Breakingviews - Trump’s Saudi amorality can make Gulf great again | Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Thanksgiving-week absolution of Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents has undermined any claims to global moral leadership by the U.S. administration. But America’s reputational loss today may benefit the Gulf in 2019.
Though Trump gave MbS a pass on Khashoggi’s killing, the 33-year-old monarch surely realises how close a call he faced and may owe his eventual accession to the U.S. president alone. That gives Trump leverage to undo many of MbS’s recent blunders.
Start with forcing an end to the pointless four-nation blockade of Qatar, where the United States has a military base. Pressuring Saudi to lift this embargo would improve a regional economy hurt by lost Qatari business, ratchet down tensions in the Gulf that have concerned global investors and reunite families.
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