This is a big week for Saudi Arabia and its embattled young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as it struggles to shake free from the scandal caused by the savage murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents at its consulate in Istanbul last month.
The US Central Intelligence Agency last week concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing of Khashoggi, an eloquent and measured critic who took sanctuary in the US last year and wrote columns for the Washington Post. President Donald Trump, by contrast, waffled for a while, saying the CIA finding was a “very premature report”.
Then on Tuesday he made up his mind: he is standing by his man. Yes, the crown prince may have ordered the hit (“maybe he did and maybe he didn’t”) but, frankly, this president does not care. It is all overwhelmed by the hundreds of billions of Saudi petrodollars he fondly believes will flow into the American economy, and the kingdom’s purported weight in the fight against Iran.