How fucked is Trump in dealing with SA?

[Aardvark154]

The Turks have audio and video of Khashoggi's killing in the Saudi Embassy.

Perhaps the most interesting thing if the Turks are to be believed is that seeming in violation of treaties they are party to, and International Law more generally, they are admitting that they have been spying on Consular premises in Istanbul.

If they are spying on the Saudi's what is to say that they are not spying or attempting to spy on our Consulates General in Turkey?

Is anyone going to bother to consider the forest rather than just the trees?

 

[danmand]

Here I thought that Tania Blixen/Isak Dinesen (Karen von Blixen-Finecke) was a national hero in Denmark.

While Karen Blixen had many flaws as a human being, she never wore a pith helmet, and she did not have to travel to Kenya to get laid.

 

[mandrill]

Perhaps the most interesting thing if the Turks are to be believed is that seeming in violation of treaties they are party to, and International Law more generally, they are admitting that they have been spying on Consular premises in Istanbul.

If they are spying on the Saudi's what is to say that they are not spying or attempting to spy on our Consulates General in Turkey?

Is anyone going to bother to consider the forest rather than just the trees?

I'm sure they do. The Saudis probably do as well - probably with surveillance equipment they bought in Houston or LA. Or Langley.

Neither Erdogan or Prince Mo give a shit about anything remotely like common decency or international norms of behaviour.

The Turks just figure this opportunity to rub shit in the face of Prince Mo and the Saudi Royals is worth tipping their hand over.

BTW, when is the GOP administration going to get around to appointing ambassadors to either SA or Turkey? When Trump finishes playing golf or hanging out with Kanye and gets down to work?

 

[mandrill]

The Trumps and the alt right launch right into their attack on Khashoggi. Looks like they're really looking forward to being buddies with Prince Mo and building that Trump Towers Mecca super-hotel.

Donald Trump Jr. took a shot at missing Washington Post columnist and prominent Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi on Friday, retweeting a post linking him to terrorists.
Khashoggi disappeared earlier this month after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, and it is suspected he was murdered by a team of Saudi security agents. The Washington Post reported on Thursday night that Turkish officials have told the U.S. that they have video and audio proving Khashoggi was interrogated, tortured, killed and dismembered by the Saudi team.
PJ Media’s Patrick Poole took to Twitter on Friday to post what he called a “notorious 1988 Arab News article” by Khashoggi in-which he can be seen “tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam.”
“He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists,” Poole added.

Sean Davis, founder of The Federalist website, shared the tweet linking Khashoggi to terrorists in the 1980s, suggesting the public portrayal of Khashoggi was like other “evidence-free narratives.” Davis’s tweet made it’s way up to the president’s son, who retweeted it from his public Twitter account:

What Poole failed to note in his tweet is that the U.S. was backing Afghanistan’s Mujahideen at the time that Khashoggi wrote about them, in their fight against the Soviet Union. Both Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam supported the Mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of the 1970s and 1980s.
Since Khashoggi’s disappearance, President Donald Trump has faced pressure to call out U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. While speaking about the disappearance yesterday, Trump said the U.S. doesn’t “like it even a little bit,” but defended America’s arms deals with the country and noted Khashoggi was not a U.S. citizen.
“Whether or not we should stop $110 billion from being spent in this country – knowing they have … two very good alternatives,” Trump said. “That would not be acceptable to me.”
“I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country – they are spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs for this country,” he added.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/poli...d’-with-terrorists/ar-BBOiREU?ocid=spartandhp

 

[Frankfooter]

The Trumps and the alt right launch right into their attack on Khashoggi. Looks like they're really looking forward to being buddies with Prince Mo and building that Trump Towers Mecca super-hotel.

Donald Trump Jr. took a shot at missing Washington Post columnist and prominent Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi on Friday, retweeting a post linking him to terrorists.
Khashoggi disappeared earlier this month after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, and it is suspected he was murdered by a team of Saudi security agents. The Washington Post reported on Thursday night that Turkish officials have told the U.S. that they have video and audio proving Khashoggi was interrogated, tortured, killed and dismembered by the Saudi team.
PJ Media’s Patrick Poole took to Twitter on Friday to post what he called a “notorious 1988 Arab News article” by Khashoggi in-which he can be seen “tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam.”
“He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists,” Poole added.

