SHAFAQNA– After passing three weeks, supporting Saudi Arabia to cover Khashoggi’s murder from the Trump administration, on Tuesday US president said it has identified Saudis responsible for killing and plans punishments.
According to Sky News, after speaking to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Donald Trump has described the killing and subsequent cover-up of the death of Jamal Khashoggi as a “fiasco”.
On Tuesday, answering to a reporter in the White House how the Khashoggi killing could have happened, Trump said “They had a very bad original concept. It was carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst in the history of cover-ups. There should have never been an execution or a cover-up, because it should have never happened. I would say it was a total fiasco from day one.”
The United States and Saudi Arabia have been friends since 1945, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Saudi Arabia’s founding king, Abdulaziz, onboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal to strike the deal of the century: Washington would provide the security and Riyadh would provide the oil. Their alliance has held for more than seven decades, even after 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers who brought down the Twin Towers turned out to be Saudi nationals.
But now, bizarrely and belatedly, a growing number of U.S. politicians and pundits seem to have turned on the Kingdom and its belligerent young crown prince Muhammad bin Salman since the disappearance and alleged murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey on October 2nd.
Yet still, plenty of Washington think tankers and pundits, not to mention senior members of the Trump administration, are reluctant to speak out against Saudi Arabia and have been busy smearing Jamal Khashoggi instead. Much of this has to do with Donald Trump’s financial interest in Saudi Arabia, as well as the fact that Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are obsessed with Iran, and are bent on going after Iran, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is their key ally in that aggressive endeavor.
President Trump has been extremely reluctant to be tough on Saudi Arabia. When asked if he believed their account of what happened to Khashoggi, Trump said: “I do. I do. Again, it’s early. We haven’t finished our review, or investigation.” He also noted that the arrest of 18 Saudis is “a good first step.” The statements come a few days after the President was parroting Saudi leaders’ insistence that they had no knowledge of the incident as the crisis unfolded.
The Saudi government offered different forms of assistance to promote the US national interest. Their government has remained a major producer of oil and they have offered a crucial geographic outpost for American military operations. As Council on Foreign Relations scholar Rachel Bronson argued in her book, “Thicker than Oil,” the country’s deep religiosity was also valuable between the 1940s and 1990s, because it helped create a buffer to the appeal of communism.
Under President Trump, Saudi Arabia has once again been the linchpin of the administration’s policy in the Middle East. The plan, for which Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been a key adviser, has been to depend on the wealthy Persian Gulf states to isolate Iran and eventually build support among Arab states for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, CNN mentioned.
It’s true the US-Saudi relationship is deemed an important one. It’s true some American jobs depend on arms sales to the kingdom. It’s possible the Saudis’ payment of $100 million to help stabilize Syria – the cash, held back since August, suddenly appeared in US government accounts on Tuesday, the day Pompeo landed in Riyadh – may have influenced Trump. But none of this fully explains why he is laying the ground to exonerate the regime in general and bin Salman in particular.
The answer can be spelled out in four letters: Iran. Trump realized, belatedly, that his long-plotted strategy for confronting Iran, which culminates on 5 November with a sweeping, potentially crippling global embargo on Iranian oil, cannot work without Saudi support.
The plan, which many analysts believe is actually an attempt to force regime change in Tehran, depends on the Saudis pumping extra oil to compensate for the anticipated shortfall. If not, the outcome could be a worldwide oil shock, with rapidly rising prices and massive, negative knock-on impacts on international markets and trade.
That’s why Trump refuses to contemplate sanctions, such as suspending arms sales, as urged in Congress. For the same reason, he has failed to check the Saudi-led carnage in Yemen. Iran is why Trump will not apply his punitive tool of choice – penalties on named individuals in foreign governments – in the Khashoggi case. Surely nobody honestly believes the high-risk Istanbul operation was undertaken without the prior knowledge of bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s most powerful man. But sanctioning him would blow up Trump’s entire Iranian bonfire night plot.
Remember how we reached this point. As a candidate, Trump bought into the dodgy narrative, promoted principally by the Saudis and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that Iran was the main fomenter of instability across the Middle East, that it was intent on destroying Israel, and that its quest for regional hegemony included duplicitous pursuit of nuclear weapons. In May, Trump reneged on the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran. Next month, he will penalise European allies, and anybody else, who dares do business with Iran.
Trump needs the Saudis not only because the oil embargo could prove chaotic without them. He will also need their political and military cooperation if, as threatened, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards take reciprocal, physical action to halt Saudi and Gulf states’ oil exports via the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, at the mouth of the Red Sea. If this crisis point is reached, escalating confrontations across the region cannot be ruled out.
Attracted by a dictatorial style of governance he evidently admires, Trump’s Middle East policy pivots on the Saudi alliance. He has swallowed Netanyahu’s false nuclear narrative. With epic misjudgment, he bet his shirt on a known hothead, Mohammed bin Salman, who many now suspect is a cold-blooded killer. That’s why he badly needs to bury the Khashoggi affair, whatever the truth of the matter. He sent Pompeo to fix it. So far, Pompeo has failed, The Gaurdian mentioned.
