In recent weeks, Arab countries, as well as Iran and Turkey have all been working out how they can move forward and get along with each other, all due to “sleepy Joe” Biden being asleep at the wheel. Where’s all this heading?

Barely a year in office and what has Joe Biden done in the Middle East? Could it be an after dinner game, like what Europhiles in Brussels play (‘Name five famous Belgians’)? Name five decisions Biden has made in the Middle East?

U.S. presidents can be bold. And they can be wrong. But the worst type are those who are neither bold nor decisive in anything they do. Joe Biden, under the microscope, appears to be a U.S. president asleep at the wheel on so many domestic issues but when we look at the Middle East, it’s almost as though he’s in a coma. And it’s starting to affect how the region operates and how its countries interact with one another.

During Trump’s early days in office, he made a point of doing nothing on the international circuit until the Saudis were ready to accept him as his first official international trip to mark his presidency. The background to this was a strong relationship between Jared Kuchner and Mohamed Bin Salman – the latter installed as Crown Prince by the Trump administration on the condition that a recognition was made of Israel. But the Saudis wanted more. One of the reasons why it took six whole months before Trump made it to Riyadh and ingratiated himself with the cultural histrionics of sword dancing and looking at best ridiculous, was that a second dirty deal was being carved about how the White House would go through with a particularly mendacious ruse against Qatar – which transpired quickly as a blockade on the tiny energy rich state and statements from Trump condemning them for supporting terrorism. In fact, there was even a plan on the table crafted by a middleman working for Blackwater chief Erik Prince, to draw Trump into a plan which would involve a private army overthrowing the Royal Family in Qatar.

The last part of this didn’t transpire as Trump smelled a rat and got nervous at the last moment and the middleman involved, George Nader, soon found himself caught in a CIA trap which landed him in prison and his blueprint for the Qatar invasion scrapped, as part of the Mueller investigation.

For the Saudis, it was nirvana since the day Trump arrived and danced to their tune, even though Kushner was soon to try and capitalize on the situation to harangue the Qataris to invest in his failed New York City real estate endeavours. For MbS in particular nothing could go wrong and the years of fretting over the Obama years seemed well behind them. Finally a U.S. president who is going to show us some respect and give us a much better deal. Indeed, it was rarely pointed out by journalists in the U.S. that the so called amazing arms deal that Trump claimed to have pulled off, was in fact, as Trump likes to put it himself “fake news”. Not only was the figure grossly inflated but it was also not explained to the press that the terms of payment were on the “never never” which gave the Saudis the flexibility to reduce the speed of the purchases and even pull out.

And then everything changed with the Khashoggi murder for Trump and MbS. The Saudi Crown prince was seriously underwhelmed by the Trump response which was barely supportive by any stretch of the imagination.

At this point, relations between Washington and KSA began to sour and in so many ways, what we are witnessing today are rooted here.

Joe Biden came into office huffing and puffing about the Saudis and the Khashoggi murder and how the Saudis would have to pay a price for what was conveniently dubbed a hideous human rights abuse against almost a U.S. citizen.

But the reality is that Biden hasn’t done anything of the sort. In fact, in many ways he has shown that all the ranting and remonstrating about Khashoggi was actually just fake news being created to hit the Trump administration. What we see now is a weak, ineffective and, at times, moronic U.S. president who can barely even remember his own tepid rhetoric on Saudi Arabia and their horrendous, barbarous attacks on Yemenis, even to this day. Just recently, he found himself on the back legs on a deal he signed off to allow more arms sales to the Saudis, despite Congress resisting the deal.

Given the confusion and the dead-dead slow negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, the Saudis are now lost and confused. They can’t take Biden seriously and are almost certainly betting on him not being around for a second term. Bearing in mind that they couldn’t take Trump seriously to help them in their hour of need, amidst talk to possible plots to overthrow MbS, it is hardly surprising that they think of Biden as a fool, who is not worth the time of day.

And so, the recent news that the Kingdom has turned to China to help it develop ballistic missiles really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone given the backdrop of the regime’s worries both domestically and regionally. There have been plenty of warning signs since Khashoggi that the Saudis were shopping around and warming to both China and the Russians as the deal that they had struck with the Americans was very expensive and brought little advantages politically. With China as a partner now, there is leverage towards Iran which, in itself, actually works as a lightning rod to defuse tensions rather than exacerbate them. In fact, relations in the region are generally improving between old rivalries on a grand scale due to Biden’s dithering, as we have just seen a new page turned with Turkey which now is beefing up relations with its old foes in the region like the UAE and Egypt. The fact that Abu Dhabi orchestrated the attempted coup d’etat against Erdogan in 2016 and earlier in 2013 masterminded the successful overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood icon Morsi in Egypt shows security concerns, COVID, domestic woes, Iran’s growth are enough to smash heads together and work out how enemies can seek a workable peace with one another.

Who knows where this all heading, but a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not as far fetched as it sounds. Who needs the Americans?

The reality is that the West can no longer carry off the moral high ground when dishing out the human rights tutelage. London, Paris and Washington are addicted to Saudi arms deals and have exposed woke U.S. media as entirely fake.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohamed bin Salman (or simply MbS to many) is an opaque figure who we can say at least is hugely misunderstood by most, certainly western media. In recent weeks, the news that a Saudi official who was allegedly the mastermind behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was arrested and detained briefly by the French, sparked more media chaff about the affair allowing America’s woke media to peddle the worn narrative about MbS being the one who signed the murder off.

Yet the French Connection to the MbS story is interesting as it was Macron who, one could argue, has turned a page for U.S. media and brought MbS in from the cold. It was actually the French president who recently reached out to the Saudis to boost France’s trade with the kingdom as few if any in the West now can keep up the boycott of Saudi Arabia. The French, the British and more importantly the Americans all need the Saudis’ money although three years after the Khashoggi murder the news that Joe Biden is throwing his weight behind 650 million dollar air-to-air missile deal, despite it receiving some resistance in the Senate over concerns for the Saudi role in Yemen, should surprise us – given that Biden was so bellicose about hitting the Saudi regime (and in particular MbS) hard, after only a few days in the Oval office.

Did the French move spur Biden to change his tact and win some points from the U.S. army lobby? Possibly. But if those from the woke camp in America who so vociferously campaigned and whaled at every given media moment about the death of the Saudi commentator are as disingenuous as Biden, then we should be surprised that it took three years for the Saudi crown prince to get the whitewashing which he has finally been awarded by Washington.

We now see, in the bare light, what all that fake hullabaloo was really all about: bashing Trump. If we look, in particular at CNN and the Washington Post (the latter who wheeled out a black editor who claimed to be a dear friend of Khashoggi and turned on the tears when the cameras started to roll), it is clear that the campaign was really only about using the murder as a tool to generate media spin against Trump who had made the Saudis his closest allies in the region (bar the Israelis) and at the time of the murder was helping them with a ruse to destroy Qatar. Trump was blind-sided by the murder. Totally caught off guard and the Washington Post didn’t miss a heartbeat in treating Khashoggi practically like a U.S. citizen who had been murdered for carrying out his American apple pie beliefs of liberty and freedom of expression. The truth about Khashoggi, was in fact a million miles from what the Post’s Opinion section crafted in a baptism of sensational storytelling with perhaps the biggest lie being how the journal managed to not mention its own links – let alone Khashoggi’s – with Qatar, as just one example.

