Since Saudi Arabia publicly acknowledged that the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi had been a preplanned murder and that the kingdom’s earlier story on his death was fabricated, questions have swirled as to just what the U.S. would do, if anything, to hold its close ally accountable.
Weeks after the dissident journalist’s killing, the plan is clear: impose serious-sounding sanctions, pay lip service to the idea that such extrajudicial killings are unacceptable, and dance around anything that would implicate the Saudi crown prince or hurt long term bilateral relations.
That at least seems to be the reasoning behind the Treasury Department’s Thursday morning announcement of sanctions against the 17 Saudis in connection to Khashoggi’s murder. The penalties included sanctions on a close aide to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but not the crown prince himself.
But it’s not just the executive branch that is pursuing this strategy. In the Senate, Rand Paul, R-Ky., an outspoken critic of U.S. actions in the Middle East, secured a vote Thursday afternoon on a $300 million arms sale to Saudi ally Bahrain. Although it was voted down, the bill would certainly have been a blow to the kingdom, but it too would have fallen short of a direct rebuke of Saudi actions. For the White House and most Senators, even this was too close to actually holding Saudi Arabia accountable.
In the House, Republicans blocked a bill that would end U.S. military support for the Saudi coalition in Yemen on Tuesday. Despite growing backlash against the war and questions about the truthfulness of Saudi claims that civilian deaths in airstrikes were accidental, questioning all U.S. engagement in the war remains a red line.
For its part, Saudi Arabia seems all too happy to play along with the U.S. strategy of avoiding a direct blow to either the crown prince of the key objectives of the kingdom.
In a show of good faith, on Thursday morning the Saudi government announced that it would pursue the death penalty against 11 Saudi’s implicated in Khashoggi’s killing. With the war with Yemen facing renewed scrutiny, the Saudi-led coalition has ordered a halt in an ongoing assault.
The clearest example yet of Trump’s intentions to side step actually punishing Saudi Arabia, however, is NBC’s report that his administration would try to bribe Turkey to follow Washington’s lead with the handover of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen.
So the choreography continues with slow shows of taking the killing seriously playing out in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia as well as Israel and perhaps Turkey. The eventual goal is likely for there to be enough action to placate the public and the media so that everyone can get back to the real business of arms sales, oil exports, and, of course, fighting Iran.
Despite the talk of sanctions and threats to arms deals, the message to Saudi Arabia is clear: It’s not the war in Yemen or even killing dissident journalists lured to the consulate to get a document before his wedding that’s the problem. Instead it’s sloppy action that have given everyone a headache by straining the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
