Washington
\nThe Saudi assassination of a US-based journalist has put President Donald Trump in an intractable bind.Does he preserve a close US ally and accept whatever Riyadh says about the murder? Or does he risk a rupture and embrace the conclusion of the Central Intelligence Agency that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country\u2019s de facto leader, ordered the killing?<\/p>\n
The US President has refrained from attacking Prince Mohammed ever since Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist who had been writing articles critical of Riyadh for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.<\/p>\n
With Riyadh under international pressure, the Saudi prosecutor announced the arrest of 21 suspects and charges against 11, saying five would face the possible death penalty.
\nAt the same time, Washington announced sanctions on 17 Saudis allegedly involved, including two top aides of the prince.<\/p>\n
Neither side though named the mastermind of the operation. But, according to the Post and The New York Times, the CIA is certain that it was Prince Mohammed himself.<\/p>\n
That puts the US President in a bind. He has formed a deep alliance with the Saudis over a mutual dislike for Iran and a shared interest in keeping global oil prices steady.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump has only two options,\u201d said Michele Dunne, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can agree with the intelligence evaluation and go along with what Congress wants to do, which means indicating publicly or privately that the US will no longer work with MBS.\u201d Or, she said, he could go against all that and try to protect the White House\u2019s relationship with the prince.<\/p>\n
In either case, the risks are high.<\/p>\n
Severing relations with the son of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud is an extreme step, but would not necessarily mean a complete bilateral rupture, said Dunne. \u201cSaudi Arabia is not MBS, and MBS is not Saudi Arabia.\u201d Yet it risks spurring changes in the hierarchy of the Saudi royal family, with the outcome unpredictable for Saudi-US relations.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, if Trump refuses to condemn Prince Mohammed, an angry Congress could take action that would damage the relationship, such as freezing arms sales to the Middle East giant.<\/p>\n
Senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is close to the president, does not mince his attacks on the prince over Khashoggi\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believed from day one that 15 people, 18, whatever the number was, they don\u2019t get on two airplanes, go to Turkey and chop a guy up in the consulate who\u2019s a critic of the crown prince without the crown prince having known about it and sanctioned it,\u201d Graham told NBC\u2019s \u2018Meet the Press\u2019 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The White House appears divided. Kushner has been quiet about the case and his friend the prince.<\/p>\n
But on Friday, Kirsten Fontenrose, a White House official who advocated a tough stance, resigned her position, according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n
One day he denounces it as \u201cone of the worst cover-ups\u201d in history and a \u201ctotal fiasco\u201d. The next he stresses the importance of the alliance and repeats that Prince Mohammed has personally denied to him that he ordered the assassination.<\/p>\n
Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution think-tank said Trump\u2019s equivocating is risky for the relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Saudis aren\u2019t getting the signal that this kind of activity is damaging,\u201d she said. \u201cThe signal that they\u2019re trying to send is that business can go on as usual with the senior leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington The Saudi assassination of a US-based journalist has put President Donald Trump in an intractable bind.Does he preserve a close US ally and accept whatever Riyadh says about the murder? Or does he risk a rupture and embrace the conclusion of the Central Intelligence Agency that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47815,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47813\/revisions\/47815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}