But where is the call centre opprobrium now, just days after Biden has decided, in fact, that it’s fine to sell the Saudi’s air-to-air missiles? Why didn’t the French detain Khaled Aedh al-Otaibi, the Saudi official believed to be at the very centre of the murder and who could shed light on two key questions, namely where the body is and whether it was MbS who issued the order or not. The fact that al-Otaibi was detained was due to his name being on an Interpol blacklist, which, in itself is part of relations between the Saudis and Turkey reaching an all-time low when the murder occurred (it was Turkey who signed off the arrest warrant). But his release is an indication that the West has decided to move on from its hypocritical campaign against MbS and instead go back to selling his regime arms. Even Turkey is trying its best now to patch up its differences with the Saudis and move on. MbS himself has won an important battle both at home and abroad and has edged closer to attaining the foreign investment colossus which he needs to modernize the kingdom and consider a second IPO of the stateowned oil facility. Expect soon photos in the New York Times of him seating with world leaders and talking green energy and a cooling off for the spat with Lebanon (to give a ‘cadeaux’ to Macron and make him feel like a player in the region).

But the lesson to Middle Eastern despots in the region is clear. If you want to kidnap or murder your own dissidents who are residing in the West, don’t risk doing the job yourself with your own third-rate security services, who are almost certain to make a dog’s breakfast of the job. Much better to ask Mossad or Mi6 to do the job for you who will be more professional, leave no forensic or digital footprint and frame your adversaries into the bargain.

Walter Russell Mead makes another far-fetched claim:

America’s alignment with the principles of freedom is both a major foreign-policy advantage and a source of confusion and distress. On the positive side, despite America’s flaws and inconsistencies, people all over the world know that the cause of freedom and that of the U.S. are aligned [bold mine-DL]. This association helps legitimate U.S. power around the world and creates allies in the unlikeliest places—as when Hong Kong protesters carried the American flag or Iranian protesters refused to step on it.

Mead’s account is too simplistic and self-congratulatory. The “flaws and inconsistencies” that he mentions mean that people in many parts of the world do not identify our government’s cause with the cause of freedom because the two are at odds with one another. Our support for the occupation and blockade of Gaza puts the U.S. in opposition to Palestinians’ freedom. Our government’s backing for Saudi and Egyptian despotism aligns us with authoritarian governments that violate human rights on a daily basis. Support for the Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen makes us the enemy of Yemeni civilians.

When protesters in a country with an authoritarian government take up the American flag or refuse to denigrate it, they are making a statement about their own governments far more than they are saying anything about ours. That does not make them our allies, not least since our government isn’t doing anything for them, but it does mean that they want to use that symbol to express their frustration and disgust with their own leaders. They are not “legitimating” U.S. power, and many of them resent the way that U.S. power has been used against them and their country. The Iranians who have taken to the streets to protest the awful destruction of the civilian airliner and the deaths of 176 innocent people are not out to align themselves with the U.S. They are protesting against the recklessness and incompetence of their own leaders.

Try as the Trump administration might to co-opt their cause and exploit their anger for its own purposes, most Iranians hold a more negative view of the U.S. than they have held in many years. Iranian protesters are not our allies or our pawns, and we have to stop looking at their protests and the protests in other nations this way. They have their own concerns and grievances, and our government’s crocodile tears on their behalf don’t matter in the least.

Mead makes an even more preposterous claim later in the column:

Yet the necessities of U.S. foreign policy continue to drive the Trump administration toward the advocacy of human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, across the Middle East, in Venezuela and elsewhere even as much of Mr. Trump’s electoral base remains staunchly noninterventionist.

There has always been this double standard at work in U.S. foreign policy, but Trump and Pompeo have made a point of taking this double standard to its logical extreme. India can carry out a massive crackdown in Kashmir lasting months and resulting in widespread human rights violations and an ongoing Internet shutdown, and the Trump administration barely notices. The Saudi government executes political protesters on bogus terrorism charges and concludes a sham trial that lets Khashoggi’s murderers go free, and the administration continues to sing the kingdom’s praises. Egypt’s government locks up dissidents and even U.S. citizens (one of whom has now died in detention), and the president celebrates Sisi as his “favorite dictator.” The Saudi coalition is guilty of numerous war crimes against Yemeni civilians, but that hasn’t caused Trump to bat an eye once in almost three years.

theamericanconservative.com

The UN expert on extrajudicial killings urged international sanctions against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) who is personally implicated for ordering the assassination last October in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

Special rapporteur Agnes Callamard also censured the United States and other Western states for not doing enough to put pressure on the Saudis over the murder.

Saudi Arabia has maintained that Crown Prince MbS is innocent and that the killing was done by a team of rogue Saudi agents who overstepped their mission to apprehend Khashoggi and return him to Saudi Arabia to face prosecutors over his public criticisms of the monarchial rulers. Khashoggi had been self-exiled to the US where he was granted a legal residence status while working as a columnist for the Washington Post.

The damning conclusion of the UN report this week confirms an earlier assessment by the American CIA which assigned responsibility for the assassination to the Crown Prince. Despite that CIA finding, President Donald Trump has maintained MbS and the Saudi regime as a close ally. Trump has repeatedly sought to downplay accusations against the regime over Khashoggi’s killing.

Recently, Trump bypassed a ban imposed by Congress on selling weapons to the oil kingdom. The arms deal was priced at over $7 billion. Trump cited the “emergency” of supporting Saudi Arabia against “Iranian aggression” as the reason for bypassing Congress.

Trump’s indulgence of the Saudi monarchs has at least two reasons, apart from arms sales. He needs the Wahhabi regime for his anti-Iran “maximum pressure” policy. The Saudis are also key to the White House in selling its anticipated “Deal of the Century” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The stark, brutal reality is the Trump administration has no interest in sanctioning the Saudi rulers – even though its own intelligence agency and the UN report this week have laid responsibility for Khashoggi’s murder on the state at the highest level.

Amazingly, too, European governments have also let the Saudis off the hook. Earlier remonstrations against Riyadh have since subsided. Western media have also largely let the murder of the journalist fade from the condemnation it deserves. No doubt the lucrative business of selling arms to Saudi Arabia by Britain, France and Germany is just too good to let the state-sanctioned murder of a journalist get in the way.

Contrast that with the Western reaction to the Dutch-led probe into the 2014 downing of Malaysian MH17 airliner over eastern Ukraine. This week the investigation upped the ante of blaming Russia for the disaster in which 298 people onboard were killed. It names four individuals who are accused of embodying a link between Russia’s military and the Ukrainian separatists whom the Dutch-led investigators claim shot down the Boeing 777.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad got it right when he denounced the latest report by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) as a “politicized” stunt aimed at scapegoating Russia for the disaster. “We are very unhappy,” said the premier about the report. “We want proof of guilt not hearsay.”