Sean Davis, founder of The Federalist website, shared the tweet linking Khashoggi to terrorists in the 1980s, suggesting the public portrayal of Khashoggi was like other “evidence-free narratives.” Davis’s tweet made it’s way up to the president’s son, who retweeted it from his public Twitter account:

What Poole failed to note in his tweet is that the U.S. was backing Afghanistan’s Mujahideen at the time that Khashoggi wrote about them, in their fight against the Soviet Union. Both Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam supported the Mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of the 1970s and 1980s.
Since Khashoggi’s disappearance, President Donald Trump has faced pressure to call out U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. While speaking about the disappearance yesterday, Trump said the U.S. doesn’t “like it even a little bit,” but defended America’s arms deals with the country and noted Khashoggi was not a U.S. citizen.
“Whether or not we should stop $110 billion from being spent in this country – knowing they have … two very good alternatives,” Trump said. “That would not be acceptable to me.”
“I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country – they are spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs for this country,” he added.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/poli...d’-with-terrorists/ar-BBOiREU?ocid=spartandhp

That'll also just put more pressure on Trump to open his books.
He has bragged he's making big money of the Saudis, indeed the Saudis are the only thing keeping his hotels afloat lately.

Trump is the most corrupt politician I've ever seen.

 

[onthebottom]

He is reserving his outrage for a pastor that is held in house arrest in Turkey. The Turks will not finance a hotel in Ankara.

That guy is a US citizen.

 

[onthebottom]

OTB, you were the very dude who told us that Justin wasn't important enough to take on Prince Mo and that only Trump and the US could put P-Mo in his place. Brave words indeed! Trump flinches and cringes when dealing with the Saudis. If he pisses them off, they will never let him build a hotel there - ever. In short...

Justin isn't a big enough player to take on Prince Mo; but Trump isn't a big enough MAN to take on Prince Mo.

I think he’s got a $100b arms deal he’s like to deliver on.

I was kidding about Canada, nobody cares what Mr. dress up does.

Why are the Germans importing Russian gas while Putin likes people on the streets of Europe?

 

[Frankfooter]

I think he’s got a $100b arms deal he’s like to deliver on.

Saudi is the biggest purchaser of US weapons, yes.
But that's not something to be proud of.
That means US bombs are falling Yemen.

The Saudis are worse then the Taliban, really.

 

[mandrill]

Prince Mohammed threatens to fuck with the US and faces down Trump.

So much for OTB's swagger that Trump can control Prince Mo where Justin failed. Prince Mo is nuttier and nastier than ever. Time the CIA arranged for one of P-Mo's cousin to take over in SA and got things back to normal. But I don't think Trump and the USA have the balls to do that.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/saudi-ara...er-missing-critic-001155240.html?guccounter=1


Saudi Arabia warned Sunday it would retaliate against any sanctions imposed on the oil-rich kingdom over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as the Riyadh stock market plunged on growing investor jitters.

From tech tycoons to media giants, a host of Western companies are now distancing themselves from the Gulf state, imperilling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's much-hyped economic reform drive.

US President Donald Trump threatened ally Saudi Arabia on Saturday with "severe punishment" if Khashoggi, who has been critical of Prince Mohammed, was killed inside its Istanbul mission.

But Riyadh vowed to hit back against any punitive measures.

"The kingdom affirms its total rejection of any threats or attempts to undermine it whether through threats to impose economic sanctions or the use of political pressure," an official source said, quoted by state news agency SPA.

He said Riyadh would "respond to any action with a bigger one", pointing out that the oil superpower "plays an effective and vital role in the world economy".

According to Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, the kingdom has "over 30 measures" that it could implement to combat sanctions.

These measures include using sales of oil and arms, exchange of information between Riyadh and Washington, and a possible reconciliation with regional arch-rival Iran, said the report.

As investors took fright, Saudi stocks tumbled by around seven percent at one point on Sunday, wiping out their gains for 2018.

Business barons including British billionaire Richard Branson and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, as well as media powerhouses like Bloomberg and CNN, have pulled out of next week's Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh, dubbed "Davos in the desert".

- 'Baseless allegations' -

Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, vanished after entering the consulate on October 2.

Turkey on Saturday stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia by accusing the kingdom of failing to cooperate with a probe into the journalist's disappearance.

Turkish officials have said they believe Khashoggi was killed inside the mission and claims have been leaked to media that he was tortured and even dismembered.

