Saudi Arabia’s Murderous Ruler must Not Be Appeased

WP Editorial

In an interview with the Atlantic published recently, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was asked whether President Biden misunderstands him. “Simply, I do not care,” replied the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, sitting atop some of the world’s greatest oil reserves. According to the magazine, MBS, as he is known, suggested that alienating the Saudi monarchy would be bad for Biden. “‘It’s up to him to think about the interests of America.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Go for it.’”

When asked by the magazine whether he had ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist, he said it was “obvious” that he had not. “It hurt me a lot,” he said. “It hurt me and it hurt Saudi Arabia, from a feelings perspective.”

This arrogant insouciance is revolting. The US intelligence community concluded that the crown prince approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, who was seized, suffocated and dismembered with a bone saw in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The crown prince displayed a knife-edge coldness to his victim in the interview. “I never read a Khashoggi article in my life,” he said. “If that’s the way we did things, Khashoggi would not even be among the top 1,000 people on the list. If you’re going to go for another operation like that, for another person, it’s got to be professional and it’s got to be one of the top 1,000.”

We think Khashoggi was at the top of his game with his columns about the need for more openness, tolerance and freedom in Saudi Arabia, and his arguments still hold true. Free speech and dissent are continually persecuted in the kingdom, which grotesquely executed 81 men in a single day this month, most of them denied fair trials or due process. Mr. Biden has been correct to keep a distance from the young potentate, even as the crown prince hopes to use his oil reserves to pry respect from the president. Saudi Arabia supplies 7 percent of US oil needs and could pump more to ease shortages.

Biden must not rush into a rapprochement... “Where is the potential in the world today?” he said in the Atlantic interview. “It’s in Saudi Arabia. And if you want to miss it, I believe other people in the East are going to be super happy.” As he certainly knows, China is not likely to put warplanes on the tarmac at Taif to save Saudi Arabia, as the United States did in 1991. Just recently, the administration transferred a significant number of Patriot antimissile batteries to help Saudi Arabia defend against missile and drone attacks from …Houthi rebels it is battling in Yemen.

The long relationship will endure ups and downs. But in all dealings with Saudi Arabia, Mr. Biden should stand by the principles that Khashoggi so passionately cared for, however much it discomfits the pouty monarch in Riyadh.