Above: Jamal Khashoggi (credit: Sky News)By Alexander Clark, '19The death of a prominent Saudi dissident and journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, has led to a dramatic surge in criticism from the western press toward Saudi Arabia, a country the Trump administration has seen as a vital partner to fighting Iran’s growing influence in the middle east. A partnership once seen as a promising cornerstone to America’s middle east policy has become toxic, with Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee going as far as to threaten sanctions “at the highest levels” against the Kingdom. The controversy began when Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the government, living in the United States, disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd to collect papers allowing him to marry his Turkish fiancee. He was seen entering the consulate. He was not seen leaving.Turkish news media reported that 15 Saudi officials landed in Istanbul and visited the Saudi consulate on the day Mr. Khashoggi entered the consulate. They hastily departed on the same day, allegedly acting as a hit team carrying out the assassination. The Saudi government released an explanation on Jamal Khashoggi 18 days after his disappearance, stating that he was strangled in the consulate during a fist fight in an operation intended to bring the dissident living abroad back to the kingdom. The Saudi government arrested the 15 agents who flew into Istanbul to carry out the operation, along with two consular staff members and a driver. Those sacked for their role in the operation include an advisor to Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, Saud al-Qahtani and General Ahmed al-Assiri, a high-ranking intelligence official. They were arrested for escalating and planning the kidnapping operation gone wrong respectively, without prior permission from the highest levels of government. This explanation is not widely trusted. CIA officials claim to have listened to Turkish-provided audio recordings proving that Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by Saudi operatives as a result of a planned operation, not an accident. Responding to this version of events, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) saw it as a complete fabrication, stating, “They’re buying time. And they’re buying cover. They are seeking to, in effect, shift blame to a group of fall guys and confine the investigation to the Saudi government.” President Trump’s response to this version of events which absolved Bin-Salman was cautious, saying “It’s possible” that Prince Mohammed was unaware of the operation. I’m not satisfied until we find the answer” to the question of Mr. Khashoggi’s fate. Even traditional Republican allies of the president are breaking with this cautious endorsement, with Rand Paul arguing, ““It’s insulting to anyone who’s analyzing this with any kind of intelligent background to think that, oh, a fistfight led to a dismemberment with a bone saw.” The murder of Jamal Khashoggi fits in a larger pattern of the Kingdom’s aggressive, reckless and belligerent behavior over the last few years. The Washington Post, which Mr. Khashoggi regularly contributed to, blasted Crown Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s “dark and bullying side.” The ambitious heir to the monarchy’s thrown, the young man is seen as the one who gave the order to take out Khashoggi according to an anonymous US government source. In a so-called “anti-corruption purge” 400 Saudi billionaires were detained on Bin Salman’s orders in a Ritz-Carlton hotel, only to be released after buying off their captors. Under his watch, Saudi authorities confined a woman’s rights activist to house arrest under armed guard, one of the many victims of mass arrests wherein trials are confined to total secrecy. In what has perhaps became the darkest chapter of his record, Bin Salman declared war on opposition forces to the government of Yemen in 2015 as defense minister, a move he made without any prior consultation to the Saudi military apparatus. He sees the conflict as a proxy war with Iran since the Houthi fighters receive armaments from the Iranian government and identify with Shia islam like their Iranian backers. The United Nations branded the unfolding catastrophe in Yemen in 2015 as “an entirely man-made catastrophe,” with airstrikes from the Saudi-led, and US-backed coalition, being the leading cause of civilian casualties. In the context of the ongoing cold war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, Mohammad Bin Salman sees securing the poverty-stricken country on his southern border as essential. The US, fiercely opposed to Iran, has continued to support the brutal Saudi military campaign, even certifying that the Saudi-led coalition was demonstrably trying to avoid civilian casualties after one of their airstrikes targeted a school bus, killing over 40 children. Jamal Khashoggi’s death in the consulate has led to increased media scrutiny of these once neglected areas of Saudi and American foreign policy, with the New York Times on Saturday releasing one of the few substantive reports from an American media outlet from the frontlines of Yemen. The port city of Hudaydah is indicative of an ongoing humanitarian crisis and indicates a larger one looming. The Saudi-led coalition has laid siege to the port in an attempt to deprive the Houthis of tax revenue, but the port is the only significant means to deliver food and medical aid to Yemen’s population of which three quarters of Yemen’s 28 million people rely on. Disease and hunger are the main direct causes, as 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of starvation and the nation is experiencing the worst cholera outbreak in history. While Khashoggi's death has shined a spotlight on Saudi Arabia’s destructive conduct in Yemen, responses from the United States have been mixed. