America and the Saudis Saving the alliance will require telling the truth about Khoshoggi.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-and-the-saudis-1540159637
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has hurt itself badly with the killing of journalist Jamal Khoshoggi, and its serial explanations are compounding the damage. President Trump will lose control of the Saudi-U.S. relationship if he doesn’t speak truth to these Saudi abuses and to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old power in front of the throne.
The most complete Saudi statement, issued late Friday night, at least admits that Khoshoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate at the hands of Saudi agents. But the story that Khoshoggi was killed in a “fight and a quarrel” isn’t credible on its face. “The brawl aggravated to lead to his death and their attempt to conceal and cover what happened,” said the Saudi statement. That must have been some lopsided “brawl” with a 59-year-old journalist confronting multiple security agents, as if he were Liam Neeson in “Taken.”
The story is contradicted by information leaked by Turkish officials who say Khoshoggi was killed quickly and dismembered on the scene. The Saudis still haven’t produced Khoshoggi’s body, or provided more details of precisely how or when he died.
The “fight” story also conveniently lays blame on lower-ranking officials while effectively absolving members of the royal family, especially the Crown Prince known as MBS. The Saudis say they’ve arrested 18 officials and sacked five others. Several are part of MBS’s inner circle, and it’s unlikely they would have acted without at least the tacit assent of the Crown Prince. Khoshoggi, who had a wide following in the Middle East, had criticized the Crown Prince for his authoritarian tactics in trying to reform the Kingdom.
On Sunday Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir called it a “rogue operation” that neither MBS nor “the senior leadership of our intelligence service” was aware of. This would be more believable if the Saudis hadn’t taken 18 days to say it. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is promising to reveal Turkey’s account of what happened on Tuesday, and that could further undermine Saudi credibility.
The Trump Administration’s response to all this hasn’t exactly been a model of moral or strategic clarity. Mr. Trump has rambled from promising “severe” consequences to extolling U.S. arms sales to threatening sanctions to a seeming apologia for MBS as an “incredible ally.” On Saturday he finally got closer to the truth when he told the Washington Post that he doubted the Saudi explanation. “Obviously there’s been deception, and there’s been lies,” Mr. Trump said.
The U.S. goal should be to preserve the U.S.-Saudi alliance while making clear that murdering journalists is unacceptable and that MBS’s erratic judgment and willful use of power are problems for the bilateral relationship. The U.S. can’t dictate to King Salman who should run his government, but MBS also can’t be allowed to conclude that America thinks this is no big deal. Otherwise he’ll keep creating trouble for his own country and the U.S.
Sanctions of individual Saudis under the Magnitsky Act are inevitable and warranted. Sanctioning MBS would depend on whether evidence implicates him in the killing. A moratorium on arms sales is probably counterproductive since MBS could turn to Russia and China. But the U.S. could work with the Saudis to reduce their bombing in Yemen, which is killing civilians, in return for U.S. interdiction of Iranian arms deliveries to Saudi enemies in Yemen.
U.S. officials above all can’t appear to be complicit in a whitewash of the murder or public embrace of MBS as if nothing happened. Americans understand that the U.S. has interests in the Middle East that often require working with rulers and countries that can be brutal. But that shouldn’t extend to denying actions that offend our values when they occur.
Mr. Trump needs to lead here or Congress will take charge with uncertain and perhaps damaging effect. Saudi Arabia lacks the deep emotional support that Israel has among the U.S. public, and a significant lobby on the left prefers an entente with Iran instead of the Saudis. Mr. Trump saw on Russia sanctions how bipartisan majorities can roll over his policy if he ignores foreign offenses against U.S. values and interests. He shouldn’t make the same mistake on Saudi Arabia.
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