The Times reports that the Biden admin will not hold Mohammed bin Salman personally accountable for murdering a U.S. resident journalist who was employed by The Post:
WASHINGTON — President Biden has decided that the price of directly penalizing Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is too high, according to senior administration officials, despite a detailed American intelligence finding that he directly approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and Washington Post columnist who was drugged and dismembered in October 2018.
The decision by Mr. Biden, who during the 2020 campaign called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state with “no redeeming social value,” came after weeks of debate in which his newly formed national security team advised him that there was no way to formally bar the heir to the Saudi crown from entering the United States, or to weigh criminal charges against him, without breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies.
Officials said a consensus developed inside the White House that the price of that breach, in Saudi cooperation on counterterrorism and in confronting Iran, was simply too high.
We’ll see; the report just came out. Also, can’t the U.S. bar any noncitizen it wants from entering the country, maybe with an exception for U.N. business? I don’t know, but that statement needs clarification. Anyway, Rep. Adam Schiff released this statement today:
“For years, the House and Senate have pressed for this measure of accountability, and I’m grateful to President Biden and Director of National Intelligence Haines for making this report public as we requested.
“The highest levels of the Saudi government, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are culpable in the murder of journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi, and there is no escaping that stark truth laid bare in the Intelligence Community’s long overdue public assessment. It should not have taken this long for the United States to publicly share what we knew about the brutal murder of a U.S. resident and journalist, and this report underscores why Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s repeated claims that he was either unknowing or uninvolved in this heinous crime are in no way credible.
“As the Crown Prince continues to demonstrate no remorse for his actions and to shield senior Saudi officials from accountability for their role in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, the Biden Administration will need to follow this attribution of responsibility with serious repercussions against all of the responsible parties it has identified, and also reassess our relationship with Saudi Arabia. We must ensure that if foreign governments target journalists simply for doing their jobs, they are not immune to serious repercussions and sanctions, because restoring confidence in American leadership requires we act in accordance with the values that have long set America apart.
“The Administration should take further steps to diminish the United States’ reliance on Riyadh and reinforce that our partnership with the Kingdom is a not a blank check.”
Amen to all of that. Saudi Arabia is a horrifying autocracy, but since I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, I know realpolitik is a thing and understand (while not necessarily approving) why American presidents have coddled Saudi autocrats for generations. And further, for all its lofty rhetoric about democracy and human rights, the U.S. often acts as a global crime syndicate its own damn self, so there’s that. But Bone Saw shouldn’t skate. I think Froomkin is right here:
What WH reporters should be saying: Absent a plausible public explanation for why punishment does not extend to MBS personally, it is evident that in this case concerns about geopolitical stability and domestic politics outweighed the commitment to human rights and press freedom.
— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@froomkin) February 26, 2021
What do you think?
Open Thread: Actual Golden Calf
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
rhythms with burst
Wapiti
Can the Magnitsky Act be applied against MBS?
Gretchen
This reminds me that the Bush administration moved a bunch of Saudis out of the country right after 9/11, which was never explained. And I’m hoping more info on Kushner’s complicity with the Saudis will come out soon.
dr. bloor
The wording of the article suggests they don’t think it’s worth the larger geopolitical price tag attached to it.
Renewable energy, and GTFO of the Middle East as fast as possible afterwards.
Baud
Damn. Stuck at 5.
OGLiberal
At the very least, don’t let him come here and don’t ever allow any member of this administration or the Democratic Congress be seen anywhere near him. No diplomacy should be coordinated through him, with him, etc. And maybe look into any shady business/money stuff he might have going on here…added benefit, may get Jared in the net as well.
ETA: And maybe some dirt on this d-bag: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dpq0NJtWwAAOjsx.jpg
Ruckus
I don’t like that he skates but national political realities are such that we don’t always get what we want.
Maybe in the not really distant future we might be a touch less reliant on SA for oil, seeing as how once it’s lit on fire it doesn’t come back. Other parts of the world are looking at and doing that. It changes how the world has to look, how it has to act, and who it has to pay. Renewable energy has a lot of wide reaching payoffs for this and all countries. Of course there will be losers, the ones who always just take and really never provide lasting value for that.
