Podcast: The Importance of US-Saudi Relationship

Katrina Trinko / Daniel Davis /

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is raising new questions about the U.S.-Saudi alliance. We talk to Jim Phillips of The Heritage Foundation about what the U.S. should do, now that the Saudis have admitted Khashoggi is dead. Plus: We debate whether buying a lottery ticket is a good life decision. Listen below, or to read the full transcript of our interview with Phillips, scroll further down.

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The below transcript has been lightly edited. Jim Phillips is the senior research fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at The Heritage Foundation.

Daniel Davis: Jim, can you give us an update on the situation with journalist Jamal Khashoggi?

Jim Phillips: Well, the Saudis are slowly evolving their explanation as to what happened on Oct. 2 when he disappeared in the consulate. After saying that he had left the consulate and they had no idea where he was, they are now saying that there was an argument and a fistfight in which he died, although there’s still some loose ends on this story because they still claim they don’t know where the body is.

We’ll just say that the story is evolving, but the Saudis are slowly coming clean to admit responsibility for his death.

Katrina Trinko: Kamal’s disappearance actually happened in Turkey. The Turks have been releasing selective information that they claim is valid. How does Turkey figure into all this and what should the U.S. be thinking about their role or lack thereof in an investigation?

Phillips: Unfortunately, one of the problems that has muddied the waters–even further beyond the Saudi attempts to muddy them–is the fact that there’s an information war, or really a disinformation war, going on between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Probably the first accounts of both are false. The Turks claim that they have an audiotape and initially they claimed they had a videotape too of Khashoggi being killed and tortured by the Saudis, but now it appears that they may not have those tapes.

In fact, the story behind those tapes was released in a Turkish newspaper of very questionable credibility, a newspaper that has falsified interviews before and added manipulated audiotape to make Kurdish demonstrators look guilty. It has a very questionable record in terms of reporting the facts. This same newspaper claims that the U.S. is training ISIS terrorists in Syria.

I think what has happened, unfortunately, is that the Turkish government is using these series of damaging leaks to pressure not only Saudi Arabia, but pressure the U.S. into breaking relations with Saudi Arabia in order to further the agenda of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Davis: If the Saudis did kill Khashoggi, would that mean the crown prince is behind it, that he plotted this?

Phillips: Unfortunately, it probably does mean he was behind it because in the Saudi system, it’s very difficult to see some kind of rogue force–especially since, in recent years, the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has consolidated power in his hands. It’s likely that this did occur at his orders although now the Saudi government is trying to distance itself from that.

Trinko: Sen. Rand Paul suggested in a call with reporters Monday that Saudi Arabia would essentially do a cover-up. He said “The 15 people who actually committed the killing, they will quickly execute them or shuffle them off somewhere never to be seen again. Anybody that can possibly say the crown prince is involved will probably be executed.” Those remarks are according to reporting in the Washington Examiner.

Do you think Paul is right? Is there any possibility of coming to the truth in an investigation here or is it likely that the Saudis will behave ruthlessly and we’re never going to know?

Phillips: I think he’s right that there will be a cover-up attempt, but I don’t think he’s right in suggesting that everybody involved is going to die. I think some of them will probably end up in jail. Some of them may gladly take the fall to protect others, but I don’t think necessarily that they’re going to die one-by-one in mysterious traffic accidents. If they do, we should definitely react to that.

Davis:  You wrote a piece for us last week in The Daily Signal, talking about the cautious approach that the U.S. should take and make sure we have all the facts before we make any big decisions. Knowing what we know now and assuming that, for the sake of argument, it was the crown prince who did this, how does that change the calculus and the way we relate to Saudi Arabia?

Phillips: Although not all the facts are known, what is known has greatly undermined faith in the judgment of this crown prince and definitely has undermined his reputation. He’s not likely to ever visit the U.S. again, let alone other countries that are likely to see huge demonstrations focused on his presence if he does show up.

But I think it would be a mistake for the U.S., first of all, to rush to judgment and impose penalties before the investigations are known because, as I mentioned, the information coming out of these leaks in Turkish newspapers is not a very credible source to base U.S. action on.

We need to get to the bottom, and essentially this is turning into a murder investigation. We shouldn’t be rushing to get the facts here. We should be sure of what we’re getting not only from the Turkish side, but from the Saudi side.

Secondly, that this looks like this act, if it did occur on the prince’s orders, is motivated by, to a large degree, insecurity. The U.S. should be careful that, in tailoring a response to this, we don’t further inflame Saudi insecurity or there will be other acts like this in the future.

I would advocate trying to insulate the U.S.-Saudi security relationship from sanctions that would be taken in this course. I know, for instance going back to the ’80s when the French were found to be responsible for the death of an environmental peacekeeper in, I think, South Pacific, the U.S. didn’t break relations with France even though it was found to be responsible for the death of that protestor. There were some steps taken, but the broader relations survived. I think that’s very important for Saudi Arabia.

Trinko: You referred in your op-ed to Saudi Arabia as a key Middle Eastern ally for the United States. Why is that relationship so important for the U.S.?

Phillips: Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest producers of oil in the world. Now that the U.S. is stepping up sanctions against Iran, it’s very important that the oil that Iran formerly exported which is not going to be exported because of sanctions, it’s important that that oil be replaced and that Saudi Arabia has the largest untapped source of oil production. It’s important for containing Iran, for combating Islamic terrorists. Saudis are an important part of the terror coalition. They’ve had problems in restricting the Islamic charities from passing some of this money to terrorist groups in the past, but they’ve done a better job.

Saudi Arabia is important for stabilizing the Middle East in the future. If the U.S. unilaterally torpedoes the security relationship, then the Saudis could be doing a lot more very dangerous unilateral things.

Trinko: So you had mentioned earlier that you thought insecurity was a big part of the reason why the Saudis presumably killed Khashoggi. Khashoggi–he’s a US resident, writes for the Washington Post, someone I had never even heard of until this all happened. Why did he get under their skin so much? I mean this seems insane to us, I think, looking at this calculus. Why would you do this? What do you think their thinking is?

Phillips: I think Khashoggi potentially represented a dual threat. One was an internal threat because he was very … He had very close ties to other members of the royal family, including members of the royal family whose toes that the cown prince stepped on when he elbowed them out of the way on his rise to power.

Secondly, Khashoggi showed some sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood which the Saudis are extremely opposed to and they see as a deep existential threat to their continued rule. They may have suspected him of taking money from Qatar, which is an Arab Gulf state that the Saudis have had a cold war with because they consider it too close to the Muslim Brotherhood and too close to Iran. Khashoggi may have represented to the prince both a potential internal and an external threat to his personal political power.

Davis: Wow. Fascinating. Jim Phillips, appreciate you coming on to explain for us.

Phillips: Thank you.

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