The JIT has spent the most part of five years propagating innuendo of Russian wrongdoing. It has relied on “classified information” from NATO intelligence sources, which it says it is not permitted to disclose. The JIT has also relied on a NATO propagandist blog site, Bellingcat, to claim as “evidence” that Russia supplied an anti-aircraft missile system to Ukrainian rebels to shoot down the MH17 passenger plane.

None of the Dutch-led probe has conformed to the slightest standards of criminal investigation and due process. The Malaysian authorities have been denied full access to findings, while the Ukrainian state has, even though the latter should be treated as a suspect party given the circumstances of the airliner being shot down over its territory.

Russia, which has been continually accused since the very beginning even before plane wreckage was examined, has also been denied participation in the investigation. Russia’s own independent findings have produced significant evidence implicating the military forces under the command of the authorities in Kiev. One such piece of evidence is that the Buk missile fragments indicate the munition dated from 1986 as part of the Ukrainian military’s inventory.

The JIT report, which is due to continue for several more years, is flawed from anti-Russia prejudice and unsubstantiated “evidence”. It is, as the Malaysian premier said this week, based on hearsay and innuendo. This is a travesty of legal standards and criminal investigation.

Yet the JIT’s unsubstantiated allegations against Russia and its collection of reports have lent political impetus for the US and its European allies to impose economic sanctions against Russia which have cost the country billions of dollars in disrupted trade.

By contrast, the UN report this week confirms serious allegations against the Saudi rulers for their role in the barbaric murder of a journalist. Jamal Khashoggi was kidnapped inside a consular premises, drugged, murdered and his remains dismembered, never to be found. As the UN special rapporteur asked this week: where are the Western sanctions against the Saudi regime?

The hypocrisy and double standards of the US and its European allies just goes to show their cynical expedience. It is expedient to sanction Russia over slanderous innuendo concerning the death of 298 airline passengers. It is, however, commercial and geopolitical good business to turn a blind eye to Saudi state complicity in murder.

The Initial Public Offering of Aramco – the world’s biggest oil company – was the “brainchild” of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), as told in this recent documentary. When he became heir to the throne in early 2017, the young prince made the partial sell-off of the state-owned asset the “cornerstone” for his far-reaching plans to reform the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

MBS, the favored son of aging King Salman, was given free rein over major policy decisions, including trying to modernize the Saudi economy away from its near-total dependence on oil. The Crown Prince drew up a “Vision 2030” master plan to reinvent Saudi Arabia as a hi-tech business hub for the Middle East. The plan – widely hailed by Western news media as an “ambitious new beginning” – also included social reforms to give women more rights and to open up more lax leisure facilities, such as cinemas and sporting venues. The Western plaudits for the young royal pandered to his ego and vanity.

However, the thirty-two-year monarch has since fallen out of favor among his erstwhile Western backers over the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 in what many believe to have been an assassination plot ordered by Crown Prince MBS. The House of Saud vehemently deny his involvement and claim that the murder was a “rogue operation” by Saudi intelligence agents who were sent to Istanbul to forcibly return Khashoggi to his native country. Few people – most notably US President Donald Trump – believe the official Saudi claim of MBS’ innocence.

The timeline of events is important here. Khashoggi went in self-exile in September 2017, a few months after MBS became heir to the throne. His next-in-line promotion was seen by many observers as a breach of the kingdom’s succession rules. MBS, with his father’s approval, bypassed other heirs who were higher up the succession ladder. It was a “power grab” by the sharp-elbowed MBS who is known for being arrogant and impetuous.

During his US exile, Khashoggi became a regular columnist for the Washington Post and a prominent guest speaker at various influential think tanks on Middle Eastern matters. A cardinal theme for the dissident was criticism of MBS and highlighting serious policy mistakes. Khashoggi was critical of Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, the blockade of Qatar, its destabilizing interference in Lebanon’s political affairs, as well as exposing the darker side of MBS’s authoritarian rule during the round-up and alleged torture of other royals, which the Crown Prince had been claiming was an anti-corruption crackdown. The young royal’s “reformist” image was therefore being marred by Khashoggi’s insider insights.

All this negative publicity – from high-profile media platforms in the US – is bound to have impacted on the strategy concerning the share sell-off for Aramco. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Aramco was said to be world’s biggest-ever stock-market listing. It had investors drooling. New York was vying with London for the deal.

The company was valued by the Saudi Crown Prince and his advisors at $2 trillion. The intended 5 per cent sell-off of company shares was calculated to raise $100 billion. That windfall was then supposed to be used to drive forward the ambitious Vision 2030 which MBS was staking his entire reputation and ego on.

But foreign investors began to lose confidence in Aramco’s valuation at $2 trillion – reckoned to be unrealistically high. Secondly, there were growing doubts about MBS as a reliable ruler. The much-vaunted stock-market launch of the company began to fade from the end of 2017 through early 2018. Investors became leery of what had been touted as the most spectacular capital venture ever.

As Aramco’s prospects dwindled, it was reported that King Salman eventually stepped in to pull the plug on whole concept.

Al Jazeera reported: “The king spoke – and a $2 trillion dream went up in smoke.” The Financial Times commented at the time: “Shelving the Saudi Aramco IPO [sell-off] is a blow to Crown Prince… For the king it maybe was too much to go down as the man who sold the crown jewels.”

The abrupt cancelling of the Aramco stock-market plan came as a severe knock-back to MBS. The young royal is known to see himself in the same mold as global entrepreneurs. When he was on a two-week visit to the US last year, he smooched with Silicon Valley figures and other business leaders. One can easily imagine the personal insecurity of this pampered Saudi heir trying to “prove himself” among what he considers “icons” of success.

With MBS’ Aramco “brainchild” aborted, the whole reform “master plan” of his Vision 2030 was also then thrown into disarray. No exaggeration, his world must have been turned upside down and his reputation badly dented. It’s hard to overstate how bruising the turn of events must have been for the “visionary” royal.

A CIA assessment of Crown Prince MBS, as reported by the Washington Post, refers to him as a “good technocrat” but also an arrogant and impetuous character. “He doesn’t seem to understand that there are some things you can’t do,” quoted the Post.

All this earth-shattering news came at the end of August, 2018, when the Western media revealed that Aramco stock-market plan was being ditched. What’s more, it was also clear that the once-buoyant image of MBS was being checked by his father.

Barely five weeks later, Jamal Khashoggi was lured to Istanbul on false pretenses to collect a legal document from the Saudi consulate. That was on October 2 when it is believed that he was tortured to death inside the consulate, and his body cut up with a bone saw for disposal. His remains have never been recovered.

