White House Bid to Placate Senate Over Saudi Behavior Backfires

Senior senators from both parties rebuffed the Trump administration’s attempt to placate lawmakers demanding action against Saudi Arabia and threatened to punish the kingdom through restrictions on U.S. support for its war in Yemen.

The administration sent Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to the Capitol on Wednesday, but the move backfired after senators emerged from a closed-door briefing even angrier than before, in part because CIA Director Gina Haspel didn’t participate.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a frequent ally of Trump, even vowed that he won’t vote to wrap up key legislative business this year -- including a spending bill needed to avert a partial government shutdown -- until he receives a briefing from Haspel on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s possible role in the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

“Any key vote, anything that you need me for to get out of town, I ain’t doing it until we hear from the CIA,” Graham of South Carolina told reporters. The CIA reportedly has said it had “high confidence” the crown prince ordered the murder.

The briefing came ahead of a vote this week on a resolution seeking to limit U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war against Yemeni rebels. Also hanging over the briefing was the Oct. 2 killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and a U.S. resident, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Trump has been eager to prevent Khashoggi’s killing -- and the crown prince’s possible role -- from derailing U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia, which the administration has built much of its Mideast strategy around. But senators have demanded the White House be more forthcoming about intelligence gathered on the Khashoggi killing and have signaled they may back broader sanctions against the kingdom.

QuickTake: All About Saudi Arabia’s Controversial Crown Prince

“We have a problem here,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, told reporters after the briefing. “We understand that Saudi Arabia is an ally, of sorts. We also have a crown prince who is out of control. We may not have a smoking gun, but we’ve got some very high confidence” that Prince Mohammed was responsible, he added.

Corker said he’s asked the White House to propose an amendment that would make the proposed resolution acceptable to the administration. “It’s very likely that I will support getting on it,” he said of the measure.

Seeking Haspel
Pompeo wouldn’t answer reporters’ questions about why Haspel didn’t take part. Some senators said the White House blocked her participation.

“Nobody was happy that she wasn’t there,” Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona told reporters. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said it was a “coverup” not to have the CIA director take part.

One Republican emerged from the briefing calling for new sanctions on Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s murder.

“This is the kind of behavior we expect from Russia and North Korea,” Oklahoma Senator Jim Lankford said. “So we do need to confront them.”

The frustration seemed to give the Yemen war resolution, introduced by independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, more momentum.

Senate Resolution
Senators can force votes on the resolution -- and potentially add amendments -- if 51 senators vote to proceed. They could take up the measure as early as Wednesday. Lankford said he opposes the Yemen resolution but would back separate sanctions legislation.

Ahead of Wednesday’s briefing, Mattis and Pompeo argued that Saudi Arabia is far too important a partner -- in the fight against Islamic State, pushing back on Iran and upholding democracy in Iraq -- to give up on.

“I must note we are seldom free to work with unblemished partners,” Mattis told lawmakers, according to prepared remarks released as the briefing was underway. “Long-standing relationships guide but do not blind us. Saudi Arabia, due to geography and the Iranian threat, is fundamental to maintaining regional and Israeli security, and to our interest in Mid-East stability.”

Pompeo struck a far more combative tone in an opinion piece published Wednesday morning in the Wall Street Journal. The former CIA director and four-term congressman from Kansas derided “the Capitol Hill caterwauling and media pile-on” over Khashoggi’s killing, arguing that “degrading U.S.-Saudi ties would be a grave mistake for the national security of the U.S. and its allies.”

Trump’s Stance
The statements signaled that the Trump administration’s support for Saudi Arabia implies support for Prince Mohammed.

Trump has been dismissive of his intelligence community’s assessment that Prince Mohammed is responsible for the killing. He’s said repeatedly that Saudi Arabia’s spending billions of dollars on U.S. weapons and its role as an ally and major oil producer are too crucial to let go.

Congressional leaders have been far more critical of Saudi Arabia than the Trump administration, threatening a new round of sanctions against the leadership and warning they may try to block weapons sales to the country. They have also sought to shine a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen that has resulted from the war between a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels.

In his prepared remarks, Mattis argued that pulling back what he called “limited” U.S. military support and weapons sales would be the wrong move ahead of “promising initial negotiations” spearheaded by United Nations special envoy Martin Griffiths.

“It took us too long to get here, but at this key juncture, a change in our approach would work against Martin’s efforts by breathing new life into the Houthis’ combat operations, just when they are reluctantly engaging with the U.N. interlocutor,” Mattis was to say.