Saudi Arabia insists Khashoggi left the building safely and dismissed accusations that authorities had ordered his murder by a hit squad as "lies and baseless allegations".

The kingdom's Tadawul All-Shares Index (TASI) lost more than 500 points, diving by seven percent in the first two hours when trading resumed after the weekend, in panic selling reminiscent of the days after the global financial crisis in 2008.

It later clawed back some losses to close down 3.5 percent at 7,266.59 points.

Mohammed Zidan, market strategist at Thinkmarket in Dubai, said the drop in Saudi stocks was the result of panic selling because of several political and economic factors.

"There has been a kind of uncertainty surrounding the situation of the disappearance of Khashoggi which has caused the market to fall," Zidan told AFP.

"The withdrawal of top participants from the Riyadh investment conference has also negatively impacted traders' sentiment," he said.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia should take Trump's warning seriously.

"When the president warns, people should take him at his word," he told Fox.

"If the Saudis are involved, if Khashoggi was killed or harmed or whatever, bad outcome here. He (Trump) will take action."

- 'Public relations crisis' -

The cancellations have cast a pall on the annual summit at which Prince Mohammed wowed investors last year with talking robots and blueprints for a futuristic mega city.

The withdrawal of Uber's Khosrowshahi from the event is particularly symbolic as the kingdom's vast Public Investment Fund (PIF) has invested $3.5 billion in the ride-hailing app.

Branson, who dropped two directorships linked to Saudi tourism projects around the Red Sea, said claims about Khashoggi's disappearance would "change the ability of any of us in the West to do business with the Saudi government".

Global multinational corporations "see potential in a developing market like Saudi Arabia, but for many the reputational risk of being associated with FII outweighs the potential gains from the Saudi economy," said Michael Stephens, a Middle East expert at the RUSI think tank.

 

[Aardvark154]

As already said it is fairly easy for Senators and the like to play the "Brother Jonathan" card ---- the aspect of the U.S. national identity which is all about Freedom, Democracy and Moral Superiority. However, they are happy to lay the blame on the Administration when those ideas result in the loss of jobs, or fundamental shifts in politico-military relations.

Anyone who does not believe that Russia would be more than happy to step into the gap left by the U.S.A. when it decides to get on its high horse when dealing with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is hopelessly naïve!

 

[mandrill]

As already said it is fairly easy for Senators and the like to play the "Brother Jonathan" card ---- the aspect of the U.S. national identity which is all about Freedom, Democracy and Moral Superiority. However, they are happy to lay the blame on the Administration when those ideas result in the loss of jobs, or fundamental shifts in politico-military relations.

Anyone who does not believe that Russia would be more than happy to step into the gap left by the U.S.A. when it decides to get on its high horse when dealing with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is hopelessly naïve!

I dunno. Russia already has its pawns on the board - Iran, Syria, Turkey. At first, I though you had a good point. Now I suspect that Russia's other little pets will get sulky if Putin gets friend-y with SA. You can only back so many pit bulls in the dog pit before a couple get jealous and bite you.

And Prince Mo is off to the races with this shit. He does it again and again. Eventually, he will get bolder and bolder and do shit that really messes up the US, unless he's nipped in the bud. The embarrassment the JK incident causes might be just the beginning.

 

[Frankfooter]

As already said it is fairly easy for Senators and the like to play the "Brother Jonathan" card ---- the aspect of the U.S. national identity which is all about Freedom, Democracy and Moral Superiority. However, they are happy to lay the blame on the Administration when those ideas result in the loss of jobs, or fundamental shifts in politico-military relations.

Anyone who does not believe that Russia would be more than happy to step into the gap left by the U.S.A. when it decides to get on its high horse when dealing with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is hopelessly naïve!

MBS probably thinks that with the idiot Trump in power that they too can act like a despot as much as they want.
While Trump only shouts to his devoted that the press is the enemy, MBS took action.
I'm sure that Trump is now secretly jealous.

Putin and MBS are similar enough, though Putin is way smarter.
And both are trying to sell their oil.
The Saudis have bought enough US weapans to not become a Putin client state.

 

[mandrill]

In Saudi Arabia in May 2017, President Donald Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and key members of the US Cabinet were treated to a royal, red carpet visit designed to appeal to Trump's fetish for being fawned over, featuring elaborate, ceremonial sword dances in a blinged out, opulent palace that made Trump Tower look relatively modest.

