Hello, I'm Ros Atkins. Each week on the BBC World Service, I look in depth that one of the biggest issues in the news. Today, it's America's relationship with Saudi Arabia.

So help you God? So help me God.

Congratulations, Mr. President. President.

It's been six weeks since Joe Biden's inauguration,

six weeks for him to start turning campaign promises into policy. Promises like

this one on Saudi Arabia made during a debate in 2019.

President Trump has not punished senior Saudi leaders.

Would you?

Yes, and I would make it very clear.

We were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them.

We were going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are.

That was on the campaign trail.

Now Joe Biden is president and listen to how the tone has changed.

This is his State Department spokesperson Ned Price

announcing the President's new strategy on Saudi Arabia.

We are very focused on future conduct and that is part of why we have cast this not as a

rupture but a recalibration. This is the story of a superpower and how the Saudis are part of its

efforts to stay that way.

It's the story of two countries which at first glance have little in common.

One is a democracy, one's an authoritarian monarchy, one's majority Christian, one is Sunni Muslim, one has freedom of

speech, the other silences dissent, and it's the story of why the complex bond between

them won't be easily broken.

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