‘Hope we can keep it’: Trump touts Saudi arms deal while talking sanctions over Khashoggi death
US President Donald Trump has again warned that Saudi Arabia will face consequences if it was behind the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – but he also suggested that Washington will not be axing its arms deal with Riyadh.
When a reporter, employing some lingo previously used by the president, asked Trump what "severe consequences"against Saudi Arabia would entail, the president had a rather vague answer.
"I think it's too early to say," he said, while stressing that it's "very serious stuff" and "something we don't like" if Riyadh was indeed behind Khashoggi's murder. He added that Congress would be involved when it came to determining an appropriate response.
However, he once again touted the arms deal between Washington and Riyadh, citing the $450 billion and 600,000 jobs it is bringing into the country, and adding that it would be "very hurtful" to the US if it was dropped.
"I hope we can keep that," he said.
When asked specifically whether sanctions might be considered, Trump said it was a possibility but declined to commit to implementing them. Instead, he said the US is first going to "find out who knew what, when, and where."
Trump went on to once-again call Saudi Arabia a "great ally" of the United States. "That's why this is so sad."
Khashoggi, a journalist with The Washington Post, was last seen on October 2 when he entered the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. Turkish officials have accused a Saudi assassination squad of murdering and dismembering his body. Riyadh says it is investigating the circumstances of his disappearance.
Trump's comments come just one day after he stated that it "certainly looks like" Khashoggi is dead, adding that whoever was behind his murder would face "severe consequences."
TRUMP AND HIS SAUDIS
The
Saudi Challenge
Jamal Khashoggi's
murder -- and no one now questions whether the Washington Post contributor was
killed by Saudi agents in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey -- has far-reaching
implications for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump appears to
want to help sweep the incident under the rug, providing cover for the Saudis'
ludicrous suggestion that the killing was a rogue operation or an interrogation
gone awry. And he's enmeshed the highest officials of his administration in the
mess by sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh, where the secretary
was photographed, all smiles, sitting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
who most likely ordered Khashoggi's murder. The administration is giving itself
little leeway to take serious measures to protest the killing, signaling to the
world that the U.S. cannot be counted on to stand up against bloodthirsty
autocrats, even when a U.S. resident and member of the American press is the
victim.
I
doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending.
Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his
patrons for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In
the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of Trump's
many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his landmark
Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001. During the
campaign, the Trump Organization registered more than a half-dozen limited
liability companies in the kingdom, in anticipation of cashing in on Trump's
enhanced renown. When Trump actually won (which apparently he didn't think he
would at the time), someone must have explained he couldn't move ahead with new
business there as president, because he withdrew the registrations. Of course,
a little thing like benefiting from the office of the presidency hasn't stopped
the Trump Organization, run by the president's two eldest sons, from accepting
Saudi largesse since the election. With many Trump properties and brands losing
customers in today's highly polarized political atmosphere, Saudis are spending
lavishly on Trump properties in Washington, New York and even Chicago as many
others avoid them.
But if Trump
doesn't get why looking the other way when an American journalist is tortured,
beheaded and hacked to pieces by a team of Saudi government operatives is bad,
surely national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary Pompeo do. Autocrats
are stepping up their game around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin
didn't hesitate to order a hit on British soil of an ex-KGB agent and his
daughter earlier this year. But the United Kingdom responded quickly, kicking
out Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions. The United States followed suit,
but only because Congress, not Trump, knew that to do otherwise would have let
down an ally and encouraged a despot. When asked in a "60 Minutes"
interview Sunday whether he believes that Putin was involved in the poisoning
and other assassinations, Trump's response was: "Probably he is, yeah. ...
But I rely on them. It's not in our country."
