Five years after a Saudi hit squad murdered, dismembered, and disappeared the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia has won.
It was President Donald Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner who embraced Saudi Arabia after the killing and then set the conditions for the ongoing Saudi victory over human rights. But Joe Biden also deserves blame.
On the campaign trail, candidate Biden had pledged to hold Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to account, saying he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” Initially, Biden held a hard line, but within a year that evaporated. He traveled to the kingdom in summer 2022 in an about-face visit that resulted in an unforgettable fist bump.
Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and even nonprofits have been all too willing to rehabilitate MBS’s image, in large part thanks to Saudi Arabia’s economic largesse. Media organizations and think tanks, too, have taken on Saudi funding and hosted the kingdom’s officials at public events. It’s MBS’s world: Can I interest you in a round of Saudi-run golf? Saudi-funded tech products? A quick trip to an art fair and tango workshop in the once ultra-conservative kingdom?
But what’s new today, on the fifth anniversary of Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never being seen again, is that Saudi Arabia is no longer on its back foot in Washington. MBS has achieved a hearty welcome back into the good graces of the once outspokenly critical Biden and his administration.
How else can we read the unfolding dynamic in which the crown prince has Washington reportedly considering an unprecedented array of inducements — a potential security pact and a nuclear program — in exchange for the kingdom signing a diplomatic agreement with Israel?
Even now, MBS fashions himself a reformist, a line repeated by retired officials from Democratic and Republican administrations, and by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair whose institute receives funds to advise Saudi Arabia. Yet…
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