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President Donald Trump said that the Crown Prince of the American ally, Saudi Arabia, had told him directly that it had nothing to do with the journalist's assassination Jamal Khashoggi, but Trump says that he wonders "will anyone know one." (November 18)
AP
In this image made from a March 2018 video provided by Metafora Production, Jamal Khashoggi reacts when a cat jumps on his lap, while speaking in an interview in a secret location. Eighteen days after the disappearance of Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia acknowledged Saturday morning October 20, 2018 that its author, aged 59, had died in a "punch fight" inside. from the consulate of Saudi Arabia to Istanbul.(Photo: Metafora production via AP)
WASHINGTON – Seven weeks after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration is still seeking a coherent response to the death of the Washington Post columnist and a resolution of the foreign policy crisis.
Despite continued domestic and international pressure to punish Saudi Arabia for its role in killing Khashoggi, President Donald Trump has continued play the status of the Kingdom as a key ally of the United States – and minimize the evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly ordered the murder of the US resident.
"Their strategy has been hoping that the truth will not be revealed," said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and national security advisor under the Obama administration, who is now part of National Security Action , a critical defense group of Trump's foreign policy agenda.
"They have taken steps to try to escape some of the pressure, especially from Congress," he said. "But with each opening of the pressure valve, new and overwhelming revelations followed about Saudi Arabia's complicity in this murder."
The Washington Post and other news outlets reported last Friday that the CIA had concluded that the crown prince, the de facto leader of the country, had ordered the killing of Khashoggi. La Poste quoted anonymous sources as saying that the CIA's analysis was based on multiple sources of information.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied Salman's involvement in the death of Khashoggi, who was killed on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi, an American resident and critic of the Saudi regime who fled his country last year, went to the diplomatic offices to obtain the documents he needed for his next marriage to a Turkish woman.
Turkish officials said their evidence shows that Khashoggi was brutally murdered and dismembered inside the consulate by Saudi agents. Saudi officials have proposed changing accounts – claiming first that Khashoggi had left the consulate unscathed and finally admitted to being murdered there. The remains of Khashoggi have still not been found.
Waiting for the "full report"
On Saturday, Trump said the CIA had yet to "evaluate" and described Saudi Arabia as a "spectacular partner." Trump said his administration would produce a "full report" detailing the circumstances surrounding Khashoggi's death, including "who did it."
On Monday, White House officials had little information on the status of this report and officials from the CIA and the State Department declined to comment. Several foreign policy experts have stated that they do not expect the report promised by Trump to be complete accounting.
"I expect the administration to stagnate and prevaricate," said Bruce Riedel, a Middle East expert with the Brookings Institution, a leftist think-tank based in Washington.
Aaron David Miller, former advisor to six former state secretaries, said the Trump government had done everything possible to give the princethe benefit of the doubt, and he expects any report on Khashoggi's death to follow this line.
"I think the strategy of the administration is to argue that there is no proverbial smoker", which proves that the crown prince ordered the assassination of Khashoggi, said Miller, now a member of the Wilson Center, a foreign policy research organization. He added that this was part of a broader effort by the administration to "preserve at all costs this relationship with Saudi Arabia".
But, he added, "the Congress clearly has something else in mind".
The senior legislators on both sides are convinced that the Crown Prince, known by his MBS initials, was aware of Khashoggi's murder and directed it.
"If you know anything about Saudi Arabia and MBS, the fact that he did not know it's impossible to believe," said Senator Lindsey Graham, RS .C., At the NBC Meet the Press conference. "… It's irrational, it's out of order, and I think it's done a lot of damage to the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia."
Up to here, the Trump administration has taken two steps to react to the killing of Khashoggi; ban 21 Saudis from traveling to the United States and impose sanctions on 17 Saudis.
"The administration seems far from paralyzed," said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy at the American Conservative Institute. "He asked for answers, sanctioned people in Arabia and a ceasefire in Yemen", where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting against Iran-backed rebels.
"… it's Trump himself who remains reluctant to take the heir to the finger," she added.
Sanctions are not enough
Lawmakers welcomed the sanctions, but said that was not enough. Graham and others advocate legislation that potentially suspends billions of dollars in arms sales by the United States to Saudi Arabia and imposes mandatory sanctions on those responsible for Khashoggi's death under the Magnitsky law. The Trump administration should also document human rights in Saudi Arabia and impose new accountability measures for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
The president has repeatedly said that Khashoggi's death should not jeopardize the possible sales of US weapons to the kingdom or the Saudi-American alliance at large. The administration relies heavily on Saudi Arabia in its campaign to isolate Iran.
Pletka said that Khashoggi's death presented the government with a "hopeless situation", complicated by Trump's desire to contradict those he believed were motivated by domestic politics rather than by Saudi human rights considerations. # 39; man. Other experts have agreed that punishing Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi, while trying to preserve the broader alliance, is a complicated task.
"There is no simple answer to that," said Price. However, the administration may take several steps to signal that "not everything is happening as usual," he said, including ending any US military support for the Saudi government's war in Yemen. and calling on the regime to release all its political prisoners.
"We do not hear anything close to that for the moment," Price said. "The administration had hoped that these sanctions would be the end".
Contributors: John Fritze and Christal Hayes
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