Former Vice President Joe Biden says President Donald Trump may not “know what he’s doing” and coddles dictators.
The potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate told CBS “This Morning” Thursday he’s concerned Trump “seems to have a love affair with autocrats” and “coddles” dictators, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Saudi ruling family, abcnews reported.
Mehdi Hassan : Saudi Arabia is U.S and Israeil key ally in aggressive endeavor against Iran
Mehdi Hassan Al Jazeera TV host tweeted that is the real reason that Trump won’t condemn Saudi Arabia to do with Iran? Because he and Netanyahu need MBS as part of their anti-Iran coalition?
In this week’s episode, Mehdi Hasan is joined by The Intercept’s D.C. bureau chief, Ryan Grim, and the founder of the National Iranian American Council, Trita Parsi, to deconstruct the evil Justice League of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Salman.
Mehdi Hasan said Why is the U.S. so keen to help the Saudis cover-up the alleged murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Is it all about oil and arms sales and Trump’s apartments, or is it something deeper, more geopolitical? Is it really about Iran and about Israel?
Why Saudi Arabia has such support from the neocons, from the Trump administration, even from the State of Israel, and it’s not just because they buy lots of weapons and sell lots of oil, important though that is; nor is it just because they give lots of money to Donald Trump, he added.
“ That’s all true BUT it’s also about geopolitics, it’s also about power. It’s about the Iranian elephant in the room, and the fact that Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are obsessed with Iran. Obsessed! And are bent on going after Iran, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is their key ally in that aggressive endeavor”.
He said actually I was very pleased to see the New York Times this week report that White House officials are “worried” that this new crisis with Saudi Arabia, and the Kingdom’s constantly changing story over whether or not they murdered Jamal Khashoggi, accidentally or otherwise, whether that could, quote, “derail a showdown with Iran and jeopardize plans to enlist Saudi help to avoid disrupting the oil market.”
He added Derail a showdown with Iran. Because that clearly is the priority for hawks in Washington D.C., in Tel Aviv and in Riyadh. The Times goes on to point out that this crisis comes quote “at a fraught moment for the Trump administration, which is expected to reimpose harsh sanctions against Iran on November 5, with the intent of cutting off all Iranian oil exports.”
“But to make the strategy work,” the paper says, “the administration is counting on its relationship with the Saudis to keep global oil flowing… and to work together on a new policy to contain Iran in the Persian Gulf.”
“Contain Iran. Sanction Iran. Showdown with Iran. With the ultimate aim of? War with Iran. That is the name of the game when it comes to Trump, Netanyahu and yes, MBS, the Saudi crown prince. They are the three anti-Iran Musketeers and therefore they will stick together through thick and thin, through gruesome murders and beyond. As will their spinners and propagandists here in D.C. and elsewhere:
Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy said Trump Administration doesn’t want to actually seek justice in this case because they’re in on a strategy to counter Iran, which really is about making sure that the U.S. doubles down on its military presence in the region and helps the Saudis and the Israelis shift the balance of power back to the way it was prior to 2003.
he added That’s the Saudi and Israeli game plan. Now the way I think some folks have kind of got this story a little bit wrong in the sense of saying – look, we need the Saudis for this strategy. We don’t need the strategy. It’s the Saudis that need a strategy. It’s the Saudis that have been pushing this strategy together with the Israelis. Because prior to this we had a nuclear deal that was working and you had the Obama Administration that actually was trying to slowly but surely reduce America’s dependence on Saudi Arabia. Trump has done the opposite and bizarrely is now making the argument: well, we need the Saudis to counter Iran. We don’t need to counter Iran. It’s the Saudis that need the U.S. to counter Iran.
The nuclear deal was not just about the nuclear issue. It signified that the United States after 40 years had come to terms with one reality in the region – Iran is a major power. Because remember what John Kerry was doing as soon as the nuclear deal was struck. He was going around the world telling people: “Trade with Iran. You have to make sure that this deal works by providing Iran with the economic benefits we promised them.” It was the opposite of containment. This terrified them, because it meant that in their perspective, they were abandoned by the United States. They had to go and fight the Iranian rivalry on their own instead of being able to have the United States with its massive power come and tip the scale in their favor. And then they got lucky.
Donald Trump got elected. A man who has no understanding whatsoever of geopolitics and they managed to quickly convince him – to the extent that I think he genuinely starts to believe it – that their fight with Iran is America’s fight with Iran. It is not.
Ryan Grim said Israel considers Iran to be its existential threat. And the Saudis and the Emiratis have over the last several years, or more than a decade, recognized that their best path to power in Washington is to cozy up with Israel. Now, that has been a balancing act because they don’t actually recognize the country and so they need a different rhetoric back home than they need here in Washington. But the ambassadors have become good friends and they kind of allow Israel to carry it through Congress in some ways. Now the Emiratis and the Saudis also pump Washington full of cash. But cash alone doesn’t do it. You also need the political cover and the political cover is Israel. And so, to the extent that Israel wants a confrontation with Iran, the Saudis and Emiratis also want it – Emiratis slightly less so – but if it gets them closer to Israel, which then gets them closer to the United States, then they’re willing to go along with it, The Intercept reported.