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Saudi Arabia

President Donald Trump, in shrugging off allegations that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman may have been responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, described the world as a dangerous place. Gulf leaders are likely to share that perception in response to the president’s seeming unwillingness to fully take their interests into account, particularly in the wake of his announced US troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan. The vacuum created by Trump risks fueling greater Gulf assertiveness, with potentially messy consequences.
A draft US Senate resolution  portraying Saudi policy as detrimental to US interests and values and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman as “complicit” in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi could, if adopted and implemented, change the dynamics of the region's politics and create an exit from almost a decade of mayhem, conflict, and bloodshed. It could accomplish this by causing the prince’s close UAE ally, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed, to reconsider the wisdom of his being so closely associated with Muhammad bin Salman.
Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s experience at the G20 summit suggests that he will be able to put the Khashoggi scandal behind him and maintain his position. While Western leaders largely kept their distance, other world leaders, including Vladimir Putin, greeted the prince with great warmth. Muhammad is not completely out of the woods, but he was able to leave the G20 confident that he is not a global pariah.
The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has sparked multiple battles that are likely in coming months to shape relationships ranging from that between the US and Saudi Arabia to those among Donald Trump, his Republican party, the US Congress, and the US intelligence community. The fallout of the killing could also shape Trump’s ability to pursue his policy goals in the Middle East, including forcing Iran to its knees and imposing a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 1981, US President Ronald Reagan's decision to implement a large arms deal with Saudi Arabia involving aircraft, tanks, and Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) prompted a determined campaign against it spearheaded by the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC and the Israeli government found the inclusion of the AWACS in the deal particularly troubling, as they threatened to speed up the regional arms race and erode Israel's technological edge. President Reagan was equally determined to see the deal go through, as failure to do so would have had a detrimental effect on his authority and international standing. In his first major policy challenge in the White House, Reagan led a no-holds-barred effort to convince Congress to approve the deal. This conflict between a US president and Israel illustrates the peril into which a small state wades when it asserts its own perceived national interest at the expense of that of a far more powerful ally. This dynamic would come to the fore once again decades later, when Benjamin Netanyahu would openly resist the efforts of President Barack Obama to reach a nuclear accord with Iran.

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