Facing pressure to act against the Saudis over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but also clearly not wanting to imperil US-Saudi ties, the Trump Administration has announced sanctions on 17 Saudis over the killing Thursday.
The sanctions were exactly the sort that Saudi Arabia would doubtless counsel as a way to keep everything in line with the oft-changing Saudi narratives, and their consistent theme that the crown prince was wholly blameless.
So naturally, the US didn’t sanction the prince. Indeed, all 17 people they did sanction were people that the Saudis had already singled out as being targets of their own token investigation. The US used almost that entire Saudi investigation list, except for military generals, as their own list of sanctions targets.
Treasury officials tried to play these sanctions on individuals up as a major attempt to “achieve justice” for Khashoggi’s family. In reality, the main point of this is to sell the idea that they did something, without doing anything that might make the Saudis mad or risk juicy US arms sales to them.
Jeez, do you think we were too tough on them? One can only imagine our reaction if this had been something done by the dastardly Iranians. Bombs away or as the dead war hero said, “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”.