Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to arrest or kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. This emerges from a US intelligence report that could add further strain on US-Saudi Arabia relations if the White House reassesses relations with Riyadh.

The report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, released on Friday, cited the Crown Prince’s control over decision-making in Saudi Arabia, as well as the involvement of a key advisor and members of the Prince’s protective detail in the operation that killed Khashoggi. a critic of the royal family.

Also on Friday, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken imposed visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals believed to have “threatened overseas dissidents, including, but not limited to, the murder of Khashoggi”. A State Department spokesman would not disclose the names of these people because the visa records are confidential under US law.

However, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration would not punish the crown prince for Khashoggi’s murder. The White House ruled that such measures would create excessive costs for US-Saudi Arabia cooperation on counter-terrorism and confrontation with Iran, according to the Times.

Blinken said the restrictions are part of a new “Khashoggi ban” that bans visas for anyone acting on behalf of a foreign government who is believed to have carried out “serious, extraterritorial activities against dissidents”.

When asked why the Crown Prince was not among the punished, Blinken emphasized the importance of US interests and not the disruption of relations with Saudi Arabia.

“So what we have done with the measures we have taken is really not to break the relationship, but to recalibrate it to better suit our interests and values,” Blinken told reporters at a press conference. “And I think we also need to understand that this is bigger than any single person.”

The finance department on Friday imposed sanctions on the crown prince’s security detail known as the Rapid Intervention Force. It also sanctioned the former Deputy Chief of the Kingdom’s Intelligence Service, Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al-Asiri, who is accused of being a leader of the conspiracy.

“Absolute Control”

The ODNI report states: “Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control over the kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, so it is highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this type without the Crown Prince’s approval.”

In a statement on Friday, the Saudi government said it disagreed with the conclusions of the report as completely unacceptable, claiming the assessment contained inaccurate information. Riyadh condemned Khashoggi’s murder as a “heinous crime” contrary to the laws and values ​​of the kingdom and blamed his death on a rogue group.

The CIA-led assessment that had so far been classified comes from President Joe Biden, who aims to reshape US relations with Saudi Arabia after years of the Trump administration’s condemnation of the kingdom’s human rights abuses despite condemnation in Congress and ignored at the United Nations.

The Trump administration refused to submit a report to Congress in 2019 on who was responsible for Khashoggi’s death. The legislature had requested the report under the Magnitsky Act, which would have required sanctions against those responsible for the killing.

Khashoggi, a 59-year-old American and a Washington Post columnist, joined the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 and never left.

He was killed by a group of assassins who then dismembered his body. His remains were never recovered.

Robert Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, speaks during a press conference to appeal to the United Nations on the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the United Nations in New York, United States on October 18, 2018.

Shannon Stapleton | Reuters

“The Crown Prince viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the kingdom and largely supported the use of violent measures to silence him,” the ODNI report reads.

“Although Saudi officials planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi in advance, we don’t know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him.”

DOWNLOAD: The full evaluation of the ODNI information

Recalibrate relationships

California Democrat Adam Schiff, chairman of the House of Representatives Intel Committee, called on the White House on Friday to impose “serious repercussions on all those responsible” for Khashoggi’s assassination and, as a result, to reassess US relations with Saudi Arabia of the intelligence report.

“We need to make sure that foreign governments targeting journalists just for their jobs are not immune from severe repercussions and sanctions, because to restore confidence in American leadership we must act in accordance with the values ​​that America sets.” for a long time, “said Schiff.

“The government should take further steps to reduce the United States’ dependence on Riyadh and reaffirm that our partnership with the Kingdom is not a blank check,” he added.

In a diplomatic reprimand to the Crown Prince this week, the White House made it clear that Biden does not see 35-year-old bin Salman as his counterpart and will instead have relationships through his aging father, King Salman. Bin Salman has been the public face of the kingdom since he became Crown Prince in 2017.

The Trump administration maintained relationships through the Crown Prince, who maintained close personal relationships with members of the Trump family, particularly Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Tuesday: “On Saudi Arabia, I would say that we made it clear from the start that we will recalibrate our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

On Thursday, in his first conversation with the 85-year-old King, Biden reiterated “the importance the United States attaches to universal human rights and the rule of law,” according to a White House ad.

Biden also told the king that he “will work to make bilateral relations as strong and transparent as possible,” the White House said. Khashoggi’s name was not mentioned in the advertisement.

Biden’s review of relations with Saudi Arabia is part of a broader US foreign policy shift in the Middle East. The president has ended US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and is trying to return to the negotiating table with Iran, Riyadh’s enemy, through its nuclear program.

Biden “also discussed regional security” in his appeal with King Salman on Thursday, citing his government’s efforts to end the war in Yemen “and the US commitment to help Saudi Arabia defend its territory since it faces attacks by Iranian-centric groups, “White House ad said.

Biden and the King “also confirmed the historical nature of the relationship and agreed to work together on issues of mutual interest,” according to the White House.

Saudi denials and Trump’s doubts

The Saudi authorities initially denied any knowledge of Khashoggi’s death and later claimed that the journalist was involved in a fight at the consulate and died in the clash. The Saudi authorities eventually admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a “rogue operation” while denying the Crown Prince was involved.

A United Nations investigator concluded in a June 2019 report that Khashoggi was “the victim of a premeditated, premeditated execution, an extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law.”