It is claimed that MBS organized the plan to entice Khashoggi to Istanbul. The journalist was fearful of returning to Saudi Arabia because of his media criticism. MBS’s younger brother, Khalid, who was based in Washington as US ambassador, reportedly phoned Khashoggi to assure him that he would be safe to go to Istanbul. That must have been sometime during September. The Saudi embassy denies the phone call was made.

Jamal Khashoggi is not known to have expressed any public opinion on the proposed Aramco stock-market plan. But it can be fairly deduced that his critical writings concerning the “reformist” Crown Prince and the latter’s lack of credibility dealt a serious downer – at least indirectly – to the whole venture.

In MBS’ egotistical rage over his dream being squelched, Jamal Khashoggi probably emerged as the bane of the Crown Prince’s ambitions. In a five-week period, the journalist’s fate was sealed by a murder plot that bears the hallmarks of rage and revenge.

Yet, as far as mainstream media coverage was concerned, the two stories appeared completely unrelated. Except, in reality, they intimately connected. It was George Bush Senior as the director of the CIA who brought the US and Saudi Arabia into close partnership for global repression.

Since the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, there has been a growing disgust among US public, the media and lawmakers with the despotism of the House of Saud, in particular Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom. He is accused of ordering the heinous killing of Khashoggi, whose body was hacked to pieces and disposed of, according to Turkish investigators. Even the CIA has pointed fingers at the Crown Prince.

US Senators last week introduced a resolution calling for the heir to the Saudi throne to be held to account over the murder. The senators are also calling for an end to the horrendous Yemeni war and the Saudi-led blockade of neighboring Gulf state Qatar, events which the Crown Prince has personally directed.

There is thus a palpable sense in Washington that the US must dissociate itself from Saudi barbarity, even though the countries have had a strategic partnership going back nearly eight decades. An historic meeting between former President Franklin D Roosevelt and the founding king of Saudi Araba, Ibn Saud, in 1945 near the end of World War II marked the beginning of that bilateral relation.

The US-Saudi relationship has always been about oil supply, maintaining the petrodollar as world reserve currency, and of course massive American weapons sales vital to the US military-industrial complex. The deeply conservative Saudi rulers with their Wahhabi Sunni religion are also important surrogates for Washington to suppress democracy movements in the Middle East, and to act as a bulwark against Iranian Shia influence.

That function was openly expressed recently by President Donald Trump, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis when they said the US could not afford to alienate Saudi rulers with sanctions over the Khashoggi murder “because the Saudis were essential to US interests of countering Iran”.

To a point, American media and lawmakers have shown a degree of ethical awareness in slamming the Trump administration for its “transactional” relationship with Saudi rulers. Business profits and politics are being put above moral values regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the war in Yemen, say critics.

However, those well-meaning concerns seem superficial and ignorant of the inherent and truly abhorrent nature of the US-Saudi relationship. Washington’s foreign policy and in particular the nefarious role played by the CIA and other unaccountable secret agencies are very much dependent on Saudi despotism for reaching their illicit objectives, whether in suppressing democratic movements, overthrowing governments and waging covert war with terror proxies.

Those Americans demanding an overhaul in the bilateral relation, in which Washington stands up for “American values” of human rights and rule of law, do not seem to understand the fundamental nefarious nature of US global power and its reliance on Saudi henchmen.

The person who very much developed that pernicious partnership was George HW Bush. A good reference source is Russ Baker’s book on the Bush Dynasty.

During the 1970s, various congressional committees began investigating the clandestine, criminal activities of the CIA. Probes, such as the Church Committee, were set up out of increasing American public concern over the involvement of US intelligence agencies in assassination campaigns and repression around the world. One of the assassinations included that of President John F Kennedy in 1963. Out of those congressional investigations, there were calls for more public oversight on the financing of the CIA.

George Bush Senior served as CIA director (1976-77) during those heady times of sharp public scrutiny. He would later become the 41st president of the US (1989-93). And his son, George W, would subsequently become the 43rd president for two terms (2001-2009).

It was Bush Senior as CIA chief who oversaw the new role of covert Saudi funding as the means to bankroll clandestine US global repression and regime-change intrigues. The Saudis were assigned this vital role because of US public demands for greater congressional accounting of CIA activities. A neat innovation was found.

A classic demonstration of this arrangement is seen during the past eight years of war in Syria. Washington and its NATO allies, Britain and France, wanted regime change against President Bashar al Assad, a close ally of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. The CIA, as well British and French military intelligence, provided the tactics and logistics for proxy militants trying to overthrow Assad. But it was the Saudis and other Gulf clients who funneled the billions of dollars to wage the war.

This arrangement of American intelligence and Saudi money for entirely criminal purposes involving deployment of terror groups stems from the legacy of George HW Bush.

So, when Saudi despots feel that they can get away with murder and genocidal war, it is because they have been cultivated by Washington despots. The barbarity of head-chopping Saudi potentates is the corollary of American so-called “democratic leaders” who feel entitled to overthrow foreign states and sanction mass murder.

This inherent function of US global power in league with Saudi dictators, among other repressive regimes such as the Neo-Nazi cabal ruling Ukraine, is what escapes those American critics who are demanding that Trump take punitive action against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed.

The proof of that glaring disconnect was the media outpouring of sentimental eulogies to the late President George HW Bush, who was roundly praised as a “great and noble leader”. Why US policy is embroiled with Saudi corruption and criminality is because of criminals in high office like Bush.

Then, after almost a full week of silence on that, US President Trump, on November 22^nd, denied that the CIA had come to any conclusion, at all, about whether Saudi Crown Prince Salman had ordered the murder of Khashoggi: Trump said “They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways. I have the report… They have not concluded. I don’t know if anyone’s going to be able to conclude that the Crown Prince did it.” Congressional Democrats promptly responded to the President’s statement, by repeating what the Washington Post had said, and telling CNN, “The CIA concluded that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was directly involved in the assassination of Khashoggi. They did it with high confidence, which is the highest level of accuracy that they will vouch for.”

America’s voting public believe whomever they want to believe, which is almost always the politicians and newsmedia that the given individual votes for and obtains news from. In such a country, objective reality is hard to find, because the crucial evidence is hidden from the public. For example, the CIA’s report on the Khashoggi murder is hidden from the public. Neither the Government nor the press trust the public enough to allow the public to see anything of the actual report itself. So, voters can only go by whatever prejudices they have. Therefore, in America, prejudices reign, and it happens because the Government and the press don’t trust the public enough to present the actual evidence to them. Either a person trusts the Government, or the person doesn’t. But what is “the Government,” in such a case as this? Is it the WP-alleged assertion of what “the CIA” supposedly said, or is it instead the US President, who says that the CIA didn’t assert any such thing? And, if you don’t trust what one side, in such a case, calls “the Government,” then it’s easy for that side to label you “unpatriotic,” even if you happen to be a patriot asserting the truth, and “the Government” happens to be the actual traitor against its own public, such as the US Government itself has been proven to be (and not only about such matters as 2003’s “WMD in Iraq”, in which the US Government was clearly traitorous).

