As a presidential candidate, US President Joe Biden promised to make a pariah out of Saudi Arabia over the 2018 killing of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, but when it came time to actually punish Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, the US’ strategic interests prevailed.
The Biden administration on Friday made clear that it would forgo sanctions or any other major penalty against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the Khashoggi killing, even after a US intelligence report concluded that the prince ordered the hit.
The decision highlights how the real-time decisions of diplomacy often collide with the righteousness of the moral high ground.
Photo: AFP
Nowhere is this conundrum starker than in the US’ complicated relationship with Saudi Arabia — the world’s oil giant, a US arms customer and a counterbalance to Iran in the Middle East.
“It is undeniable that Saudi Arabia is a hugely influential country in the Arab world,” US Department of State spokesman Ned Price said on Monday when asked about Biden’s retreat from his promise to isolate the Saudis over the killing.
Biden administration officials said that US interests in maintaining relations with Saudi Arabia forbid making a pariah of a young prince who might go on to rule the kingdom for decades.
That stands in stark contrast with Biden’s campaign promise to make the kingdom “pay the price” for human rights abuses and “make them in fact the pariah that they are.”
“We’ve talked about this in terms of a recalibration. It’s not a rupture,” Price said of the US-Saudi relationship.
However, what the Biden administration is calling a “recalibration” of former US president Donald Trump’s warm relationship with Saudi royals looks a lot like the normal US stand before Trump: chiding on human rights abuses in the kingdom, but not allowing those concerns to interfere with relations with Saudi Arabia.
In recent days, Biden officials have responded to intense criticism of its failure to sanction the prince by pointing to US measures targeting his lower-ranking associates.
Those include steps against the prince’s “Tiger squad” that allegedly has sought out dissidents abroad, and sanctions and visa restrictions against Saudi officials who directly participated in Khashoggi’s slaying and dismemberment.
The language itself has softened, with Biden officials referring to Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner.
On Monday, US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner told The Associated Press that he was open to more sanctions, but added that the US needs to maintain its relationship with Saudi Arabia.
“This is a dangerous neighborhood — and the Saudis are critical in terms of keeping pressure on Iran,” Warner said.
Forgoing punishment in such a brutal killing, of an internationally known journalist, sends a message of impunity for future slayings, not just for the prince, but for all authoritarian governments, said Sarah Leah Whitson, leader of Democracy for the Arab World Now, a rights group that Khashoggi founded not long before his death.
The Biden administration “basically sent the message that if you’re at the top, you’re safe, and business will continue as usual, as long as we agree on some low-level officials to throw under the bus,” Whitson said.
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