Baud
I’ve been too busy to follow closely, but someone said earlier that the report wasn’t all that damning in terms of evidence.
Jake
Wouldn’t brushing aside the Khashoggi incident and putting focus on securing Saudi cooperation in dealing with the Yemen crisis still amount to a commitment to human rights?
Baud
Someone also said that slowly moving to give SA the cold shoulder could pressure the king to name someone other than MBS as his successor.
guachi
We should make it clear he’s a murderer and that the punishment for his crimes falls on Saudi Arabia.
Treat MBS like a pariah and ignore him whenever possible. State out loud that the US isn’t doing this or that because MBS still alive.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
p.a.
Faulkner: “The past is not dead. It’s not even past.” Choices made generations ago bind us. Just how much are we still reliant on Saudi oil? What else? Military intelligence? Influence in the Arab/Muslim world? Counterbalance to Iran?
How long would disentanglement take, and at what at least temporary cost? Questions for A.S. I guess.
dr. bloor
@guachi: Unfortunately, this is like trying to punish Texas for fucking up their energy regulation. The people in charge will be the last to pay any penalties.
The Dangerman
Respond quietly and with appropriate deniability. Ask Putin for some of that special tea. Then again, I’m not into capital punishment; so perhaps give him something that makes his hair fall out or penis fall off.
debbie
He won’t be around forever. He’s got plenty of enemies in SA, doesn’t he?
VOR
Bingo. Fund renewable energy. Push the transition to non-internal combustion vehicles. Electrify the National Strategic Railway. Get off oil as a fuel.
Putin relies on oil money too, so it’s a twofer.
Chetan Murthy
@p.a.: I think it might be worth looking at how much Saudi (and Arabian more generally) oil our allies in Europe and the Far East import. Like it or not, we try to be the global police force for all our allies. And arguably that’s better than letting them do it themselves (who wants Japan and South Korea tussling for who gets which bases where?)
P.S. Which is not an argument that US hegemony is an unalloyed good: we’ve support bastards all over, and that’s been really, really bad.
Betty Cracker
@Jake: Good point; it could be a tradeoff like that, and one could make the case that it’s a worthwhile tradeoff to achieve a greater good. But if that’s what they’re up to — or whatever the reason is — it would be great to hear an explanation, and I hope we do.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Baud:
The damning evidence likely comes from high placed Saudi sources and imaginative eavesdropping methods, neither would they reveal.
BruceFromOhio
This torques me off more because it is accurate than some rich Saudi prince and his butchers’ apparatus walks.
Jeffro
Here’s what I think: ugh
Hopefully he’ll end up banned from ever setting foot on American soil (or did I miss that part?), at least.
Montanareddog
Lots of good arguments above as to why realpolitik may hold the day. But I cannot help feeling disappointed that, once again, the egregiously evil skate
laura
I think it must be a terrible day to be an investigative journalist who covers the powers wherever they may be. I hope that justice isn’t sacrificed for the relationship with SA – though it looks that way. I fear that other governments will expect a similar free pass for killing journalists. And I cannot stress this enough- Fucking that Fucking gormless wax faced shit bag Jared Kushner.
Poe Larity
@Jake: Yemen and MBS go together, it’s his war. He can’t afford to lose it and so we can’t afford the next ruler to lose it either. So it will go on and on.
Short of getting the family to agree to a Syriana solution, he’s going to be around for the next 50 years.
Chetan Murthy
@Montanareddog: Saw this about Klaus Barbie (yeah, it’s Counterpunch): https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/26/how-real-nazis-came-to-the-americas-the-recruitment-of-klaus-barbie/
The evil have gotten away with shit for a long time. With our government’s active approval, too.
piratedan
perhaps the best way to deal with this is to make all that military gear we sold them the last transaction of it’s type ever. No advisors, no parts, no manuals, no updates, nada. If we stop needing their oil and transition to other power sources, we reduce their power and their influence.
