The attack of the Saudis and the embrace of Iranian despots

 Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen:

Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian place where religious leaders have tremendous power and the royal family has more. Its standards for justice are not American standards.

So when the CIA authors a report on the death of a Saudi journalist at the hands of Saudi henchmen, it isn’t surprising that the report, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), points the finger at Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. What is surprising is that the report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is just three-quarters of a page of amateurish innuendo.

OK, there were four pages released: a cover page; a page with the executive summary (below); a page that repeats the executive summary, then adds four bullet points of innuendo; and a list of individuals trailing down the third page to get to a fourth page.

The entire executive summary is worth reading:

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

  • “We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.
  • “Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.”

No evidence.

“We assess”—not with confidence, not with human sources (even anonymous or redacted sources), not with physical evidence, not with evidence at all. Just “we assess” because the crown prince had “control of decision-making” and “absolute control” of the intelligence operations. We needed a report for that?

Later, on the same page, the report notes, “The Crown Prince probably fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that failure to complete assigned tasks might result in him firing or arresting them.”

Probably?

We don’t know whether the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s murder, or ordered his capture, or ordered anything at all. One could equally posit that, given an “environment in which aides were afraid” and knowing as they did that the crown prince despised Khashoggi, they took it on themselves to get rid of the guy—hoping to curry favor with a demanding boss. Did they? Who knows? Did the crown prince order the killing? Who knows? Not the CIA, apparently.

The report is more an indictment of the politicization of the CIA than a document that tells the government anything worthwhile about Saudi Arabia. Everything in that three-quarter page document has been in the newspapers.

...

Khashoggi had ties to al Qaeda and bin Laden.  He is apparently celebrated by the media because of his association with the Washington Post which has gone to bat over his death.  The Saudis are no saints, but there are worse allies out there. The leadership in Iran is far worse and Biden wants to irrationally trust them with nukes in a few years.

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