WASHINGTON: President Biden has decided that the diplomatic cost of directly penalising Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is too high, according to senior administration officials, despite a detailed American intelligence finding that he directly approved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and Washington Post columnist who was drugged and dismembered in October 2018, The New York Times reported.
The decision by Biden, who during the 2020 campaign called Saudi Arabia a "pariah" state with "no redeeming social value," came after weeks of debate in which his newly formed national security team advised him that there was no way to formally bar the heir to the Saudi crown from entering the United States, or to weigh criminal charges against him, without breaching the relationship with one of America's key Arab allies.
Officials said a consensus developed inside the White House that the cost of that breach, in Saudi cooperation on counterterrorism and in confronting Iran, was simply too high. For Biden, the decision was a telling indication of how his more cautious instincts kicked in, as the responsibilities of managing a difficult ally led him to find ways other than going directly after Prince Mohammed to make Saudi Arabia pay a price.
While human rights groups and members of his own party applauded the president for making public the official intelligence finding, whose contents leaked more than two years ago, many said that it was just a first step — and that more had to be done to hold the crown prince, known by his initials M.B.S., accountable for his role.
Many organizations were pressing Biden to, at a minimum, impose the same travel sanctions against the crown prince as the Trump administration imposed on others involved in the plot.
Biden's aides said that as a practical matter, Prince Mohammed would not be invited to the United States anytime soon, and they denied that they were giving Saudi Arabia a pass, describing series of new actions on lower-level officials intended to penalise elite elements of the Saudi military and impose new deterrents to human rights abuses.
Those actions, approved by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, include a travel ban on Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief, who was deeply involved in the Khashoggi operation, and on the Rapid Intervention Force, a unit of the Saudi Royal Guard that protects Prince Mohammed — and is under his direct control.
The declassified intelligence report concluded that the intervention force directed the operation against Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi entered the consulate on Oct. 2, 2018, to get papers he needed for his forthcoming marriage, and, with his fiancée waiting outside the gates, was instead met by an assassination team.
An effort by the Saudi government to issue a cover story, contending that Khashoggi had left the consulate unharmed, collapsed in days.
The Trump administration acted against 17 members of that team, imposing travel bans and other penalties. Biden, one official said, described the new sanctions the United States is imposing to King Salman, the crown prince's father, in a phone call on Thursday that was only vaguely described in a White House account of the call.
But the king is 85 and in poor health, and it was unclear to administration officials how much he absorbed as Biden talked about a "recalibration" of the relationship with the United States.
In an effort to signal wider action against countries and officials who reach beyond their borders to repress dissent, Blinken is also adding a category of sanctions, a newly named "Khashoggi ban," to restrict visas to anyone determined to be participating in state-sponsored efforts to harass, detain or harm dissidents and journalists around the world. In a statement, Blinken said 76 Saudis would be designated in the first tranche.
That review, officials said, would be part of the annual State Department human rights report. It is part of an effort, officials said, to create a new category of human rights abuses — one called "extraterritorial repression," a growing issue as Russia, China and even allies like Turkey try to silence critics who are living in Europe, the United States or other free societies. While the initial bans will apply to Saudis, officials said they would quickly be used around the world.
A few hours after the release of the report and the new sanctions, the Saudi government issued a blistering response. "The kingdom of Saudi Arabia completely rejects the negative, false and unacceptable assessment in the report pertaining to the kingdom's leadership, and notes that the report contained inaccurate information and conclusions,"
it wrote.