Not a big fan of this outcome but hard to see what could be done to have those responsible suffer the consequences of their actions… short of a targeted drone strike (which has its own repercussions) what are the likely next economic or diplomatic steps that could be taken?
catclub
Given that there is no accountability when the Saudi government is making war on Yemenis,
there is also no accountability when the Saudi Government kills one individual.
The funny thing is that killing thousands of Yemenis has even fewer repercussions than killing one journalist.
haha
BruceFromOhio
@laura: This, exactly.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Many parts of the EU are trying mightily to get off importing as much oil, from both SA and Russia. Electric cars would do a lot as well as wind and solar for power generation. Don’t know if they still are but England went months without a coal fired power plant online. The only way they would do that is if something else had taken over, something besides oil. Because they have coal but little to no oil. Many countries of Europe have stated that new internal combustion vehicles will not be allowed to be sold after 2030 or 2035. The cost of vehicle batteries have fallen to less than 10% per KWh of what they did cost over the last 10-11 yrs and are now almost to the cost that means a similarly equipped auto will soon cost approximately the same, regardless of the power source. Zero emissions, far less to go wrong, far, far less imported oil just to move it.
Warblewarble
What did Kushner and Nikki Haley know and when did they know it?
Geminid
@Poe Larity: Maybe MBS can’t lose the Yemen war, but he can not win it either. The Houthis are just too numerous and cohesive. Iran can be sanctioned relentlessly, but they will still muster the resources to maintain the war effort of the motivated Houthis. There has to be a settlement of this war.
A Ghost to Most
The oil industry is in decline, and the Saudi influence will as well. Make no deals with this devil.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: I’m 100% happy with that, and know that we’re behind our allies, generally, in going green. But OTOH, we import our oil from other places, usually closer than KSA, and we get lots of it out of our own ground. All of which means that we’ll be independent of KSA oil far sooner than our allies, even while they’ll probably be independent of fossil fuel generally, sooner than we are.
And since we’re the global policeman [or wanna be], that means we still gotta deal with KSA. I don’t like any more than anybody else around here, but that doesn’t change things.
The faster we go green, the faster we work with our allies to go green, the faster we can stop giving a damn with a buncha Arab oil shiekhs think.
Victor Matheson
@VOR: Yup. Pollution and climate change are not the only negative externalities associated with fossil fuel use. There’s also the huge “propping up autocratic dictators” problem as well.
J R in WV
deleted
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s odd how allowing an American citizen to be tortured to death is the least of the Trump admin’s abuses.
Montanareddog
@Chetan Murthy: thanks for bringing me back down to earth, reminding me that it was ever thus. And that far worse monsters than MBS never faced justice. And rereading my initial post, hell, disappointed was a mealy-mouthed word for me to use. But, fuuuuck!
Foolish of me to place too much faith in the new administration – they have to live in the real world, I suppose.
Cacti
Yeah, I can’t say I’m thrilled with the way the Biden Middle East policy seems to be shaping up.
But, it’s about what I expected, honestly.
Chetan Murthy
For some contrast, here’s an interesting article about China and the CCP: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/11/china-seeing-ccp-clearly/
It’s not going to be fun reading for us Trump-haters, b/c it describes how the Trump regime brought with it a sea change in the way our government approaches China. It’s a really interesting description, and I’ve confirmed with my (Trump-hating) HongKonger friend, who still has family and connections back there, that the description of how HK folks view (e.g.) Pottinger is accurate.
It seems that, perhaps, the Biden admin will keep some of the “intellectual point-of-view” while ditching the jingoism and corruption. Which would be great, and would make a lot of HKers very, very happy.
For me, the connection with KSA is this: it isn’t a necessary thing that we “wash our hands of KSA”. We -can- adopt simply a stricter (and progressively over time) stance, that can impose slowly-growing costs on KSA’s behaviour. And sure, that takes a kind of discipline and culture that we don’t really have (yet). But we can push for that, and maybe Biden will see that it’s in our national interest (as, apparently, he’s seeing w.r.t. China). [Again from that article] It’s somewhat a matter of what the -culture- of our foreign policy communities is, regarding the country (KSA, China).
