Jamal Khashoggi is the Nephew of Notorious arms trafficker Adnan Khashoggi of Iran-Contra fame. He was also a hearty political Islamist. He was also not a journalist for the Washington Post, he was a contributor for the Post opinion page. Khashoggi was in Istanbul with his fiancée to finalize his divorce paperwork from his previous marriage. His fiancée is a suspected Turkish Intelligence officer. He was known to be privately close to the offices of President Erdogan and supportive of his re-Islamization of Turkey.
Having been born in Media KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), he grew up in the shadow of his uncle and those his uncle was in contact with in western intelligence organizations. Likewise, having grown up in high society he had strong contacts, members of the royal family who are close to the Medina clerical structures. By virtue of their stature in Saudi Society, there were additional robust contacts into MI6, the French DGSE and the CIA. These are big names such as Prince Bin Sultan and Bin Turki Al Faisal (former Saudi interior Minister), who were on the wrong side of the succession struggle when Prince Bin Salmon attained power.
After starting his professional life in a corporate book retailer, he moved to various news outlets throughout the Gulf region as a foreign correspondent. It is believed that he parlayed the access it afforded him into ingratiating himself further with the Royal family and international security organizations as a broker of information. At the height of the global War on Terror, he was a leading correspondent for As Shark al Awsat. At this time al Awsat had unique access to what was left of Al Qaida and its senior leadership in exile in Pakistan.
Between this access and that which he cultivated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, he became a ‘go-between’ for Arab governments who needed trusted means to pass messages. This made him, in addition to his lifelong contacts in the Medina clerical circles, a uniquely placed person who could make introductions between governments, intelligence services, the religious establishment, and radical Islamists. In short, he was everybody’s guy and nobody’s guy all at once.
In 2017 as Prince Bin Salmon was consolidating power, he abruptly left Saudi Arabia and began to center his activities in Turkey and Washington. In the increasing tension between the royal family and the Erdogan government in Turkey had to be a precarious position for him. His royal family patrons Prince Bin Turki and Bin Sultan were out of power and the King had taken the side of the Bin Salman and his liberalizing policies. The liberalizing of the Kingdom landed with a thud among the Mecca and Medina clerical elite and thus the thin veneer of Kashoggi’s secularist writings were laid bare.
He never was politically liberal. The writings that he penned were often heavily equivocal and intellectually inconsistent. His having a side against Prince Bin Salman makes this self-evident. His “liberality” was merely designed to increase his reach to sources on all sides. He was a lifelong Wahhabi if neither in dress or comportment but out of a survival necessity. Bin Sultan and Bin Turki have been of the strain of political thought so as to turn a blind eye to the misdeeds the clerics often ratified as long as they were outside of the KSA.
In order to get Bin Turki and Bin Sultan back into power Khashoggi likely triangulated that from Turkey, where he could leverage clerical contacts and Islamist objections to liberalizing the Holy land to cast doubt on Bin Salmon’s worthiness to govern the KSA.
They killed him for it.
Whether Bin Salmon ordered a hit or knowing his displeasure with Khashoggi’s dangerous and potentially destabilizing antics, it was an entrepreneurial operation undertaken by lower level men is immaterial. It is the historical full contact nature of near eastern politics and sadly predictable. But in that, it precipitated another crisis.
Enter the Iran deal. The Iranian government is cracking under economic strain. Further, the Iran deal was so corrupt that the leading critics of President Trump’s handling of the Khashoggi murder piled on. They were in on the Iran deal and are running for cover lest their misdeeds become known.
By dividing Trump from Prince Bin Salmon, an economic crisis in the international spot price of oil it might force a decision that would necessitate President Trump to reverse his stance on Iranian sanctions lest the oil market and world economy crash. It is a very real danger, but the primary benefit to the deep state is that a relaxation of sanctions would permit the Iranian mullahs to re-consolidate power and the corruption surrounding the Obama Iran deal could remain concealed.
Look no further than former CIA Director John Brennan’s protestations lodged against Bin Salmon throughout the Khashoggi affair. Brennan the former Chief of Station for the CIA in Saudi Arabia, a communist who it is widely believed converted to Islam during his tour in the KSA.
In short, the Khashoggi Murder is an incredibly unholy mess, where one personality got exactly what Khashoggi always sought; to be the indispensable middleman of international intrigue. Unfortunately, someone somewhere didn’t get the memo on his indispensable nature.
Pastor Gregory Young is the host of the radio show, ‘Chosen Generation’.
Learn more at pastorgregyoung.com
