The dance between the US and Saudi Arabia

Nov 18, 2018 Editorial

Saudi Arabia has announced it would seek death sentences for some members of the team of Saudis suspected of murdering Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
So, a month and a half after the killing, all is clear: The Saudis are prepared to kill the main witnesses to the Khashoggi murder.
And, oh, Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old de facto ruler, will be exonerated.
“Absolutely, his royal highness the crown prince has nothing to do with this issue,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir assured reporters in Riyadh on Thursday. The American sanctions do not rise to the prince’s level, nor to those closest to him.
Yesterday, the CIA concluded that the instructions to kill Khashoggi came directly from the crown prince.
Turkey apparently has a full audio recording of what happened and has steadily made portions public (in the latest, a member of the kill team instructs a superior by phone to “tell your boss” the deed has been done).
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, stressed that the murder was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. “The necessary equipment and people were previously brought in to kill and later dismember him,” Mr. Cavusoglu said.
Indeed, it’s hard to believe that a planeload of security agents, including a forensic specialist, flew all the way to Istanbul just to gently persuade Mr. Khashoggi, a one-time intimate of the royals who became a self-exiled critic of the crown prince, to come home.
The truth may never be known, especially if the Saudi public prosecutor succeeds in obtaining the death penalty that he said he’s seeking against five of the Saudi suspects, thus eliminating the main witnesses.
But what is already clear is that the relationship between the oil-soaked kingdom and the United States needs to change.
Almost from the creation of Saudi Arabia, the United States and Western powers thirsty for oil and hungry for Saudi investment dollars have largely closed their eyes to its systemic abuses of elemental human rights, including the suppression of women and freedoms of religion and expression.
The blinkered approach was not limited to Saudi Arabia — the West dealt with the Soviet Union and scores of other despotic regimes to prevent war, ensure supplies of oil and other raw materials and, in recent decades, to combat terrorism.
But Prince Mohammed went too far, on too many fronts. Campaigning to contain the rival power of Iran, he launched an ill-conceived war in Yemen, which has blown up into a humanitarian disaster of unspeakable proportions in which America is complicit as provider of weaponry and military support; he blockaded Qatar; he detained the prime minister of Lebanon.
At home, the prince began what on first appearance were promising social and economic reforms, including the lifting of a ban on women driving. But he also detained a host of his princely cousins and other petro-billionaires to consolidate his power, and cracked down on dissenters — leading, whether on his orders or not, to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi.
Among Mr. Trump’s first reactions to the Khashoggi murder was to state that it would not affect the lucrative arms sales.
The murder in Istanbul, caught in all its horror on Turkish audiotapes, ripped down the last of the curtain. Governments, business executives and politicians quickly scaled back their association with Saudi Arabia.
Yet President Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of Saudi Arabia, apparently ready to accept whatever excuses the Saudis offer in relation to Khashoggi’s death.
The world feels that the Trump administration must make the Saudis come clean on how Mr. Khashoggi died.
(Adapted from the New York Times)

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