Has Mohammed bin Salman finally gone too far?

Khashoggi's presence in the Washington area, his insight from decades of intrusion into the Saudi elite, and his laid-back, scholarly attitude make him an excellent interlocutor for policymakers and journalists. The ruling circle around MBS was presented with the best known and best-connected specter of the regime operating in the heart of the only Western capital in which he wanted to lead the conversation the most.

Khashoggi's relations with influential Saudis

For many years, the idea that Khashoggi would become the most wanted opponent of the Saudi regime would have seemed inconceivable when he had built a career as a journalist and operator closely linked to the Saudi governing body. Khashoggi collaborated closely on media initiatives with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire businessman detained during the November raid of dozens of corporate executives and influential family members by MBS.

Khashoggi also advised Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, formerly head of Saudi intelligence, who served as ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Britain and then to the United States in the 2000s. the royal family went back several generations: Khashoggi's grandfather was the personal physician of the founding king of Saudi Arabia.

Controversies of 2003

Khashoggi's relations with the Saudi elite, however, were more nuanced and complicated, and several times during his career he had displeased the authorities because of what he had said or done. In 2003, he was fired as editor of the al-Watan newspaper after only 54 days after an argument between an al-Watan reporter and the powerful interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz.

Khashoggi's mandate as director of the Al-Arab News channel, created by Alwaleed and based in Bahrain as part of a solidarity show after the Arab Spring, was even shorter: channel programming was suspended after his first day of operation for the broadcast of an interview. with a politician from the Bahraini opposition. In December 2016, the Saudi authorities banned Khashoggi from writing and publishing articles, apparently after making comments in the United States in which he criticized President-elect Donald Trump.

MBS is getting closer to the Trump administration

Its proximity to the central core of Saudi power structures meant that Khashoggi's presence in Washington DC was a credible way to thwart the image presented by MBS. The prince's entourage has invested heavily in determining the MBS's skills at the Trump White House when he took office and in managing the Persian Gulf's business agenda, including the war in Yemen. the blockade of Qatar, both closely linked to MBS and Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, his princely counterpart in Abu Dhabi. The fact that Khashoggi had a voice and, in The Post, a megaphone to share his divergent views, had made him very angry, especially at a time when MBS's approach to policymaking was challenged. national and international

Why did the disappearance of Khashoggi galvanize opinion so quickly and contrasted with the much slower opposition to opposition to the many other unfortunate MBS companies, which of course include more than 10,000 combat deaths in Yemen ? Anyone who has made the decision to remove or eliminate Khashoggi seems to have miscalculated or completely failed to anticipate the human impact factor that sweeps Beltway 's goodwill towards Saudi Arabia. Arabia and inflicts enormous damage to the kingdom's reputation.

The future of US relations with Saudi Arabia

The pressure on Saudi Arabia and the MBS, in particular, casts further doubt on the Trump Government's approach to Middle East policy, as it was based for the most part on a close partnership with Saudi Arabia. The peace plan for the Middle East that Trump's son-in-law and Jared Kushner would have spent months developing would have relied on the cooperation of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to secure the Palestinian and Arab help. President Trump has publicly called on the Saudis to choose New York for the 5% listing of Saudi Arabia's Aramco and has boasted repeatedly of the sale of 110 billion guns. of dollars he would have negotiated during his visit to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in 2017.

The proximity of the White House with MBS sparked controversy, the Crown Prince having made a mistake after the other and having given few results, King Salman bin Abdul Aziz begged MBS to reaffirm the Saudi support to the Palestinians and condemn the move of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. The Aramco list has been put on the ice.

The members of Congress who viewed classified documents related to the Khashoggi case were the most vehement in their indignation and unanimously in their calls for a firm response. The influential Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (SC) even referred to a "change" in US-Saudi relations, making it harder for the White House to rely on Saudi ignorance protests and any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Turkey that tries to sweep away Khashoggi's disappearance under the carpet.

The investigative reporters have the habit of assembling the events and if irrefutable evidence establishes a connection between elements of the Saudi rulers and the decision to abduct Khashoggi, dead or alive, appeals policies to sanctions against the perpetrators could be deafening. That the mid-term elections produce a more or less favorable White House convention, bipartisan condemnation of Khashoggi's demise, and Beltway's media determination to discover what happened to one of their own. means means that simply going back to a "like-usual" will probably not be an option.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is a member of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University at Rice University.