The Trump
administration relies on Saudi Arabia, too. It is the enemy of our enemy Iran,
which, in political calculus, makes Saudis our "friends." But even
friends require reining in at times. And these friends need us more than we
need them. We are no longer dependent on oil imports; our oil reserves surpass
those of Saudi Arabia. Although Trump worries about losing that promised $110
billion Saudi arms purchase he keeps touting (but which has yet to
materialize), the Saudis don't have anywhere else to go if they want to keep
their airplanes in the air. They are locked in by past purchases; no one else
can deliver the spare parts for U.S.-built weapons. As for the help in
challenging Iran, they have no choice there, either. Iran is far more a direct
threat to the kingdom than it is to the U.S. And as for their most crucial role
-- the war on Islamic terrorism -- the Saudis claim to fight terrorism but are
also a major source of funding for radical Islamic schools and mosques that
recruit terrorists around the world.
The
administration has only a short time to come up with a proper and proportionate
response to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The president thinks Americans will
move on -- but his inaction makes the world a more dangerous place. And next
time, the attack just might be on American soil.
Trump scrambles to cover for Saudi
regime as crisis over Khashoggi
murder mounts
19 October 2018
Following
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s emergency talks in Riyadh and Ankara, and
amid mounting reports implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the
murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration
is scrambling to shield Washington’s closest ally in the Arab World.
On
Thursday, Trump continued to suggest that Prince Mohammed and his father, King
Salman, may have had nothing to do with the disappearance and evident torture
and murder of Khashoggi on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
However, after being debriefed by Pompeo following the latter’s talks with
Prince Mohammed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told
reporters it appeared that Khashoggi was dead.
The
official line is that Pompeo secured a pledge from the Saudi leadership to hold
accountable anyone found in the course of the regime’s own investigation to
have played a role in Khashoggi’s disappearance. On that fraudulent basis,
Pompeo advised Trump to give Riyadh several more days to provide an accounting,
after which the White House will decide its response.
Meanwhile,
unnamed Turkish officials and the pro-Erdogan newspaper Yeni Safak reported
Wednesday on the contents of what they claim is an audio recording of the
events that transpired in the Istanbul consulate following Khashoggi’s entering
the building on the afternoon of October 2. The 60-year-old self-exiled Saudi
national and resident of Virginia in the US, who went from being a regime
insider to a Washington
Post columnist and critic of the new crown prince, ostensibly
went to the consulate to obtain documents in advance of his impending wedding
to a Turkish national. He never emerged from the consulate.
According
to the Turkish accounts, he was almost
immediately attacked by a team of 15 men
who
had flown that day to Istanbul from Saudi Arabia,
brutally tortured,
drugged, murdered, beheaded
and dismembered. These sources say his fingers
were
cut off, but do not stipulate whether that
occurred before or after he had
expired. One of
those reported to have been in the group is a
forensic doctor
who carried a bone saw.
The Washington Post on
Wednesday published a detailed profile of the 15 men, complete with photos and
scans of travel documents. It reported that at least nine of the men have ties
to Saudi security. The New
York Times reported Wednesday that at least four are directly
linked to the crown prince, having traveled with him as part of his personal
security detail.
The claim
of Crown Prince Mohammed that he had no foreknowledge of a plan to kill the
former regime loyalist-turned critic is absurd on its face. He is an absolute
ruler in a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, and is known to closely oversee
the activities of his security apparatus and to be personally extremely cruel.
Pompeo’s
meetings on Tuesday with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed were aimed at
signaling continued US support while making a pretense of seeking a full
accounting of Khashoggi’s disappearance. The same is true of his meeting the
following day with Erdogan, at which he evidently did not ask for a copy of the
audio recording of the events inside the consulate.
For his
part, the Turkish president has yet to publicly make any accusation against the
Saudi leadership or endorse the reports being leaked by Turkish officials and
the media. At odds with Riyadh over the Saudi regime’s support for US-allied
Kurdish forces in Syria, its backing for the el-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt, and
its lineup with Washington over Iran, Erdogan appears nevertheless to be
reluctant to sever relations with the oil-rich Saudis and may be seeking to use
Riyadh’s crisis as leverage in obtaining concessions.
On
Wednesday after meeting with Erdogan, Pompeo told reporters on his plane back
to the US: “I do think it’s important that everyone keep in their mind that we
have lots of important relations, financial relationships between US and Saudi
companies, government relationships, things that we work on all across the
world. The efforts to reduce the risk to the United States of America from the world’s
largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.