P.S. I’ve read the author, Perry Link, and at least in my experience, he seems to be a solid, non-polemical person. But I could be 100% misinterpreting.
Jeffro
@Warblewarble: this, exactly
The timeline suggests both knew ahead of time, with Haley thinking Kushner was going to call MBS off, then resigning when he didn’t.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: Same. I was somewhat surprised at his tough talk about Bone Saw during the primary and general election seasons, tbh.
Mike in NC
I feel like watching “The Kingdom” again.
Baud
@Cacti:
Saw this a few days ago.
Barbara
We really don’t much rely on Saudi oil, but I am sure global stability of oil markets does depend on Saudi oil. I think, probably, that grand gestures are unlikely to bring long term change. Continued distancing, faster transitions to non-carbon based fuels and so on are probably more powerful in blunting SA’s force in American politics. Also, not necessarily totally analogous, but when U.S. has taken hard line against various mideast regimes in the past, like Iraq and Iran, it ends up being counterproductive and is more likely to create a rallying point against us. Bush’s “axis of evil speech” was a setback for liberalizing political forces in Iran for a long time.
Skepticat
I understood that Biden had decided to deal with the king rather than with MBS, and I’d like to see MBS simply frozen out and ignored. I’m with Piratedan; we shouldn’t sell another popgun or bullet to the Saudis. It’s more good incentive for energy independence too.
And isn’t it nice to have a president who doesn’t pitch a hissy fit full of foolish bluster and puerile nicknames when he’s unhappy with another country (or anything else)?
Chetan Murthy
@Barbara: The US has to deal with our major geopolitical competitors, who would inevitably move to fill any withdrawal of ours. It’s all awful, and yeah, going green will make all of these quandaries less dire.
Baud
OT. Here’s some good news that might be worthy of a post.
germy
germy
lowtechcyclist
The U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum and petroleum products (taken together) in the fall of 2019, the most recent data I could find. Given reduced automobile use since March 2020, I expect we still are. Either that or we’ve simply got a glut of petroleum that we can’t export because everyone else is using less.
Either way, ISTM that we’re WAY less dependent on the goodwill of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia than we were back in the days when we imported half the oil we used. (As environmentally appalling as fracking can be, it’s got this silver lining.) And if there really is an oil glut now – hard for me to believe there isn’t – the effects of KSA cutting back production just ain’t what they would have been twenty years ago.
So I really do need our realpolitik dependence on KSA spelled out for me. What can they do to us and our allies that doesn’t cause far more problems for themselves? International diplomacy isn’t exactly my area of expertise, even at an armchair level, so I’m sure there are significant interrelationships I don’t see. But I’d love it if people who DO know their shit in this area, like Adam or Cheryl, could spell out the potential repercussions if we declared MBS persona non grata and Saudi Arabia took maximum offense.
Baud
More info
Baud
@germy: ?
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist: Japan gets most of its oil from KSA, Iran, Russia. EU gets 7% from KSA. South Korea gets 34% from KSA (69% from the Middle East). Yes, -we- don’t get our oil from KSA. But they’re a big exporter to our allies, and because they have such large reserves (even today) they are able to affect world oil prices in a way nobody else can. Sure, that effect is slowly declining. But they still can cause havoc in the economies of our allies. And since oil is one of the most fungible commodities, that havoc will come home to our economy, too.
It is what it is. I’m not defending it. We have to work with our allies to get us all freed from imported fossil fuels.
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist: I think it is insufficiently appreciated that a “fungible commodity” like oil really has a world price. Supply disruptions in one place will affect the price everywhere. It would take some massive calamity, for the US to ban exports of oil-derived fuels, and absent that, US oil prices will always reflect world prices.
debbie
@Baud:
I would hope many Russians also qualify for this honor.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Oil prices have been going up. I think they are predicting greater demand as the pandemic winds down.
