his palace in Riyadh just after 7:30 am (0430 GMT), a US official said. Blinken has been touring the region since Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel on 7 October and killed 1,300 people, sparking a massive retaliatory campaign targeting the Islamist group in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 2,200 people. Before the violence, the Saudi crown prince, known by his initials MBS, had spoken of progress in US-led diplomacy to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saudi Arabia has put the process on hold after the violence, with some suspecting that Hamas wanted to stop normalisation for fear it would further weaken the Palestinian cause. Saudi Arabia is the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, making recognition a historic coup for Israel, which in 2020 normalised relations with three other Arab states. As part of a package, Saudi Arabia - which like Israel has tense relations with Iran’s Shiite clerical state - has been seeking security guarantees from the United States, its longtime partner and consumer of its oil. But MBS is deeply controversial in the United States, where intelligence linked him to the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based Saudi journalist. President Joe Biden - who once vowed to make the kingdom a pariah - drew protests at home after a visit to Saudi Arabia last year when he shared a friendly fist-bump with MBS.