Donald Trump made Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination as US president. He had been persuaded by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, that Mohammed bin Salman, the young heir to the Saudi throne, was key to US policy in the Middle East and to Mr Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
Joe Biden, who became president-elect last week, has much more than the Middle East to think about. He will inherit a charged domestic agenda that includes a bungled response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its ravages to the US economy, as well as a country seething with racial and post-electoral tensions.
But so too did the incoming administration of Barack Obama, in which Mr Biden served as vice-president from 2008. And it spent three-quarters of its crisis management time on the region.