A Saudi court sentenced five people to death, three to prison and exonerated three others. The UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Agnes Callamard, condemned the verdict as a “mockery of” justice

Trump publicly tried to cast doubts about the Crown Prince’s involvement in Khashoggi’s death, even after multiple outlets reported that the CIA bin Salman itself had concluded that the journalist had been killed. Trump said the CIA had “nothing in particular” while claiming the oil-rich kingdom would remain a “steadfast partner” with the US

Chinese officials have made no secret of the fact that their accelerated efforts to introduce and spread the digital yuan are a first step in their long-term strategy to undermine and expand the dollar’s global supremacy.

Nevertheless, leading US finance officials rolled their eyes at every hint that the global race for digital currencies lurked deeper dangers for the dollar and thus also for the national security of the US. Even as China marched forward and Bitcoin’s value hit $ 1 trillion, the Federal Reserve was in no hurry to be a candidate.

Until now.

This week marked a public turning point for top US government officials involved in international finance – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Josh Lipsky, director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomic Center, tweeted that this was “firing a starting weapon.”

At a New York Times event Monday with Secretary Yellen, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin called for their most comprehensive approval to date of a digital dollar, central bank digital currency, or CBDC. Although Sorkin drew Yellen’s attention to a poll by the Atlantic Council at the Belfer Center at Harvard that found 70 countries now have digital currency projects, Yellen instead focused on the domestic good a digital dollar could bring to Americans.

“I think it makes sense for the central banks to look at this,” said Yellen in a historical clip from Snapchat.

“I found that staff from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston are working with researchers from MIT to study its characteristics. We have a problem with financial inclusion. Too many Americans really don’t have access to simple payment systems and bank accounts. This is something that a digital dollar, a central bank digital currency, could help with. I think this could lead to faster, safer and cheaper payments. “

A day later, Fed Chairman Powell testified in Congress and also broke new ground. He called the digital dollar “a high priority project for us”. He added: “We are determined to solve the technology problems and to advise the public very comprehensively and very transparently with all interested constituencies on whether we should do this.”

But while the Fed is in consultation, China will be executed.

Neither Yellen nor Powell mentioned China’s growing lead in developing digital currencies, but that was the context. Their call to action coincides with China’s announcement of a significant partnership with the SWIFT cross-border payments system earlier this month, removing any doubts that Beijing intends to internationalize the digital yuan.

At the same time, China has signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Mauritius, the first free trade agreement with an African state, with which a digital financial audit facility is to be created. “While China continues to develop its plans for digital currencies, it is ultimately Mauritius that leads Africa in this area,” write experts Lauren Johnston and Marc Lanteigne for the World Economic Forum. The free trade agreement declares its readiness to “promote the development of a renminbi clearing and settlement facility in the Mauritius area”.

All of this is because Beijing authorities used the February 12th Chinese New Year celebrations to launch three large pilot projects to distribute digital yuan worth approximately $ 1.5 million in “red packages” each perform about $ 30. Then, this week, China expanded its digital currency handout testing program to include Chengdu City, capital of Sichuan Province and the fifth largest city in the country, where it is distributing approximately $ 6 million worth of digital yuan.

A red package in digital Chinese currency can be seen on an arranged photo on a mobile phone as Chengdu City begins handing out 200,000 red E-CNY packages valued at 40 million yuan on February 24, 2021 in Yichang, Hubei Province .

VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images

China’s goal appears to be to lay the foundation for the digital yuan coming-out party at the XXIV Winter Olympics in Beijing in late 2022. It is speculated that Chinese organizers might require all contestants and athletes to download an app that will ensure that all payments at the Games for hotels, tickets, food, souvenirs and more are made in the new digital currency. Even if you don’t see a physical boycott of the Olympics in China, watch out for digital boycotts from the US and other teams.

It’s hard not to compare China’s current lead in developing digital currencies, so far shaken off by American officials, with its early global lead in developing the 5G or fifth generation broadband cellular standard. Until the Trump administration responded alongside Western manufacturers, no one could compete with Chinese 5G providers and device manufacturers worldwide, including Huawei.

China’s consistent prioritization of technological progress underscores its realization that in history the country that reached the technological peak in its era was mostly also the dominant international actor.

If the US loses the importance of financial technology innovation, combined with a weakening of the global dominance of the dollar, the benefits for Beijing would be considerable.

China’s different approach to privacy gives it a competitive advantage. The need for the US and Europe to address privacy concerns will complicate CBDC development. Conversely, Beijing sees the digital yuan as a way to further strengthen its already formidable surveillance state while improving its ability to fight money laundering, corruption and terrorist financing.

In a recent article published by CNAS, authors Yaya J. Fanusie and Emily Jin capture how deeply China understands the geopolitical significance of their project for digital currencies. They tell how Yao Qian, former head of digital currency research at People’s Bank of China, compared the advancement of his country’s digital currency with previous Chinese advances in robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence.

Speaking at a United Nations conference on information technology, Yao said, “Yao set up the digital currency as part of the” next war, “” referring to an article in that title in The Economist that highlighted the central role of technology in competition between the US and the US China was discussed.

The Fed fears that it will prematurely introduce a digital dollar in view of its use as the world’s reserve currency. The bigger geopolitical threat, however, is how quickly it is falling behind.

The US can still win this competition if they not only develop a digital dollar quickly, but work together to create a digital euro, a digital pound, and a digital yen. The total firepower of these currencies would quickly fill the innovation gap. It would also demonstrate the value of working with allies, a core part of Biden’s foreign policy.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and President and CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of America’s most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked for the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as foreign correspondent, assistant editor-in-chief and senior editor for the European edition of the newspaper. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place in the World” – was a New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his view every Saturday of the top stories and trends of the past week.

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