“We just
need to make sure that we are mindful of that as we approach decisions that the
United States government will take when we learn all of the facts.”
This
amounts to an unwitting admission of the outright criminality of both
governments.
As the
former CIA director and current secretary of state, Pompeo’s reference to the
“things we work on all across the world” includes conspiring to strangle,
destabilize and potentially wage war against Iran, in alliance with Israel and
most of the other Gulf oil sheikdoms.
These
“things” also include the near-genocidal Saudi-led war in Yemen, which has
already killed some 50,000 men, women and children and threatens another 14
million with starvation and deadly epidemics of cholera and diphtheria. The
Saudis could not carry out their relentless bombing and de facto blockade of
the Arab world’s poorest country without US arms, its mid-air refueling of
Saudi bombers, its provision of intelligence and help in selecting targets and
the assistance to its naval forces.
It is
notable that in all of the US press commentary critical of Trump and the Saudi
crown prince, there is virtually no mention of the US role in the slaughter in
Yemen.
There is
as well the collaboration between Washington and Riyadh in suppressing the
Palestinians and propping up Israel, and their joint support for
Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist terrorists in the war for regime-change in Syria.
The US is
particularly reliant on the Saudi monarchy at the present moment, in advance of
its November 5 deadline for imposing sanctions against all Iranian exports. It
is counting on Riyadh to open its oil spigot to prevent a spike in oil prices
as a result of a sharp reduction in Iranian oil exports.
At the
same time, the administration is coming under increasing pressure, both
internationally and at home, to distance itself from the crown prince. It made
a reluctant concession to this pressure on Thursday with the announcement that
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would join the swelling ranks of Western
officials, bankers and media organizations that have announced they will not
attend next week’s international investors’ conference in Riyadh, to be hosted
by Crown Prince Mohammed.
Dubbed
“Davos in the Desert,” the event is on the brink of collapse. On Wednesday,
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pulled out.
Businesses that have made similar announcements include Uber, JPMorgan Chase,
Viacom, BlackRock and Blackstone Group. CNN, the Financial Times, CNBC,
Nikkei and the New York
Times are among the media organizations that have withdrawn as
media sponsors.
The
likely debacle of the investors’ conference will intensify an already acute
crisis facing the Saudi monarchy. The Wall
Street Journal reported Thursday that global investors are
growing increasingly alarmed at what the newspaper called Saudi Arabia’s “debt
binge” in recent months. In the two-and-a-half years since May 2016, the
country has floated $68 billion in dollar-denominated bonds and syndicated
loans—up from zero.
In
addition, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund took out its first-ever bank
loan last month, raising $11 billion. And the national oil company Saudi Aramco
plans to raise up to $50 billion.
Reflecting
declining confidence in the regime, the cost of insuring against Saudi default
has risen by 30 percent since the disappearance of Khashoggi, and even before
the Khashoggi allegations, foreign direct investment had fallen to historically
low levels.
Also on
Thursday, the Washington
Post published Khashoggi’s final column for the newspaper.
Introducing the piece, Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah explained that
the Post had
received the column one day after Khashoggi’s disappearance, but had decided to
hold it in the hope that he would reemerge. In publishing the piece, the
newspaper acknowledged that the author had died.
The
content of the column points to Khashoggi’s likely links to sections of the US
state and intelligence apparatus. A former aide to the Saudi chief of intelligence
and one-time ambassador to the US, Khashoggi had long been known as an
interlocutor between the Saudi regime and Western media and government
officials. He also had close ties to Osama bin Laden.
In his
final column he compares the suppression of speech and expression in the Arab
world to the Soviet “Iron Curtain,” and calls for the development of an
“independent” news source in the Middle East modeled after the cold war-era
propaganda organ Radio Free Europe.
This would in part explain the furious reaction of Trump critics
in both political parties, the media and the intelligence establishment to the
administration’s efforts to alibi for the Saudi leadership. Obama’s CIA chief
John Brennan, for example, has repeatedly denounced Trump’s attempts to cover
for the regime and insisted that the crown prince personally ordered the murder
of Khashoggi
No comments:
Post a Comment