Trump, Trapped in Saudi Arabia

The president of the United States resists punishing the Saudis over the thorny Khashoggi case.

A break in Washington’s relationship with Riyadh would be a tragedy for Netanyahu’s Israel.

After 18 days of relative suspense – because everyone knows the truth – Riyadh has admitted the death of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Previously it had said that Khashoggi left its Istanbul consulate alive 10 minutes after entering. The new version is that he died “after a fistfight with people who were there.” The kingdom’s general prosecutor announced 18 detentions, and the change takes place after the trip U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Donald Trump was quick to affirm that this version seemed convincing.

Turkish authorities are working with another version. They know that a Saudi team of 15 men traveled to Istanbul on a private plane. Airport security cameras filmed them, and they have audio recordings of what happened inside the consulate. According to this evidence, not yet made public, the group tortured the dissident by cutting off his fingers when he was still alive, then killed him and cut up his body. They had a special bone saw. The Turkish police are looking for human remains in several zones of Istanbul, but they have not ruled out that remains were taken back to Riyadh in the diplomatic pouch.*

Were these 15 men sent by Riyadh the ones who argued with Khashoggi? If the goal was to kidnap him, why was there a forensic surgeon among them? The New York Times published several photos of Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a figure close to the crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS). Mutreb was in the consulate. The others belong to the royal guard and the Saudi secret services. The former head of the British intelligence agency MI6, John Sawers, told The Guardian that the evidence points to Prince Mohammad having ordered the murder.

Choosing Between Business or Ethics

Trump likes two colors: black and white; everything else is a mess, “fake colors,” inventions of the liberal media. Things have to be clear: good or bad, deal or no deal, friend or enemy. The murder of Khashoggi is a pain in the ass. It’s dragging him into the field he hates the most: complexity, shades of gray. Whatever he does – even if he doesn’t do anything beyond theatrics – will have consequences.

The president of the U.S. has to choose: business or ethics. He would do well to read Lord Palmerston, British prime minister in the mid-19th century, who proclaimed, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” To say “It doesn’t matter what happened because 98 billion euros (approximately $112 billion) in weapons sales to Riyadh are at stake” would be a way to get out of the mess.

Khashoggi disappeared Oct. 2 within the consulate building. He was going to pick up papers proving his divorce so that he could marry a Turkish woman, Hatice Centiz. He feared a trap. She was waiting outside with instructions to call Yasin Aktay, adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, if he took too long. He was never seen again. We don’t have the body, either.

Aside from Trump’s business dealings and the jobs created by the weapons industry, there’s another problem: the Middle East. “Black or white” translates, in this case, into “Saudi Arabia or Iran.”

A Strong Friendship

America’s interests in the region have been tied to Saudi Arabia for decades. It seems like a solid friendship: they have oil and we need it, we have weapons and they buy them. The problem is that while one hand is giving oil and buying weapons, the other is financing global jihadism. Saudi Arabia’s fanatical version of Islam, Wahhabism, is the religious ideology that feeds al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

Javier Martin wrote “La Casa de Saud” (“The House of Saud,” published by Catarata), a book in which he offers evidence: In 1993, King Salman, the father of MBS, created Al Haramain (the high commissioner of aid to Bosnia-Herzegovina),** later linked to several terrorist attacks. The current king distanced himself from anything that wasn’t charity.

Barack Obama, who also sold weapons to the Saudis, understood that the country that best represented his interests, after the disaster caused by the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was Iran. That explains the rapprochement and nuclear treaty signed with the support of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The defeat of Saddam Hussein plunged Iraq into a double war: one against the invader (a habit of invaded peoples) and another between Sunnis and Shiites. Iran emerged victorious from this double violence without firing a single shot, because 60 percent of the Iraqi population is Shiite. The Arab Springs in Tunisia and Egypt first – and Yemen, Libya and Syria later – turned the colonial order on its head. All of these movements failed for different reasons. The United States was concerned about one of them, the one in Egypt, a situation now corrected with a new dictator, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Side Effects

The most visible side effect of the regional chaos is Syria. After more than seven years of civil war and almost 500,000 dead, Bashar Assad, one of the main people responsible for the tragedy, has won, thanks to the support of Vladimir Putin, Iran and Hezbollah. The United States has had a less active role because it never knew who was defending its interests. It concentrated on supporting the Syrian Kurds, whom it’s now left hanging.

A break in the special relationship with Riyadh would be a tragedy for the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has turned Iran into the center of its obsessions, the enemy that distracts from his and his family’s corrupt dealings. If the whole framework falls apart, the dream of Trump bombing Iran would have to be buried.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, the deaths from bombs made in the West are counted by the thousands. They are invisible deaths, also victims of Prince Mohammad. While the United Nations warns of a famine that could kill millions, Saudi Arabia’s allies are still mired in an immoral debate: building boats (commissioned by Saudi Arabia) or maintaining honor. In Spain we’ve already chosen a side, and it wasn’t the good one.

*Editor’s note: A diplomatic pouch is a sealed packet, pouch, envelope, bag or other container that is used to transport official correspondence, documents and other articles intended for official use.

**Editor’s note: The author appears to be making a reference to Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was a charity foundation based in Saudi Arabia. The parenthetical reference to the high commissioner for aid is not clear.