When the Washington Post, on November 22^nd, reported Trump’s comments about the CIA’s report, the newspaper didn’t even include Trump’s denial, which was quoted here, but instead gave only fluff from Trump, such as “I hate the crime, I hate the coverup. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do, and they have vehemently denied it.” That newspaper merely paraphrased Trump, didn’t actually quote him, about the important parts of the President’s statement there. The newspaper opened its ‘news’-report with “President Trump on Thursday contradicted the CIA’s assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.” But there was only that one-word paraphrase (“contradicted”). That’s all there was, in the entire thousand-word ‘news’-report, none of his actual statement about the CIA’s report on the killing of Khashoggi. Reporters like this should be fired, but they won’t be if the purpose of hiring and retaining them is to hide the actual evidence from the public, by providing only paraphrases (in this case, a mere one-word paraphrase) for the crucial parts, instead of presenting the actual evidence itself (by quoting it directly). The WP excluded anything like Trump’s statement that “They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways. I have the report … They have not concluded. I don’t know if anyone’s going to be able to conclude that the Crown Prince did it.” Instead, their mere paraphrase of that, alleging that Trump “contradicted the CIA’s assessment” didn’t present either a quotation from the CIA’s report, or a quotation from the President, much less (as would have been required in an authentic news-report on an alleged contradiction, such as this) both, so as to allow subscribers to judge for themselves whether or not the President had ‘contradicted’ what the CIA’s report had actually said. In other words: that was a fake ‘news’-report in the Washington Post; it presented no credible news, but only evidence-less fluff, about this important matter.

‘News’-media such as that are part of a political culture that’s based not on science — a society in which individuals make public-affairs judgments on their own, on the basis of the actual evidence being presented to them — but that’s based instead purely on faith. It’s a religious (or faith-based) political culture, not a scientific one. That’s to say: judgments are based on whatever the individual’s prejudice happens to be. Judgments by the public are not based on the evidence, because the evidence is actually being hidden from the public. Obviously, there is no accountability — it’s not even possible to have accountability in such a political culture, because the evidence is being hidden from voters.

On the night of Friday, November 23^rd, Trump — his Administation — released the long-awaited “Fourth National Climate Assessment” from a panel of 300 climatologists, and it calculated, for example, that Phoenix, Arizona, during 1976-2005, averaged around 80 days per year above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and that if we do everything possible to minimize fossil-fuels-usage, that average will be around 125 such days annually between 2070 and 2100, but otherwise it will be around 150 days annually, which is almost twice as many sizzling days per year as compared with the period 1976-2005.

On Monday, November 26^th, CNN headlined "Donald Trump buried a climate change report because 'I don't believe it’” and reported that, “‘I don't believe it,’ Trump told reporters on Monday, adding that he had read ‘some’ of the report. It’s a report which had been “produced by 13 agencies within the Trump administration — the result of Congress, in the 1980s, mandating that this sort of report be submitted every four years as a sort of reference point for lawmakers and legislators.” This news-report from CNN was real, not fake like the Washington Post’s was on the Khashoggi matter, and it linked to the evidence, including to the actual study itself, and to Trump’s statement that he doesn’t believe it.

Here, then, is an actual example of authentic news-reporting, which is credit-worthy and not simply to be taken on mere trust (like the Washington Post’s ‘news’ about Trump’s ‘contradicting’ his own CIA’s report). But will Trump’s voters still have faith in him, despite his clear divergence from the professionals on climatology, the scientists who are experts in these types of matters? Obviously, such a President (one who rejects the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion on a scientific topic) is an actual crackpot; but will his voters believe him simply because they want to believe him — because they’re people of faith and he here happens to be peddling their particular belief — because they’re not people of science? Then how can democracy even function, with such a public? Only authoritarianism (a faith-based regime) can function, in such a country as this.

On November 26^th, the most Trumpian ‘news’-medium of all, Breitbart, didn’t even report Trump’s “I don’t believe it,” but did include, on November 26th, a November 25th ‘news’-article bannered "Experts on Climate Change Assessment: ‘Every Conclusion of This Latest Government Report Is False’”, which opened:

The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, released on Friday, has gained praise from leftists and left-wing environmental groups as a dire warning of the coming death and destruction in the United States if we don’t stop global warming.

But critics of the report, including scientists, have slammed it as “exaggeration,” bad science and even said its conclusions are “false.”

“This latest climate report is just more of the same – except for even greater exaggeration, worse science, and added interference in the political process by unelected, self-serving bureaucrats,” Tim Huelskamp, president of the Heartland Institute said in statements released by the free-market think tank following the report’s release…

Nothing was said there about the Heartland Institute’s being funded by far-right billionaires including many who own or are heavily invested in oil and gas corporations. These people have a financial stake in downplaying the environmental threat that’s posed by their products. Very few climatologists are members of that particular propaganda-operation. It’s fake, as an ‘authority’ about anything. Clearly, Trump represents those fossil-fuels corporate owners, not the public — not even the voters who had voted for him. All Americans have a real stake in the truth about the global-warming issue. All people everywhere do.

Is an authentic democracy possible in such a country as this, where it’s so easy for liars to win and keep public offices? All that the liars have to do is to pump to the public the deceits that the billionaires they serve want them to pump. The politicians who do that will be the ones who are in serious contention to become winners, because their political campaigns will receive all the funding that’s needed in order for them to be in serious contention. The politicians who are honest won’t be among the ones who are in serious contention — it’ll be like America’s Government actually is.

And the outcome: Yes, as Pepe Escobar, lately was being told in Istanbul: “The Erdogan machine has sensed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity [i.e. l’affaire Khashoggi], to simultaneously bury the House of Saud’s shaky Islamic credibility, while solidifying Turkish neo-Ottomanism, but with an Ikhwan [i.e. with a Muslim Brotherhood – style] framework”. This is heady stuff – maybe the Arab world is not so anxious to welcome back, with open arms, either the Ottomans or the Muslim Brotherhood. But nonetheless, with the Gulf so discredited in terms of its legitimacy, Erdogan is probably right to think that he is pushing at an ‘open door’.

And strategic interests are giving Erdogan a strong tail-wind in his bid. Erdogan has secured – as part of the package to try to get Turkey to ‘lay-off’ with its Khashoggi drip-drip leaks – an end to the Saudi siege on Qatar. It is possible too, as part of the deal, that the Qatari Emir (we are told) might visit Riyadh in the near future, and that some sort of cold – very frigid – reconciliation will be conducted with MbS. The point is that Qatar is greatly beholden to Erdogan for ending the siege (and for the earlier stationing of Turkish troops in the Emirate, to protect it, against any Saudi attack), and like Turkey, the Emir is a generous Muslim Brotherhood patron.

