Wednesday, March 17, 2021

2/28/21 In Biden's White House, Khashoggi is Not Forgotten

On Friday, Avril Haines, who heads the Office of National Intelligence, released a report saying that Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, the country's ruler, had approved the operation to "capture or kill" a Washington Post reporter in 2018.

The details are memorable, and gruesome: Jamal Khashoggi, who had gone to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get documents for a marriage license, was strangled and dismembered, and his body vanished.

To Donald Trump, it wasn't that big a deal. That Khashoggi worked for a prominent liberal newspaper -- well, Trump might not have minded at all. But in any other era, under any other president, Khashoggi's death would have called for freezing diplomatic relations, shipping the Saudi ambassador back home in a hurry, and although it's hard to imagine, possibly even making a military response.

Two-plus years on, Biden inherited the mess Trump left behind, and the impossible task of responding to an international crime more than two years old.

The new report confirms the prince’s involvement in the murder, and makes diplomatic relations a tad awkward. It's like having a severed head on the conference table where you're negotiating arms and oil. What're you going to do, ignore it?

Other than restricting various visas and chiding the parties involved in the killing, Biden hasn't and possibly won't respond in any public way.

On the other hand, last week Biden met with Saudi Arabia’s king, and not with the crown prince. We assume Biden may have given the king an ultimatum to remove the we crown prince from the succession order, to help the US in some other way that compensates for the past act, or to face sanctions.

Perhaps not... it’s too early to know. We can safely assume that if the Saudis don’t do penance, the air will be a lot chillier between Washington and the Middle East's desert.


https://thehill.com/policy/international/middle-east-north-africa/540756-intelligence-official-says-khashoggi-report?fbclid=IwAR2BbtV51FBaOU6O-Mj-QKT8GjLdHzpXFc949L_xh0XwWFctYtcTiU3gj1w

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