Joe Biden puts Saudi Arabia on notice

FIVE YEARS ago Barack Obama delivered a bracing message to Saudi Arabia. “The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians,” he warned, “has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen.” He offered a solution: “They need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood.” Mr Obama’s vision of a new equilibrium in the Middle East sent ripples of anxiety through Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. They might have felt a familiar pang listening to Joe Biden on February 4th.In a wide-ranging speech at the State Department, America’s new president excoriated the “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe” of the war in Yemen. Now in its seventh year, the war is being fought between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels with ties to Iran. Mr Biden said that although he would continue selling defensive arms to Saudi Arabia—the Houthis have lobbed scores of drones and missiles into the kingdom in recent years—he would end “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.”