Turkey also enjoys a close strategic relationship with Iran (though they have their differences over Syria). The two states have a strong shared interest in seeing an end to American forces occupying parts of Syria, and putting a stop to the Israeli-sponsored Kurdish ‘project’ in the region. And again the Muslim Brotherhood enters into this equation — the latter’s flirtation with Saudi Arabia is finished, and parts of the movement (it is still fractured from the Gulf-led war against it) are returning to old comrades: Hizbullah and Iran (the Muslim Brotherhood never parted from Turkey). In short, the Muslim Brotherhood seem destined to become Turkey’s Arab foot-soldiers in the battle to take the mantle of Islamic leadership away from Saudi Arabia.

Beyond the convergence of political interest however, there is oil and gas too. Russia is the mastermind here, with Turkey acting as the putative pivot. Moscow is quietly stitching together a new energy axis: Qatar had already injected needed cash into Russian oil giant, Rosneft, giving it a substantial stake in the latter – as well as providing Rosneft with the means to buy into Egypt’s huge Zohr gas field. And Qatar is co-operating closely with Iran on exploiting their shared North Dome/South Pars gas field (the largest in the world) in the Persian Gulf – with Qatar recently, substantially expanding its LNG facilities. Iraq too has just agreed to co-ordinate oil and gas operations with Russia.

It is not hard to see what is afoot here: This week Russia completed the link to the ‘pivot’ (Turkey) – the undersea gas pipeline TurkStream, linking Russia with Turkey. As Pepe Escobar notes, “TurkStream is projected as two lines, each capable of delivering 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas a year. The first will supply the Turkish market. The second will run 180 km to Turkey’s western borderlands and supply south and southeast Europe, with first deliveries expected by the end of next year. Potential customers include Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary”. 

And phase Two? Well, soon the old plan of a regional pipeline from the Persian Gulf through Iran and Syria, to Europe (possibly via Turkey), may become again politically viable (i.e. in the interests of all parties in the new regional re-alignment.) What does this signify? It suggests that the Qatar-Turkey-Iran-Russia axis may dominate in Middle East energy production, pushing Saudi and the UAE into the place of ‘second fiddle’. And let us not ignore Iraq. Apart from its energy co-operation accord with Russia, Iraq has also just signed a free trade agreement with Iran – despite threats from American officials. (The efforts to keep Iraq within the US sphere of interest do not seem to be working well.)

The ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity given to Turkey ‘to bury the House of Saud’s Islamic Credibility, and to resurrect Istanbul’s ancient claim to leadership of the Islamic world’, naturally has stirred alarm and a deep sense of vulnerability in the Gulf.

MbZ is leading a push by the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain to re-establish the ‘Arab prerogative’ in Syria – in order to ‘join’ with President Assad in pushing back non-Arab (i.e. Turkic and Iranian) influence across the Levant. (No doubt, part of this MbZ initiative is to distance, and to differentiate himself, from the now tainted MbS).

And the atmospherics across the Sunni Levant are today extremely hostile towards MbS, we hear from recent visitors to the region. It is putting into question the Custodianship of the two Holy Sanctuaries (Mecca and Medina): The Khashoggi barbarism has forced attention onto the issues of personal safety, as well to that of the financial exploitation of pilgrims at Mecca. Ordinary pious Muslims are questioning whether it is worth undertaking pilgrimage — there is a movement advocating for boycott. This aspect of popular outrage should not be underestimated: the Sanctuaries are a significant component of identity (together with Jerusalem).

MbZ’s initiative to try to ‘save’ the Levant from non-Arab influence may have the side-effect of returning Damascus to the Arab ‘fold’ (which is to say, its seat at the Arab League), and will be welcomed in Damascus on that account alone. Moreover, the initiative represents more broadly a political recognition of the region’s strategic realities by the Gulf. That too can only help in bringing about a broader internal reconciliation domestically, and the full marginalization of the jihadists in Syria.

But to look for more than that would be wishful thinking on the part of MbZ and his western advocates – we suggest. Syrians generally are not so open to the claims of pan-Arabism as they were in the past. They were, after all, betrayed by this Arab ideal, multiple times. The claim of a ‘greater Syria’ has dimmed, and a current of steely, Syrian, Arab nationalism is more evident. It will be a tougher, more assertive Syria that emerges from this ‘war’. Damascus may be open to Gulf rapprochement, but it will not suffer any lectures on the ideals pan-Arab nationalism from those who waged war against this ancient Arab nation, nor against those who supported Syria through its ‘dark nights’.

Those who are in the ‘quagmire’ now are not Russia (as Obama confidently forecast), nor Syria, nor its allies. The wheel has turned. It is now the Gulf States, fearful for their own futures, should the family al-Saud implode, who are in a quagmire of crumbling credibility, and legitimacy — and Israel, too, is in its own separate quagmire, albeit for different reasons. Israel deliberately opted for a path that pitted it aggressively up, and against, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Turkey (via Kurdish proxies), and Hizbullah. Netanyahu presumably hoped to capitalize on Trump’s lack of nous concerning the region, and on manipulating MbS’ overt ambition. Israel escalated this overt hostility (through hundreds of air incursions over Syria), to the point of clashing, and endangering the Russian military interest – by insisting Israel must freely, and regularly, bomb Syria.

Well, the Russian military command have ‘had it’ — enough of Israeli air incursions. They want stability in Syria. Netanyahu bet on leading Trump, Kushner and MbS — a slender, unrepresentative, stratum — into a remake of the region – and lost: Netanyahu lost Israel its freedom of the skies over the northern tier of the Middle East. Putin now declines a meeting with Netanyahu. Bibi has painted Israel into a corner where it now has to decide whether to risk ‘going for broke’ against much of the region and its Palestinian ‘subjects’; or, as Gulf leaders presently are doing in Damascus, acknowledge uncomfortable realities, and try to make do.

The other question is why does Erdogan pursue the drip, drip of Khashoggi evidence, when Trump and the European establishment would dearly like him to stop? Why does he not take what is on offer and shut up? Answer: because he too, was fearing being trapped in Turkey’s own particular quagmire. Khashoggi was the chance to turn the tables – and Erdogan is taking it.

Yes, Turkish rhetoric has been somewhat florid, but behind it lies substantive Turkish concerns: Erdogan can see that Turkey is being deliberately pressured at its maritime and land based borders, and has been subject to Lire and financial sanctions attrition internally (now halted – thanks to Turkey’s careful leaking of the Khashoggi evidence). On the maritime border, Erdogan can see plainly that Israel’s EastMed gas pipeline, via Cyprus to Europe, when completed, will likely leave Turkish North Cyprus bereft of pipeline revenues. He sees also the probing by western oil majors (pursuing EU/US interests), steaming into (disputed) waters claimed by Turkey and the Turkish-administered North Cyprus.

Then there are the Kurds, supported by Israel and European states, avidly trying to establish a Kurdish ‘belt’ for the length of Turkey’s southern border. And to the east, the new, pro-western colour revolutionary government of Nikol Pashinyan in Armenia. Pressure all around. All these exacerbated tensions, as well as the earlier financial attrition, spelled out a US containment policy – and even an eventual further coup being plotted against Turkey – in the Turkish assessment.

