Amjad Ahmad JebreelThe Khashoggi case and the future of MBS
The consequences of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country’s consulate in Istanbul, on 2 October, have gradually turned into a turning point in the course of regional and international interactions, which led to increasing pressures on Saudi Arabia to unmask the circumstances of the crime.
Two courses have emerged since the beginning of the crisis; the first, Turkey’s endeavor (and to a lesser degree: Germany, France, Britain, Canada and other western countries) to reveal the truth behind the crime.
Some of these countries have already started suggesting the option of penalizing the Saudi regime, either by halting official visits to the Kingdom, or boycotting the “Davos in the Desert” conference in Riyadh, with all its economic significance, or by raising the bar of demands for a transparent and reliable investigation. The Europeans demand more cooperation with the Turks from the Saudi side to reveal the circumstances of the crime, while Berlin has made a decision to stop exporting weapons to the Kingdom, and called on all European countries to follow in its footsteps.
Human rights and journalistic organizations, the defenders of freedom of opinion and human rights, as well as the major international newspapers, especially the American ones, have played a major role in reinforcing this human rights course.
It is expected that some significant changes will affect this discourse after president Erdogan’s speech on 23 October 2018, in which he indicated that Saudi Arabia has taken an important step in its confirmation that the crime has taken place inside of the consulate; However, Ankara is demanding a comprehensive and independent investigation that would reveal all participants in the crime from all countries, especially since the Turkish agencies say the operation was planned and not spontaneous, and hence can’t be blamed on some security or intelligence agents without knowing who gave orders for its execution.
After raising a couple of questions refuting the Saudi narrative in this regard, Erdogan requested the Saudi authorities to reveal all parties involved, from the bottom to the very top. He concluded by asking King Salman to try the 18 persons accused of this crime in Istanbul, as the crime took place there.
The other track is relieving MBS from any responsibility in connection to the Khashoggi assassination and containing the consequences of this crisis by promoting incoherent accounts of “rogue killers” who assassinated him, unbeknown to the political leadership, and without the permission of the Saudi intelligence and security authorities.
This course is led by the American president Donald Trump, his chief advisor Jared Kushner, and national security adviser John Bolton, and involved in it as well are politicians, writers, media workers and teams of “electronic flies”, all of whom defend the Saudi regime.
Between these 2 tracks there are signs that the Khashoggi crisis may lead, at the very least, to weakening MBS and limiting his influence to a great extent, and eventually he may be eliminated , especially in the case of increasing pressures on president Trump from the Senate, because of the Congress midterm elections next month, which have turned the Khashoggi crisis into an “internal electoral issue”.
Three weeks after Khashoggi’s assassination, Saudi Arabia seems to be in a real impasse, which raises deep questions about the future of MBS, and Riyadh’s ability to survive this crisis, in its ties with Washington and Ankara in the first place, and other western capitals as well.
In this context, there are 3 interrelated factors that affect the future of this crisis:
First is the fluctuation in president Trump’s position and the changing of his tone from one instance to another, despite the intense pressures from the American lawmakers ahead of the elections; Apparently, Trump prefers not going too far in “punishing Saudi Arabia”, in order to maintain to their arms deals, and to pursue Washington’s policy of killing the Palestinian cause through the “deal of the century”,
and the establishing of an “Arab-Israeli NATO”, with the objective of blockading Iran’s regional influence , and intensifying the pressure on its economy and political system, while also widening the scope of combating “terrorism” as seen by the Trump administration.
The second factor is that Khashoggi’s crisis has opened the door wide for Ankara to pressure Riyadh, before international public opinion, and also to enhance American – Turkish relations, and emphasize the centrality of the Turkish role in solving the region’s problems.
Through the evidence it has gathered, and its institutions’ experience in managing crises, and its leaking of some evidence and audio and video recordings, Ankara has succeeded in magnifying the effect of the Khashoggi crisis in public opinion, which has forced Riyadh to offer an implicit recognition of the murder taking place inside of the consulate, and eventually led the king and the crown prince to offer their condolences to the journalist’s family, and vowing to hold those responsible accountable for this grave mistake, as the foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir has said.
The goal behind these Saudi conflicting accounts may be to mislead and disrupt the possibility of finding Khashoggi’s body.
The third factor is related to the response of the Saudi monarch to this crisis, and the extent of his willingness to save the regime’s reputation abroad, minimizing his expected losses externally and internally, and containing the pent-up anger of the princes of the family of Saud, especially those amongst them who have either been arrested or excluded.
In light of these 3 factors, we can conceive 2 scenarios for MBS’s future:
The first scenario: Staying in his position for some time, while the king merely contains the crisis by firing some officials and offering “escape goats”, and conducting an internal investigation that will most likely lead nowhere.
This scenario might include Riyadh offering some concessions to Ankara, including a formal apology to the Turkish state. This is the most probable scenario, especially if Trump’s position remains unchanged, and he intends to use this crisis to blackmail Saudi Arabia, as he has been doing since his visit to Riyadh in late May 2017, with his recurrent demands to king Salman to pay for the American protection of Saudi Arabia.
It seems as if the King’s decision to form a ministerial committee, chaired by his crown prince, to restructure leadership of the general intelligence agency, firing some senior officials, and relieving Saud Al-Qahtani from his position, and the king’s decision, at this very time in particular, to pay the yearly bonus to the government’s employees, are all indications that the MBS is staying in his position, at least for the next few months.
The second scenario is removing MBS and punishing Saudi Arabia; This scenario depends on the evidence that Ankara will reveal later, and its ability to convince Washington to open an international investigation, that would include MBS and his brother, Khaled bin Salman, Saudi’s ambassador in Washington, for his role in luring Khashoggi to Istanbul.
Despite the fact that this scenario is best (for Turkey, European nations, Canada, Australia and other countries), removing MBS will raise the problematic issue of finding a replacement, without jeopardizing Saudi Arabia’s stability and oil supplies to the world market.
Although the crisis reintroduced the name of Emir Mohammad bin Nayef, the former crown prince, and highlighted the role of Khaled Al-Faisal, the Emir of Mecca region who visited Turkey and offered president Erdogan a Saudi investment package in Turkey, the Saudi king is not likely to remove his crown prince, at least not immediately. This is for 2 reasons: one is to evade appearing as though he is succumbing to the Turkish/ international pressures, and the second is because MBS’s behavior throughout his time in office has shown that he would oppose this with all ferocity.
Also, the Saudi Allegiance Council, which convened secretly to choose a successor to the crown prince, might not be able to go against the will of the king and his crown prince because of 2 variables: one of them is the weakness of the cohesion in the ruling family, as shown in the absence of its role during MBS’s arrest of a number of princes in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in November 2017, and the second is the weakness of the Allegiance Council, which has been bypassed several times since its establishment by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz on 18 October 2006.
The Times newspaper in the UK thinks that if the king decided to sacrifice his crown prince, he would prefer the post to be saved for one of his sons, which makes Khaled bin Salman one of the possible alternatives.
In short, the consequences of the crime of assassinating Khashoggi have resulted in a big crisis for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in terms of its foreign relations with Washington, Ankara and other capitals, which put Riyadh in a vulnerable position. This confirms the decline in its regional and international standing, because of the crown prince’s policies, whom his father might be forced to replace with another person in the foreseeable future, and might be forced to follow the track of an international trial, so that Saudi Arabia wouldn’t bear the cost of the “adventurous Emir’s” policies.