The Saudi demand for a political appointee is a condition John Kiriakou says Riyadh has always placed on the American embassy there, and which he raised in September 2025 to explain why Saudi Arabia was the post being floated for Eric Adams.
He frames it as an inversion of the normal preference: “The Saudis have always insisted that they not have a career diplomat as the US ambassador. They demand it, which is exactly the opposite of most other countries. The Saudis demand a political appointee.”[1]
The reason is access rather than status. “Because they want to be able to pick up the phone, call the ambassador, and have the ambassador call the president, and the president takes the call.”[2]
A career officer cannot do that, however senior. “If you’re a career diplomat, the president’s never heard of you. You can’t call the White House in the middle of the night and say the king of Saudi Arabia wants to talk to you.”[2]
Kiriakou returns to the point at the end of his description of the posting, stripping it to a sentence: “the reason why they want you in the first place is they want to have somebody who will have his phone calls taken by the president. That’s it. That’s the bottom line.”[3]
The corollary he draws is that the appointment of an unqualified but well-connected figure would suit Riyadh perfectly — “as crazy as this might sound, the Saudis would be very happy to have Eric Adams as the US ambassador” — whatever the Senate might make of it.[2][4]