No wonder the euphoria in Istanbul. Erdogan is skilfully – and strategically – using Khashoggi ‘leaks’ dribbled out in the media. He is using them to exit from the threat of the Gulf-led project to plunge rival Turkey into a quagmire of encirclement, whilst watching at the same time, those who facilitated the attempted coup against him last year squirm (the Turkish press identified MbZ and MbS in particular as facilitators) – as the vice of crumbling credibility tightens on them, inverting the paradigm.

But rather than dealing with the obvious fact that US foreign power is evidently dependent on Saudi despotism, Trump’s critics tried to explain away that scandal by dragging Russia’s Vladimir Putin into the frame. A classic case of denial through distraction.

The Washington Post reported: “Trump’s defense of Saudi Arabia marks another instance when he has sided with the personal assurances of an autocrat, who has an incentive to deceive him, over the objective analysis of his own intelligence officials. Trump also took the word of Russian [President] Vladi­mir Putin that he didn’t meddle in the 2016 elections, despite the unanimous conclusions of the US intelligence community to the contrary.”

Other pundits, such as former US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and ex-director of national intelligence James Clapper, jumped to the same point, that President Trump was ignoring the advice of the CIA and aligning himself with “autocratic leaders”.

But the purported equivalence does not hold in the slightest. The US intelligence agencies – some of them, not all – previously made an assessment with “high confidence” that Russia interfered in America’s 2016 presidential election. But those intel agencies have never presented any verifiable evidence to support that sensational claim. Russia’s President Putin has denied any Kremlin-directed plot to influence US elections. His last statement on that was in Helsinki in June this year when he met Trump. The latter said then that he believed Putin’s assurances.

The case of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is totally different. Yes, the CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that the Saudi rulers, in particular Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were responsible for the killing. But numerous other observers have independently come to the same conclusion based on abundant evidence surrounding the disappearance of Khashoggi on October 2 inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Turkish authorities have provided audiotape recordings of the gruesome attack inside the consulate which strongly implicate the involvement of the Saudi Crown Prince, or MBS as he is known. There are also images of a Saudi death squad despatched from Riyadh to Istanbul, carrying murder tools in their luggage.

Even if direct evidence has yet to emerge demonstrating MBS being personally inculpated, the whole sordid affair and the brazen lies that have come out of Riyadh since October 2 are sufficient to conclude that, at the very least, the Saudi regime is answerable for the murder.

Just because the CIA has assessed “with high confidence” that MBS gave the murder order, does not mean that the CIA is wrong on this occasion. Admittedly US intelligence is not a reliable source, as shown in the “Russiagate” fantasy and, before that, the WMD allegations against Iraq, among many other propaganda operations. However, on the Khashoggi killing and the Saudi involvement we are not relying solely on the word of the CIA. We can permit US intelligence to get some things right, sometimes.

In any case, let’s just leave the CIA and US intelligence out of this. Their assessment is not needed. The conclusion that a brutal murder occurred in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul can be made from other sources and independent observations. What was perhaps significant about the CIA report this week on the killing is that it put a deadline on Trump’s prevarications. For nearly two months, the US president has dissembled and demurred about Saudi regime culpability and what the official Washington response should be.

This week Trump showed a shameful and callous indifference towards the gravity of the matter. The same day he whitewashed the Saudi regime and Crown Prince MBS in particular, Trump issued the annual presidential pardon to a Thanksgiving turkey in the White House Rose Garden, a jocular tradition that is said to go back to Abraham Lincoln’s time. “You’re one lucky turkey,” quipped Trump. The joking around could have easily applied to the Saudi Crown Prince whom Trump gave a reprieve in a statement released only hours earlier on the Khashoggi killing.

Incredibly in that statement, Trump actually admitted in a glib words that MBS may have been responsible for ordering the barbaric murder of Khashoggi.

“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” said the statement issued on behalf of Trump.

Trump’s reasoning was despicable and inane. “The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region,” added the president’s statement.

In other words, Saudi Arabia can do anything it wants, including murder, torturing political prisoners, waging a genocidal war on Yemen and sponsoring head-chopping terrorists, because it is a “steadfast partner” of Washington.

In absolving the Saudi rulers in the Khashoggi murder, Trump piled up the abject excuses, distractions and obfuscations. He accused Iran of being the problem of terrorism in the Middle East, not Saudi Arabia. He accused Iran of being responsible for millions of children starving in Yemen, not Saudi Arabia. He slandered Khashoggi as being an “enemy of the state”. He said Saudi Arabia was too important for US weapons sales, jobs and oil interests to be considered for sanctions over the “terrible killing”. Finally, Trump candidly blurted that “America First” national interests of profits and security were more important than any moral values.

In response, The New York Times sought to moralize over the president’s indecency, in an article headlined: ‘In Pardoning Saudi Arabia, Trump Gives Guidance to Autocrats’. It added: “The president laid out a foreign policy where alliances are transactional, jobs outweigh values and friends are excused for abhorrent acts.”

Of course, Trump’s whitewashing of Saudi despotism is abhorrent. But what is really upsetting the US media, pundits and other politicians in Washington is that Trump is laying bare the real nature of America’s “strategic” relationship with Saudi Arabia.

And not just Saudi Arabia. For decades, Washington has willingly consorted with the most barbaric, fascist dictatorships to mass murder its way to maintaining hegemony around the world. Journalists, trade unionists, teachers, peasants, priests, democracy activists and countless other civilians have been murdered by US-backed despotic regimes in order to keep the “world safe” for American corporate capitalism.

Trump’s brazen pardoning of the Saudi regime this week is merely a continuation of Washington’s policy. The difference on this occasion is that the veil of American moralistic pretense and virtuous rhetoric has been torn asunder.

That’s what is really vexing the US media, pundits and politicians. So in order to distract from the spectacle of sordid American calculation, there is a desperate attempt to blame Trump and explain away his indecency as an aberration of personal affinity with autocrats.

Even when the US ruling class is exposed in its corrupt dealings with murderous dictatorships, it finds some way of blaming others and smearing their bête noire – Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Photo: Flickr

The Washington Post continues its banal attack on the regime of Saudi Arabia, following the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate on October 2. In Turkey too there is much which the western media cannot understand or refuses to probe, as Ankara plays a game of blackmail with Riyadh in a bid to extract a deal from Mohammad bin Salman who is at the centre of its character assassination.

But what are we missing? What is at the heart of this story which isn’t getting picked up by journalists or even TV commentators in the region?

Much has been written about the ‘free license’ that Trump and his son in law, Jared Kushner gave the Saudi prince and that this murder is an inevitable consequence of such blinded dogma towards ones allies. There is some truth in this, but if you are to look at the coverage of, in particular, the US media over Khashoggi, you might be curious to understand why it is so extensive and prolonged. After all, Saudi Arabia has been kidnapping its own dissidents for years and there are many western journalists who are killed or go missing around the world which get minimal coverage. Why such an entrenched campaign for Khashoggi?

