The Year In Review: Rogue States & Rulers

Saudi Arabia has long been afforded a level of global influence and legitimacy it ill deserves, as a result of their vast oil reserves. Even the astonishingly brutal murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, seems unlikely to derail that.

It has been established now that Khashoggi was murdered by a Saudi hit squad, whose members went on to gruesomely dismember and dispose of his body. Since the scandal broke, Saudi Arabian authorities have sought to distance Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from blame. They have variously claimed that Khashoggi left the embassy safely; that his death was accidental; and that he was killed in a ‘rogue operation’ that the Saudi leadership had not been aware of. It is bullshit. Even Trump has been forced to acknowledge that. But he has no plans to sanction Saudi Arabia. Money doesn’t talk it swears. The only remaining question is: how deeply do the Saudis have him in their pockets? And why? Time may provide the answer.