On Thursday, the Saudis began the prosecution of 11 officials for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. This is a blame escape capsule for the man ultimately responsible for the murder, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
That doesn’t mean the Trump administration should push the issue — it shouldn’t. But this situation is interesting. For a start, it is not controversial to state that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Khashoggi’s murder. The crown prince had the track record, means, and intent to murder Khashoggi. Nor could the murder have been authorized without his approval.
It’s no coincidence that many of those sanctioned by the U.S. over the killing are or were intimate members of the crown prince’s personal court. Nor is it coincidence that the crown prince’s inner circle back in Riyadh went into overdrive talking to each other during the killing itself. The shoddy, near-psychotic tactics of the murder are also suggestive of planning by amateurs with no professional intelligence experience.
Mohammed bin Salman is the man with the power and the leader who wants to rule Saudi Arabia for the next 50 years. He was never going to allow this scandal to bring him down with it. But nor could he ignore the diplomatic fallout. So instead, the crown prince offered up a nice double digit number of fall guys for international sacrifice. Note, here, the importance of the international factor. The crown prince’s priority is drawing a line under this situation so that he can resume attracting international investment to Saudi Arabia. And he knows that when it comes to getting big investors back to the desert kingdom, all he needs vis-a-vis Khashoggi is a thinly plausible denial. This effort to close the book on Khashoggi explains the crown prince’s broader effort — one that Saudi fanboys on Twitter are loathe to admit — to demote anyone even remotely associated with the Khashoggi incident in western eyes. Notably, the now-former Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir.
That brings us to the 11 indicted individuals. Although some of those accused share blame here, it is striking that senior intelligence officials, and other members of bin Salman’s most inner circle are not on trial. The Saudis know that to charge those individuals would have been to show too obvious and too close a link between the murderers and the crown prince himself. So does the U.S. Hence why we haven’t pressed the issue.
So 11 scapegoats will be thrown in prison or beheaded to save their master. Still, as brutal as it sounds, we can swallow this. We need Mohammed bin Salman to continue his reform program.