Guilty

Partly this is a guilt complex of the Wapo editors, who I have accused in earlier articles for more or less sending Khashoggi on a suicide mission when they chose to publish his articles in Arabic. This was recently confirmed when Khashoggi’s editor at the Post – Karen Attiah – admitted to The Independent that the traffic which the Arabic articles generated shocked bosses there. I have always argued that this was a final blow for MbS, humiliated now by his adversaries in Riyadh who can read about his failings on a regular basis.

And it’s also about the fact that the Post considered him part of the DC elite. One of their own, which explains why he has become so canonised and his personality enshrined in virtue.

Their trade is treachery

In truth, Khashoggi was no saint. He took the King’s shilling from the Saudi elite all his life and made a good lifestyle for himself. At the end of a thirty year relationship of working for them and learning all of their secrets, he used that privilege as a weapon to destroy MbS. In most cultures around the world, this is called treachery. We should remember that even in London in 1963, when British spy Kim Philby defected to Moscow, many wanted him to hang for selling out to the Russians and being a double agent for all his career. Khashoggi may well have been an amiable character. But he was also a traitor.

We are led to believe that he left Riyadh in 2017 because he feared being detained. But could it be that he was frustrated at not being promoted within the hierarchy?

A select number of journalists and academics, like Dr Nafeez Ahmed, support this theory, in part at least and go further to say that Khashoggi was murdered because he was about to distribute solid evidence of the Saudis using chemical weapons in Yemen. The British academic also underlines Khashoggi’s role for Saudi intelligence and, moreover, how he helped the Saudi royal family support Bin Laden, right up until 9-11.

Yet my own sources close to the Saudi elite tell me that MbS wanted to call him back to Riyadh because Khashoggi was at the centre of a coup in the making, which would have benefitted the former Crown Prince Mohamed bin Nayef, and still operated very much as though he was a Saudi intelligence asset. Not so much a treacherous journalist who didn’t know which side his bread was buttered, but more a double agent who was the gatekeeper of incendiary information. Something had to be done about Khashoggi.

Frustrated journalists are dangerous people. They lose sight of their loyalties and promises they made. And Khashoggi was an odd character struggling with an identity crisis. Is it the same case with Karen Attieh on the Oped desk of the Post which managed him? Did she connect with him as she too feels not taken seriously by her bosses at the Washington Post?

Conspiracy theory extended? Unfortunately we are led to feral speculation when we are denied the facts, especially deliberately.

Western media has a lot to be ashamed of on both covering up the Khashoggi murder – by going along with the demonization of the kingdom – and in being part of it happening in the first place. How does all of the gory details about Khashoggi’s murder get reported as fact by the Post, when it has no proof from the Turkish police sources who supply them? There is gargantuan hypocrisy at play here as the Post is part of a conspiracy now. It played a role in Khashoggi getting murdered and it is now playing a role in diverting blame away from itself and blithely accusing Saudi Arabia’s leader of the murder with little or no solid evidence. This is sloppy journalism on a whole new scale and shows a dire lack of journalistic credibility and judgment (unless of course the Post is part of a murky campaign of disinformation which has been agreed between Ankara and Washington whose firebrand leaders are now on good terms once again). Is the Post part of a dirty deal which has been struck by Trump and Erdogan to rewrite this story?

Far fetched? Ludicrous? Maybe, but let’s look at the facts. Trump is standing back and letting Erdogan continue with his drip feeding of sensational detailed evidence, in a blackmail game with MbS – but what’s the price Americans pay for that? To place himself at the centre of that charade, Trump has indicated to the Saudis that they need to release women activists from jail (likely to happen soon) and to cancel the Qatar blockade (on the cards, but will take longer). But before that happens, what we are witnessing is Trump looking for a media distraction (sanctions against the Saudi ‘killers’) while he mulls the idea of letting Erdogan have the exiled cleric, Gulen, who the Turkish President accuses of being the architect of the July 2016 attempted coup.

But he has also allowed Erdogan to use the US media as a platform for his own moral tutelage. Yes, astonishingly, the Washington Post – which presents itself as an arbiter of free speech and a protector of journalists and their sanctity, following Khashoggi’s murder – chose to publish Erdogan’s Oped about the affair, giving the Turkish leader the edge in the power game by selling out the lives of all 170 journalists in Turkish prisons, which, presumably, Wapo editors just forgot about on that given day. One can only assume that Karen Attiah managed to hold back the tears for those who are rotting in Turkish prisons for merely writing an Oped which vexed the Turkish leader.

Presumably Erdogan paid the Post to publish the piece – otherwise, if it were gratis, then that would be like wapo supporting him and his political leadership. But was this the same money that Saudi Arabia is reported to pay to regional media outlets to buy their loyalty? How can a Middle Eastern leader who has imprisoned a record number of journalists and who is now blackmailing the Saudis, get the support from the Washington Post? Can this really be happening?

Erdogan must be laughing his head off in Turkey as he sees day after day that western media just report as facts, what his officials say about the details of the murder. And laughing even hysterically when all he needs to do is write an article taking the moral high ground – don’t laugh – on the rights of journalists in the region and give it to the Post to publish.

The dark side of Khashoggi murder

Good investigative journalists are cynical about everything which is presented to them. Is, for example, the relationship between Khashoggi and his fiancé entirely what it seemed, or was she directed by Erdogan to ‘honey trap’ the Saudi journalist as part of an elaborate plot to ensnare the Saudi crown prince? Sources from the intelligence community of one middle eastern country (I prefer not to name which one) are at least beginning to wonder about this. And almost certainly so are the Saudis. Yet western journalists who refuse to at least consider that the Khashoggi abduction was bungled (and ended up being a murder) are likely to call this a conspiracy theory. Even if it is, they should at least report on it and mull it. What about all the tools which the hit team brought, they might ask. Could they have been brought to be used to scare Khashoggi into handing over the information that MbS was seeking?

Khashoggi’s fiancé doesn’t seem distraught and the sheer speed in which the couple headed towards the marriage courts is questionable, as is, indeed her own personal relationship with Erdogan, which she even admitted to the BBC. Other questions should be the ‘evidence’ presented by Erdogan, which is looking ropy to say the least, which some journalists are identifying as such.

For the moment, the only certain thing about the Khashoggi affair is how standards of western media have plummeted to an all time low with the Post leading the pack with partisan judgment, check book journalism and an internal guilt trip fuelling their unremarkable reporting, not to mention their abysmal editorial judgment. American media has lost the moral compass and Khashoggi will be remembered for this above all – with many arguing that this, in itself, plays a role in the impunity of those carrying out the rendition and murder. When the Saudis fell into the Turkish trap, they probably believed that Turkey would be the last place in the world to care about one kidnapped journalist. But they could never have imagined how partisan, sloppy and hypocritical western media would be in covering the story. What Khashoggi has taught us is that the day that Americans read newspapers based on the editors’ judgment are well behind us. So why should we read them at all?

Photo: Twitter