Saudi Arabia Is Taunting Trump
The disappearance of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of an American ally shows how little Saudi Arabia fears the repercussions of its actions.
Donald Trump’s Middle East policy is many things, but it is not incoherent. At the core of the president’s approach has been a stark redrawing of the friend-enemy distinction: doubling down on support, often unquestioning, for allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel, while refocusing the near-entirety of American ire on Iran.
That Trump has bet big on the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, makes the Saudis’ disappearing and of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate—“” on its own terms—a different sort of escalation. For Trump, this has been