Trump more than returned the favor, delivering a speech in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in which he told the leaders of the Gulf States and other Muslim heads of state that he wasn't going to hassle them about human rights, declaring, "We are not here to lecture—we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be..."
That speech turned out to be a green light for the wild adventures of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, starting with an illegal blockade of Qatar two weeks later. Under bin Salman's growing control of the Saudi state, the hands-off American policy has continued, despite a humanitarian nightmare in Yemen, the seeming extortion of Saudi oligarchs of tens of billions of dollars and, if the allegations of Turkish officials are to be believed, the murder and dismemberment of a prominent Saudi writer inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The mysterious disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, raises important questions, not only about the nature of the Saudi regime, but also about the Trump administration's uncritical embrace of its 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a close alliance that was engineered by President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was awarded the Middle East portfolio during the presidential transition.
On the campaign trail Trump had repeatedly denounced the Iranian nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration as "the worst deal ever." This stance very much aligned with the views of the Gulf States, led by the Saudis, who felt that President Obama was empowering Iran at their expense.
Like much of the rest of the world, though, the Saudis didn't expect Trump to win the presidential election. When he did, the Saudis and their close allies the Emiratis had to scramble to build bridges to the Trump team.
Through intermediaries such as billionaire businessmen Thomas Barrack, a close friend of Trump who has worked in the Arab world for decades, as well as the longtime Emirati ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, Kushner was put in touch with Mohammed bin Salman, according to the New York Times.

Mohammed bin Salman's 82-year-old father, King Salman, is monarch in name, but it's clear that his son, who is widely known as MBS, is the center of power in the Saudi kingdom.
Both the scions of enormously wealthy, powerful families and only a few years apart in age, Kushner and MBS bonded over a belief they could transform the Middle East. They sometimes communicated through the secure WhatsApp messaging app that is used by members of the Saudi royal court, according to a Saudi source close to the royal family.
The Saudi royal family believed they could do business with the Trump family and vice versa, and the Saudis felt that Kushner spoke for the president.
For his part, Kushner believed that MBS could help deliver a US-brokered solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that their personal relationship could achieve what decades of professional diplomacy hadn't achieved.
What's more, Trump, who had campaigned on a promise of excluding Muslim immigrants from the United States, could use some Arab allies, while the Trump administration and the Gulf States were in lock step in their deep suspicion of the Iranian regime.
On March 14, 2017, early in the Trump administration, when MBS was still only the deputy crown prince, he had lunch with President Trump and his top national security advisers at the White House, an unusual honor for someone who was not a head of state and not even the next in line to the throne, which at the time was MBS's cousin, Mohamed bin Nayef.
That White House lunch helped to tee up Trump's first overseas trip, which was to Saudi Arabia. Traditionally, American presidents make their first overseas trip to close, democratic allies such as Canada, but in a coup for the Saudis, the honor went to them.

Saudis blockade Qatar

Two weeks after Trump's trip to Riyadh, the Saudis led an Arab blockade of gas-rich Qatar, closing all border crossings and cutting off air and sea travel.
This was a long-term goal of the Saudis who have long found their enormously wealthy, tiny neighbor to be an irritant because it hosts the TV network, Al Jazeera, which is often critical of other Arab states, and because it is sympathetic to Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump cheered on the blockade, tweeting, "So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding......extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"
This was the green light that the Saudis needed to keep up the blockade that continues to this day. In international law, a blockade is an act of war.
When Trump made his celebratory tweet about the blockade, he seemed to have no idea that Qatar housed the largest US base in the Middle East, which was also the most important base in the counter-ISIS fight, a base that is almost entirely paid for by the Qataris, according to a US diplomatic source.
The two members of the Trump cabinet who had had extensive dealings with the Qataris objected to the blockade. Secretary of Defense James Mattis understood the key importance of the base in Qatar for the fight against ISIS, while then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, had long experience working with the Qataris when he was the CEO of Exxon. Qatar has the third largest natural gas reserves in the world.
Belatedly understanding the important role that Qatar played in the counter-ISIS fight, Trump later tried to put pressure on the Arab states to lift their blockade, to no avail.

