WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2021) President Joe Biden is unlikely to punish or even call Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a "killer" over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi because it would undermine US interests including arms sales to Riyadh, former security and intelligence officials told Sputnik.
Biden, during an interview with ABC news earlier this week, replied in the affirmative when asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin was a "killer." However, the US president refused to use the label to describe the Saudi crown price despite the fact Biden's own intelligence agencies concluded that bin Salman was responsible for the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi, a longtime critic of the Royal family.
Last month, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a declassified report saying that bin Salman approved an operation to assassinate Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October of 2018. Turkish authorities reported that a bone saw had been used to dismember the journalist's body.
The Trump administration was harshly criticized for not punishing Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi affair. Then-President Donald Trump was also roundly excoriated after publicly admitting he did not want to put US arms sales at risk.
During his interview with ABC, Biden said he would not call the crown prince a killer because Saudi Arabia is a US ally. Biden also said Saudi Arabia is in the process of doing a "list of things" the United States expects them to do.
"I'm sure that number one on that list was to keep on buying megabuck weapons from us," former US Defense Department analyst Pierre Sprey told Sputnik.
Although the Biden administration paused arms shipments to the Saudis due to the war in Yemen, the restrictions only apply to "offensive" weapons. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in a March 15 report revealed that Saudi Arabia purchases nearly 25% of all US arms exports.
Retired US Army Colonel Doug Macgregor, a senior Pentagon adviser during the Trump administration, said Biden did not label bin Salman as a killer because he was not allowed to.
"His handlers did not tell him to accuse the Saudi Crown Prince," Macgregor said.
In his reaction to Biden's remarks, Putin said "it takes one to know one" and wished the US president "good health" while at the same time inviting him to publicly discuss bilateral issues as early as on Friday or Monday. Biden said he is certain he and Putin will "talk at some point," but did not commit to any timeframe.
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov will leave Washington on Saturday to attend consultations in Moscow about correcting relations with the US after Biden's harsh comments about Putin.
Retired CIA analyst Raymond McGovern told Sputnik the comment about Putin was unprecedented in superpower relations and warned that a new "era in acrimony" had opened between the United States and Russia.
Former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman put Biden's controversial comments in the context of the president's long history of public miscues.
"[Is was] not the first gaffe in Biden's long history of logorrhea - uncontrolled pouring out of the spoken word," Freeman concluded.
