It took a year for the first idea to be implemented, but as of next month, the part of New Hampshire Avenue in Washington where the Saudi embassy is located will be called Jamal Khashoggi Way. The city council unanimously approved the name change proposal last week. Washington isn’t just any American city, so Congress has yet to see the decision, but it’s seen as a formality. It is not only punishment for the murder on October 2, 2018 of the Saudi journalist who wrote from Washington in his columns in the Washington Post criticized the reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to councilor Brooke Pinto, the name change should also underline the importance of a free and independent press, which is, after all, “fundamental to our democracy”. Well, since Trump, that cannot be reminded often enough in Washington either.
The new street name sign is screwed on at a ceremony on site; I assume on the sidewalk in front of the embassy. But in the end, the Saudi diplomats have the last laugh, so the best. For as presidential candidate, had Biden not announced that he would “treat Saudi Arabia as the pariah it is” for the murder of Khashoggi, and said he would stop supplying weapons because of the war in Yemen? But in October it was announced that he wanted to sell the Saudis for $650 million air-to-air missiles. And the day after the Khashoggi tribute in the Washington city council, the Senate in that same Washington rejected the proposal to stop that arms transfer. And that rather broadly, with 67 against 30 votes.
While Congress was rather anti-Crown Prince. But Republican Mitch McConnell believed that blocking such “defensive” weapons “would undermine one of our key regional partners.” Defensive weapons are weapons that you sell when you have actually promised not to supply any more weapons. Well, don’t say, that’s this McConnell, who’s from Trump’s regime – a lot of Democrats agreed with him, citing the attacks on Saudi Arabia by the Yemeni Houthi rebels (who are under Saudi warfire). The Houthis get support from Iran, and ha! that’s where the obsession with Iran comes into play again. Democrat Bob Menendez also “couldn’t forget that there are 70,000 Americans in Saudi Arabia.” But apparently he was able to forget who is locked up in the Saudi prisons, including Americans.
Now it is waiting for the completion of the rehabilitation of the Saudi crown prince, who according to the CIA is responsible for the murder of Khashoggi. After his inauguration, Biden did not call him for punishment. But French President Macron has just set a good example with a Western leader’s first visit to Saudi Arabia since Khashoggi’s assassination. Macron spoke to him on December 4 in Jeddah, where the crown prince had to be for the Formula 1 image money laundering event. “We talked about absolutely everything without any taboo and we were obviously able to raise the issue of human rights,” Macron said later.
Obvious? This is the same Macron who previously publicly stated that arms supplies take precedence over human rights. But you’re right, you can talk about it.
Carolien Roelants is a Middle East expert and here she separates the facts from the hypes every week.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 13, 2021
#Saudi #embassy #overlook #Khashoggi