Jamal Khashoggi was a player, not a bleeding heart liberal

Financial Review ^ | November 4, 2018 | Alexander Downer

[Pelham]

So back to the tragic murder of Jamal Khashoggi. My intelligence sources tell me he had worked as an intelligence agent for the Saudi intelligence service, GID, for around 20 years. At one point he was sent by GID to Sudan to meet Osama bin Laden and to try to lure him away from terrorism. He failed.

Khashoggi had always been close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the people who took over Egypt under Morsi following the so-called Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Islamist organisation dedicated to the introduction of Sharia and the creation of an Islamic caliphate. These people are no bleeding heart liberals. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed as a terrorist organisation in a number of Middle Eastern countries and is part of the Hamas support group. They have been implacably opposed to many of the more liberal reforms of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

To add to the complexity of the story, the Brotherhood is supported by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Qataris. This is a source of real tension between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and their regional allies on the one side and the Turks and Qataris on the other.

So Jamal Khashoggi – a former Saudi intelligence agent, a man who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood and a sworn opponent of MBS' reform program– was in the process of setting up a centre to promote the ideology of the MB. He was setting it up in Turkey with Qatari money. The Saudis wanted to stop him. In September they offered him $9 million to return to Saudi Arabia and to live there unhindered. They wanted him out of play. Khashoggi refused and the rest you know. The Saudis killed him.

[caww]

...” Iran’s friends would love nothing more than to weaken MbS, and to split off the KSA from the United States, and they are using Khashoggi’s murder as a tool to do that.”..

YES Indeed! Great post!

[caww]

The US has had decades relationships with the Sauds......with good reason when you look at the History.

As for how the Middle Easterner Leadership is in how they deal with their “issues” between their countries. It’s always tribal style... That’s not going to change...they’ll simply be better at hiding it.

[GOPJ]

He formed an alliance with Israel and Egypt and some of the Gulf states while Obama was in office because they all believe that Iran is the major threat to their survival ...

They were right - Iran IS the major threat - - to their survival - - and possibly ours too.

[Texas Fossil]

Here are a couple of background articles that I don’t validate as fact but find lots of things in them that makes sense. As much sense as the Middle East can.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s prince of chaos

https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/saudis-prince-chaos-205606563

-

The night of the long knives in Saudi Arabia

https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/night-long-knives-saudi-arabia-1884539620