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, withdrew from attending an international investors’ conference in Riyadh, yet he will still meet with top Saudi officials this week to discuss strategy on containing Iran, stating, “We have an important relationship with Saudi, focused on combating terrorist financing and focused on our common interests of stopping Iran’s spread of both terrorism and other issues.” Donald Trump’s reaction has been very mixed to this issue as a whole. He said in an interview on the Saudi account, “Their stories are all over the place.” In the same interview, he also praised Mohammad Bin Salman as a leader, “who can keep things under check. I mean that in a positive way.” The Trump administration also remains committed to maintaining the basic foundations of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United States, including arms sales. Donald Trump falsely claiming that cancelling arms deals would lead to a loss of 500,000 American jobs. Trump has been particularly obsessed with the connection between arms sales and American jobs. During a visit of Mohammad Bin Salman to the White House, Donald Trump held up a map claiming that US arms sales would lead to the creation of 40,000 jobs. When Donald Trump was first asked about the possibility of suspending them in the wake of Khashoggi’s death, the President responded, “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money coming into our country. I don’t like stopping an investment of $110 billion in the United States,” exaggerating a May 2017 arms deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States that only amounted to $4 billion. US allies have been more quick to confront Saudi Arabia over this issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said arms exports to Saudi Arabia should be suspended while no clear answers have been provided over Jamal Khashoggi, and her foreign minister said Germany has “no basis” to conduct further arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Germany also joined the United Kingdom and France in issuing a joint statement in a critique of Saudi Arabia for not providing credible facts on Jamal Khashoggi. However, a nation with a complicated history with the US, Turkey, is at the forefront of shaping this incident, given that Khashoggi’s murder occured at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and that leaks from Turkish sources have driven this embarrassment for Saudi Arabia. The leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has promised “the naked truth,” over Jamal Khashoggi as soon as Tuesday. This decision figures into a hostile rivalry between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over their conflicting stances on the Arab spring and Islamist political parties. The aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi has been described as “the biggest event in the region since the Arab Spring,” according to the London-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute. It has brought into focus key rivalries between competing regional powers and the Trump Administration’s determination to use allies like Saudi Arabia in an ongoing cold war with Iran. In the long run, the basic framework of US-Saudi relations will likely change very little. The Trump Administration and the US foreign policy establishment more generally speaking has always been keen on maintaining a close, if complicated partnership, due to its position in determining oil prices and its strategic location in the middle east. The Khashoggi murder is not the first time this relationship has been unfavorably cast in the national spotlight. Many in the US congress have criticized Saudi Arabia over its military intervention in Yemen. In 2015, the body passed a law allowing the families of terror victims to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the September 11th attacks given that most of the hijackers were of Saudi origin. Even if the Jamal Khashoggi case does not rupture US-Saudi relations in any meaningful way, it shows that Mohammed Bin Salman has largely fell out of grace with American elite figures who once lauded him as the face of the new arab spring. His proposed reforms of Saudi Arabia are unlikely to succeed given Bin Salman’s disastrous track record. As this region of the world becomes less significant geopolitically due to decreasing dependence on oil, America could in the long term gradually abandon this intricate relationship in favor of involvement with more vibrant areas of the world economy, namely Asia. The tragic death of a dissident journalist illustrates a difficult road ahead for Saudi Arabia at the hands of an erratic de-facto leader with increasingly hesitant allies. Like the Arab Spring, the rise and fall of Mohammad Bin Salman shows how short-term optimism in such a volatile region can end in intrigue, raw power politics, proxy conflict, hegemonic desires and religious sectarianism.