Listen to “'You Can't Take Things at Face Value' in Khashoggi Case” on Spreaker.
President Trump is under pressure to declare the Saudi government responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this month, but one expert on the region says some critical questions need to be asked and investigations completed before reaching any conclusions.
“The facts need to play out. We need to question them. There are so many competing agendas going on here that you can’t take things at face value. You just can’t. Facts matter, emotions don’t,” said retired U.S. Navy Captain Chuck Nash, who is a longtime Middle East expert and a military analyst for the Fox News Channel.
Turkish intelligence insists Khashoggi was immediately assaulted upon entering the consulate on October 2, killed in grisly fashion, and even dismembered in part while he was still alive. But Nash finds the actions by Turkey rather odd.
“The Turks are, for some strange reason, completely unwilling to share their intelligence and yet this is all splashing out and playing out in the news media,” said Nash.
In the process, sensitive sources may well have been compromised.
“You’ve got CNN and the Washington Post already reporting that, through intelligence sources, we were monitoring certain conversations of the very senior Saudi people,” said Nash.
Nash says he is not definitively saying the events described in the media are not true and that if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did order Khashoggi’s murder then there must be severe repercussions when Trump talks with the Saudi king.
“(Bin Salman) would have to go. That would be kind of a pre-condition and I think the king would be reluctantly in favor of making that move because he too does not want to jeopardize the relationship with the United States,” said Nash.
However, he says there are lots of puzzling questions that remain. He says there’s no benefit to bin Salman with Khashoggi gone, but it could be a boon to the crown prince’s many enemies, from the family members he had imprisoned to the religious extremists who recoil at bin Salman’s modernization efforts and outreach efforts to other faiths.
“He has built up for himself a whole raft of enemies. So he doesn’t benefit, but his enemies would benefit if this were to be pinned on him because that would have him removed from power, which is their principle aim,” said Nash.
He’s also confused about the tactics in involved in the killing.
If you were going to put a hit on somebody, why would you send 15 people to do it. You’re just creating a witness pool that’s staggering,” said Nash.
As for Khashoggi himself, Nash says the victim was far more than a journalist. Khashoggi had contacts with Al Qaeda and was seen by some as the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia. The Muslim Brotherhood fiercely opposed bin Salman’s modernization efforts.
But Nash says people who get caught up in Khashoggi’s background are missing the bigger picture.
“At the same time you have him being glorified in some circles, there are other agencies and other folks who are probably spreading information about him on the negative side. So again, listening to all these different inputs – listener beware,” said Nash.
Nash says the reported version of the story could be true and something else may have happened. He says the biggest mistake right now would be to rush to judgment.
“When you think of all the potential goings-on and who did what to who and when, this could take awhile to unravel. This is not going to be a really quick thing,” he said.
Listen to the full podcast to hear Nash elaborate on all the different entities and agendas impacted by how this story turns out.
