Commentary
Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment claiming that “Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” The Biden White House says it won’t penalize the de facto leader of a traditional U.S. ally for fear of damaging relations. But that’s misleading, because the purpose of publishing the assessment is to make the Saudis look as bad as possible in order to make Team Biden’s preferred Middle East partner, Iran, look better by comparison.
