It's not just about those arms sales

White House officials are worried that the apparent killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Saudi Arabia’s changing account of his fate, could derail a showdown with Iran and jeopardize plans to enlist Saudi help to avoid disrupting the oil market.


Officials said the dilemma comes at a fraught moment for the Trump administration, which is expected to reimpose harsh sanctions against Iran on Nov. 5, with the intent of cutting off all Iranian oil exports.

But to make the strategy work, the administration is counting on its relationship with the Saudis to keep global oil flowing without spiking prices, and to work together on a new policy to contain Iran in the Persian Gulf.

If that carefully coordinated plan moves forward, the Saudis would likely see a significant increase in oil revenue at exactly the moment Congress is talking about penalizing the kingdom over the Khashoggi case. It is one reason that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was sent, with a few hours’ notice, to see King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday.


Part of the problem is optics, officials said: Saudi Arabia looks like a brutal ally, including by leading a deadly military campaign in Yemen, just as President Trump and Mr. Pompeo have been casting Iran as the region’s bully.

“It’s a neat trick if you can both sanction a country and partner with them at the same time,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who worked for several Republican presidents. “And it’s not easy to keep the focus on Iran’s behavior when the Saudis are doing terrible things to journalists and dissidents, and bombing children in Yemen.”

After a phone call with Prince Mohammed on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said the kingdom’s rulers had again “totally denied any knowledge” of Mr. Khashoggi’s fate. He said the crown prince, who was with Mr. Pompeo during the call, would expand an investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and suspected killing two weeks ago.

Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, has not been seen since he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish officials have asserted that Mr. Khashoggi was murdered and his body dismembered; Saudi officials denied any wrongdoing.

While Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance has heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and both Turkey and the United States, the White House has been measuring the damage to its Iran strategy.

In interviews this week, Trump administration officials and outside experts said that possible repercussions on an elaborate plan to squeeze the Iranians have dominated internal discussions about the fallout over what happened to Mr. Khashoggi.

By comparison, they said, the issue of limiting American arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which Mr. Trump has said would threaten American jobs, pales in importance. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss internal conversations.

On Nov. 5, the administration is expected to announce that any company that does business with Iran — buying oil, financing projects or investing in the country — will be prohibited from doing business in the United States, including clearing transactions in dollars. It would present a common front with the Saudis, and cast Iran as the source of almost all instability in the Middle East.

That argument, officials have acknowledged, is now in jeopardy.

Much indicates that the likely murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi will be transformative for Saudi-U.S. relations. But whether it will affect the one issue where Saudi pressure on the United States was the greatest—Iran—is unclear. The Iran strategy favored by Saudi Arabia and the Netanyahu government in Israel, and eagerly adopted by the White House, will likely lead to a military confrontation regardless of whether its assumptions about the status of Iran’s economy and political survivability are true or not.

The Trump administration’s pressure strategy on Iran assumes that the Islamic Republic is standing on its last leg. The White House believes a gentle nudge will cause its collapse in the next few months. This is a shaky assumption—one which makes the policy immensely risky for a simple reason: what if President Donald Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince are wrong? What if the Iranian theocracy survives, albeit far angrier and hostile than it was before? And what if the assumption is correct? Will the clerical rulers sit quietly as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel orchestrate their demise? History is riddled with examples where pressure has triggered confrontation rather than capitulation—even when the underlying assumption has been correct.

If Trump’s bet proves wrong and the theocracy in Tehran shows itself too resilient, the United States will find itself in a vulnerable position. Trump’s complete isolation at the UN General Assembly last month was nothing short of astounding—yet, that may become the new normal. In the process, the United States will incentivize other countries to develop alternative financial transaction systems in order to protect themselves from what increasingly will be viewed as illegal U.S. financial sanctions. This will likely weaken the dollar and diminish America’s ability to use the existing financial system as an instrument of its own national power.

Moreover, Iran will likely be far more hostile and determined to counter U.S. influence in the Middle East as a result of the Trump administration’s escalation of tensions and its efforts to unseat the theocracy in Tehran. Already, a senior Iranian official told us this past week, Trump’s pressure has undermined moderates in Tehran who advocate for diplomacy between Iran and the West and a reduction of tensions. On the other hand, hardliners in charge of Iran’s policies in Syria and Yemen have benefitted from Trump’s belligerence. “The sense is that engagement has not paid off for Iran [as a result of Trump’s sabotage of the Iran nuclear deal],” the Iranian official explained, “Iran’s military engagement in the region, however, has paid dividends to Iran’s security.”

But here’s the real problem with America’s all-out pressure approach: Even if Trump’s assumption is correct and the Iranian regime is close to collapse, history suggests it will not play out as neatly as the Trump team appears to believe. Rather than Iranian capitulation, Trump should be expecting confrontation. Which is exactly what the Saudis want.