MBS cracks down

A month after Trump's trip to Riyadh, in a palace coup, MBS forced his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef to step down as Crown Prince. Nayef was long regarded as a safe pair of hands by the CIA because of his aggressive efforts to stamp out al Qaeda in the kingdom when he was the Minister of the Interior.
After removing his cousin as Crown Prince and making himself the heir apparent, MBS also set out to remove all other possible challenges to his total grip on power using a Stalinist playbook, minus the gulags.
In November, some 200 wealthy businessmen and princes were famously jailed in the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh --- where six months earlier Trump and Kushner had been royally welcomed -- and were only released after they had ponied up many billions of dollars that they had purportedly acquired through corruption.
Corruption is an odd charge in Saudi Arabia where there is so little separation between the ruling family and the resources of the state that it is the only country in the world where the ruling family has named an entire country after itself, while MBS thinks nothing of buying expensive gifts for himself, such as a half-billion dollar yacht.
MBS has also imprisoned a range of clerics and civil society activists, some of whom face possible death sentences.
In February, MBS fired much of the leadership of the Saudi military and replaced them with his own picks.

Saudi adventurism abroad

In the past, the invariably geriatric Saudi monarch presided over a conservative foreign policy that was characterized by doing little overseas. MBS by contrast is intervening around the Middle East, not only by leading the blockade of Qatar, but also by starting a war in Yemen. In 2015, MBS began a campaign in Yemen that has helped to precipitate what the UN described earlier this year as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
The Trump administration has largely turned a blind eye to the Saudi conduct of its war in Yemen, despite the fact that the Saudi war effort is dependent, in part, on American intelligence and the US aerial refueling of their jet fighters.
In September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified to Congress that the Saudis were trying to reduce civilian casualties in Yemen, a move that was intended to avert any congressional action to stop American support for the Saudis in Yemen.
Last week, however, the UN charged the Saudi-led coalition with killing 1,300 children in air strikes in Yemen over the past three years.
In November MBS forced the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, to announce his resignation when he was visiting Saudi Arabia. MBS believed that Hariri was in the pocket of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is a major political force in Lebanon. Hariri eventually returned to Lebanon, as prime minister and MBS's play backfired badly because Hezbollah and Hariri both emerged stronger after this strange episode.
In addition to supporting their war in Yemen, the Trump administration delivered on another key Saudi foreign policy goal on May 8 when Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, a move that was applauded by the Saudis.

Their celebration was short-lived, however, because a week later the United States moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Saudi royal family styles itself "The Keeper of the Holy Places." The third holiest site in Islam is the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the Prophet Mohammed is supposed to have ascended into heaven. By moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the Trump administration signaled it was prepared to ignore Muslim sentiments about the special status of Jerusalem. And with that move any hope that Kushner had that MBS would help him broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal was likely dead in the water.

Was the bet on MBS worth it?

On Sunday, on CBS's "60 Minutes," Trump promised "severe punishment" for the Saudis if it is proven that they murdered Jamal Khashoggi as Turkish officials have alleged anonymously to media organizations.
Trump, however, said, "we would be punishing ourselves" by canceling US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a deal which he has frequently trumpeted as amounting to $110 billion.
This is an excellent example of the dangers of believing your own propaganda because, in reality, as a detailed fact check of this claim by the Washington Post has shown, so far only $4 billion of arms sales to the Saudis have been approved by the US State Department since Trump traveled to Riyadh last year. It remains to be seen if additional arms sales will be approved, but for the moment the sales are considerably smaller than was announced when Trump was in Riyadh more than a year ago.
The Trump administration could sanction specific Saudis involved in Khashoggi's assassination if it is proven that he was assassinated and certainly would be pressured to do by Congress. But Trump is unlikely to do much more given the fact that the Saudis are an important block to Iran's regional ambitions, an interest shared with the Trump administration.
The last thing Washington would want is to see the Saudis move closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin. MBS recently visited Moscow for the World Cup. One of Trump's defenses of the arms sales deal with the Saudis is that if US doesn't do business with the Saudis, someone else like Russia will.
The Saudis must feel pretty good about what they have extracted from the Trump administration: A free hand to wage war in Yemen with American support; the isolation of their arch nemesis, Iran; acquiescence to their blockade of Qatar, and a warm embrace from the President.
In return, the Trump administration has secured some relatively small-scale arms deals and Kushner is more than likely to emerge empty handed with his much-vaunted and long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
There is a useful Yiddish word for what this all amounts to: bupkis.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/how-the-saudis-played-trump/ar-BBOpQbr?ocid=spartandhp

 

[mandrill]

According to the above article, the much vaunted $110 billion arms deal is in fact worth only $4 billion...