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist: Also, a lot of the oil the US produces comes from “unconventional sources” and costs a lot to extract. E.g. shale oil, also all undersea oil. The break-even price for that oil is pretty high — IIRC for shale oil it was $40/bbl, but I could be mistaken; in any case, it’s high. KSA’s oil has a break-even price of, like, $10/bbl. So they have a lot of flexibility to lower prices [though, their national budget is funded by oil, so they can’t go too low b/c of that without risking civil strife].
They still have the West over a barrel [heh].
J R in WV
The condition of Kingdom of Saud oil reserves is a closely guarded secret, but people who study oil reserves believe that Saudi oil reserves are rapidly shrinking, and that they need to institute techniques to extract oil used near the end of life of oil fields. Injection of other substances to force oil towards production wells, for example.
This would be a great position for opponents of the Kingdom of Saud to operate from.
What a slimy, horrible, bunch of autocratic feudal monsters the family of Saud are!
ETA: So glad to see the news that State Dept appears to be authorized to deny entry visas to members of the ruling family of the Kingdom of Saud, including Mohammed Bone Saw and his hirelings and family.
danfromny
So, what Trump said.
Wapiti
@Chetan Murthy: The price of oil is fungible, yes. Which is why we should be looking to ease sanctions on Iran, within our alliances. Limiting Iranian oil on the world market mostly benefits KSA and Russia.
Benw
Biden doesn’t want to miss out on that sweet-ass orb. It’s that simple, really
Another Scott
@Gretchen: Snopes says it didn’t happen.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/flights-of-fancy/
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
Topically related.
The Pale Scot
SA’s and other ME government’s stranglehold on US policy is that oil is priced in dollars. No matter what other forms of value you have, Euros, Yen, gold, you have to convert into dollars to make the actual purchase. That’s the deal SA made with the US in the 50’s. They’d price their oil in dollars, and deposit it all into western banks only. Hence “petrodollars”. That makes the dollar the world’s reserve currency, almost everyone needs it to buy or price oil. Helps out other dictatorships, If Russia had to accept Liras because that was what was being offered that would put a hammerlock on Russo-Mob activities.
Saddam made plans to start an oil market priced in Euros, he got whacked. Gaddafi started to set an oil market priced in multiple currencies, assumed he was safe because he turned over his nuclear and chemical weapons programs. He got whacked. Follow the blood trail
Chetan Murthy
@Wapiti: I have no problems with that. !00% agree. The Europeans (and, one presumes, JP, SK) aren’t fools, and impose high gas taxes. I remember in the early 90s, gas at the pump in France was nearly 4x what it was in the US. The gap was all gas taxes.
Poe Larity
@lowtechcyclist: They can ramp back up in Syria and proxy war with Erdogan, while Iran ramps up in Iraq as a proxy for Yemen. Republicans talk about Biden “losing” them again.
Someone starts sinking tankers and the Euros complain for US Police Navy, or the UAE hosts Israeli strikes on Iran.
There’s no walking away – W’s messes will be the gift that keeps on giving.
SiubhanDuinne
@OGLiberal:
I’m sure I should know who those people are, but I don’t. Are they both d-bags, or only one of them, and in that case, which one?
Subsole
@Montanareddog: You think that’s bad, go read about unit 731.
Subsole
@Baud: Thank Christ we can start bribing the assholes on our team to maybe think about neutralizing the filibuster so they can start passing legislation…
Rand Careaga
I’ve long thought that becoming President of the United States is not unlike assuming the “Godfather” role in a Mafia family. You might take it up with all sorts of idealistic intentions, but once you announce that the family is getting out of narcotics, prostitution, numbers, racketeering, solid waste management and devoting its resources instead to, say, animal rescue, you can expect some pushback from your caporegimes. This is a predatory empire we live in, and, broadly speaking, we all take some benefit from the fact that as 4% of the world’s population we consume something between 25% and 40% of its resources. Climbing down from global hegemony is an undertaking best, or at least most comfortably, undertaken by increments.
Subsole
@Montanareddog: It’s never foolish to expect better from people who are capable of it.
germy
@Benw:
It bestows immortality. This is known.
Wait… or is that immorality?
OGLiberal
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s MBS and Zuckerberg. Since we were already talking about KSA’s d-bag I was referring to ours.
