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WASHINGTON – For President Trump, who has made Saudi Arabia the fulcrum of his Middle East policy, the possible murder of a Saudi journalist in Turkey is a looming diplomatic crisis. For Mr. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, it is a personal reckoning.
More than anyone in the Trump administration, Mr. Kushner has grown to Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – whose family may have played a role in the disappearance of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi – elevating the prince in a key ally in the Arab world and the White House's primary interlocutor to the kingdom.
Mr. Kushner championed Prince Mohammed, 33, when the prince was jockeying to be his father's heir; had dinner in Washington and Riyadh, Saudi capital; promoted to $ 110 billion weapons sale to his military; and once again hoped that the future king would have a Saudi stamp of approval on his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
While the fate of Mr. Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia and a columnist for The Washington Post, remains unclear, allegations that he was killed on the orders of the royal court have thrown Mr. Kushner's grand bet on Prince Mohammed into doubt.
He may be the risk-taking reformer the trump family eagerly embraced than a reckless, untested ruler, which critics say to have been emboldened by the parties to the Trumps to take heavy-handed actions at home and abroad.
Saudi leaders, including the prince, insist Mr. Khashoggi left the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on his own, and they do not know what happened to him after that.
But it becomes clear that he has been assassinated by Mr. Khashoggi, he will be provoked to an outcry on Capitol Hill; embarrassment American executives, dozens of whom are flocking to Riyadh for a conference next week and Mr. Kushner, who was once again a newspaper publisher, in an extremely awkward position.
After a week of laying low, there is evidence of the White House is turning on the pressure on the Saudis. On Tuesday, the White House said, Mr. Kushner and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, spoke to Prince Mohammed by Mr. Khashoggi's disappearance. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also called him.
"In both calls," said the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Turkey is also raising the pressure. On Wednesday, Turkish officials identified with Turkish government identified 15 Saudis who they said were operatives who fled to Istanbul last week in pursuit of Mr. Khashoggi.
Sabah, one of the men on the list published by the newspaper, is an autopsy expert at Saudi Arabia's internal security agency, according to the two Turkish officials. Another appears to be a lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force. The officials, quoting confidential intelligence, said all worked for the Saudi government.
Mr. Kushner declined to discuss the state of his relationship with Prince Mohammed. Behind the scenes, Fred Ryan, to Prince Mohammed, expressing concern for Mr. Khashoggi and asking for his help. Mr. Kushner has also taken other unspecified steps, this person said.
Trump administration officials said there were still too many unanswered questions to draw any conclusions about what happened in Istanbul. But Mr. Trump promised on Wednesday that "we'll get to the bottom of it."
"It's a very sad situation, it's a very bad situation," he said. "We can not let this happen, to reporters, to anybody."
Even before the murky events in Istanbul, Mr. Kushner's partnership with Prince Mohammed was running into headwinds. Saudi Arabia rebuffed Mr. Trump's pleas to settle a dispute with Qatar, his neighbor. Its arms bought $ 110 trillion trumpeted by Mr. Kushner, in part because of resistance in Congress and in part because it was somewhat exaggerated.
The Prince's father, King Salman, ruled out public support for Mr. Kushner's peace plan after Mr. Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a move that alienated the Palestinians.
Most important, from the perspective of lawmakers, Saudi Arabia has continued to kill civilians in Yemen with errant airstrikes, in a much-criticized intervention by Prince Mohammed in that country's civil war.
Reports of Mr. Khashoggi 's Potential Hillary' s Report on Capitol Hill, Who Have Long Been to the United States of America.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of Mr. Trump's closest allies in Congress, said that if the Saudis were responsible for Mr. Khashoggi's death, there would be "hell to pay."
"I've never been more disturbed than I am right now," he said. "If this man was murdered in the consulate in Istanbul, that would cross every line of normality in the international community."
Policymakers across the United States expressed concern about the Saudi government's lack of transparency and unwillingness to provide information about Mr. Khashoggi's whereabouts.
"It does not seem like the Saudis are concerned about US views because they assume they will not care for them because they do not need US approval," said Gerald M. Feierstein, a former ambassador to Yemen who was the State Department's second-ranking diplomat for Middle East policy from 2013 to 2016.
Saudi Arabia's muscle will be on display next week, when American technology and financial investors gather at the investor conference in Riyadh that the crown prince will wait. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will be representing the Trump administration at the meeting, which attendees have called "Davos in the Desert" and are held at the same Ritz-Carlton Hotel where Prince Mohammed jailed dozens of wealthy Saudis in what he said was an anticorruption campaign.
Among the prominent figures are Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group; and Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber.
Mr. Trump: Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who has a friend of the president; and Dina H. Powell, a Goldman Sachs executive and deputy national security adviser who has worked with Mr. Kushner on Saudi Arabia and is leading Nikki R. Haley as Ambassador to the United Nations.
The Treasury Department said Mr. Mnuchin was still planning to wait. A person working with American business executives said that if he has not been able
The New York Times, Eileen Murphy, spokesperson for the paper, said Wednesday night.
Mr. Kushner 's relationship with Prince Mohammed dates back to March 2017, when the two bonded over lunch at the White House. Mr. Kushner, 37, persuaded Mr. Trump to make Riyadh his first foreign trip as president. In return, we are committed to the saudis to take action against terrorism, including a new center to monitor activists.
The blossoming relationship paid for by Prince Mohammed when Mr. Trump backed Saudi Arabia in his feud with Qatar, even over the reservations of his secretary of state at the time, Rex W. Tillerson.
Even in those days, Mr. Trump's aides saw the ties between Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed as a mixed blessing. While it gave the White House a channel to Saudi Arabia, it was designed to make it easier for older people.
Mr. Tillerson, who had a bad relationship with Mr. Kushner, could not play that role, and even Mr. Pompeo, who made an early trip to Saudi Arabia as secretary of state, had deferred to Mr. Kushner on the crown prince.
Mr. Pompeo has recently been certified to Congress that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been operating in Yemen. This cam despite an Aug. 9 airstrike on a school bus in Yemen that killed more than 40 children.
He also overruled the recommendations of State Department experts who concluded that the Saudi-led coalition had not yet established sufficient civilian leadership, according to Andrew Miller, to form State Department official.
A rising number of Pentagon officials and senior American military commanders are also voicing exasperation over a conflict that has spiraled into one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
"There's a level of frustration we need to acknowledge," Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, said in an interview in late August.
For all the turbulence, defenders of Saudi Arabia say, Prince Mohammed has proved himself a valuable ally for the United States.
"It's been a rocky road, P.R. wise, but they made the right call, strategically," said Ali Shihabi, the founder of the Arabia Foundation, who has close ties to the Royal Saudi court. "They have an ally who are on the same page as they are."
Still, the growing criticism from all quarters complicates those shared goals.
"Although there is a strong relationship in the relationship," said Robert Malley, a White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf during the Obama administration.
"If one adds what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, and if some of the horrifying stories turn out to be true, one can imagine this having profound implications for U.S.-Saudi relations," Mr. Malley said.
Reporting was contributed by Maggie Haberman and Alan Rappeport from Washington; David D. Kirkpatrick from Ankara, Turkey; and Kate Kelly and Malachy Browne from New York.