Hoppie
This is the sort of issue “Secret” classification is for. It does the US, and the Biden administration, only harm to publicize this deliberation. Someone clearly has an agenda, and it is not to send the Saudis a message, but to harm the US government, ie the Biden administration.
Brachiator
This is a hard truth. Russia, China, Myanmar, India, Syria are seriously fucking over dissidents and various groups of people. No one is going to come to their aid.
Renewables will not change everything in the Middle East. No one wants to see a large scale war involving Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran.
Time reports that Yemen is facing the world’s worst famine in years, because of Saudi military efforts. Biden is trying to get some assistance. Would you prefer that he shun the Saudis?
germy
germy
F.B.I. Said to Have Singled Out Potential Assailant in Capitol Officer’s Death
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/brian-sicnick-capitol-riot-investigation.html?smid=tw-share
Baud
@germy:
So they aren’t going to vote on COVID relief?
SiubhanDuinne
@OGLiberal:
Thanks. I honestly didn’t recognise MBS in Western dress. And Zuckerberg looks about 14 there, so I didn’t recognise him either.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
No we don’t. The following are the figures from 2019 of where our imports come from as well as our own production. Canada56%, Mexico9%, Saudi Arabia7%, Iraq5%, Colombia5%. Our own production is Texas41.4%, North Dakota11.6%, New Mexico7.4%, Oklahoma4.7%, Colorado4.2%.
A problem is that a lot of the oil we now produce is from fracking which is really not all that good for the environment. I believe a lot of the oil from Canada is also from fracking. Not to count that the majority of oil is burned and that level of pollution is not good. Now the level is theoretically less than it was 40-50 yrs ago but it still isn’t good. The oil business takes in a lot of money but it doesn’t truly benefit a lot of people, in the overall scheme of things. We burn oil to move it. We burn oil to refine it. We burn it to move us. It is an inefficient process at best and it is what we’ve had for the last 100+ yrs because the technology for something else better didn’t actually exist for a long time. It does now.
Benw
@germy: LOL
Hopefully not an Immanitize; we’ve already got one of those!
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
Jesus. Now even the FTFNYT is doing it.
(We had a whole long post on this a couple of weeks ago, and I am not interested in going through all that again. Just felt the need to express my despair at ever-decreasing standards.)
Chetan Murthy
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
(from the NYTimes Style Guide)
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m sure oil usage is down, but the cars on the roads of socal are not a lot fewer now than 2 yrs ago. Fewer, sure, but not that many fewer. How is it in other parts of the country? Now over all it I’m sure makes a difference, I’m just not all that sure how much.
CarolPW
Am I the only one that when looking at Josh Hawley is reminded of Peewee Herman?
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
But we must remain vigilant against mistakes in using lie/lay/laid, lest standards slip even further.
Brachiator
@Rand Careaga:
The UK and some European countries used to be the big dog. Maybe China will depose the US.
Nations are pushed aside by greater powers. They don’t generally retire at their leisure.
Spanky
We’re 5 weeks into a new administration. What we’ve seen so far are just the opening moves in its Middle East policy. Pushing pawns, essentially, but signalling that it won’t just be a continuation of our long-standing ME positions.
Let’s see how that position evolves over the next couple of years. Think long game.
Sm*t Cl*de
@Jeffro:
“MbS is welcome to set foot on US soil as long as the rest of him stays home. He has the necessary expertise.”
david
The Fat White Duchess
@Baud: Thank you. I’ve been stewing since I read the news that sounded like it was saying MbS would simply skate. This is… better, anyway.
The Fat White Duchess
@SiubhanDuinne: I am with you in this, fwiw.
feebog
This is a horrible response from the Biden administration and it will go down as the first major error in their foreign relations. You simply cannot turn a blind eye to assassination and the ultimate muzzling of media criticism. Let’s not sugar coat this, it is a major fuckup.
Just Chuck
@Baud: Oil prices have nowhere to go but up. There was a point last year where oil futures were trading negative, because KSA made the little oopsie of trying to start an oil price war on the eve of a global pandemic.