BREAKING: Treasury will unveil sanctions today on General Ahmed al-Asiri, former deputy head of the Saudi intelligence services, and the Saudi Rapid Intervention Force for their involvement in the Khashoggi assassination. Crown Prince MBS will NOT be sanctioned, per officials.
A new State Department policy named the Khashoggi Ban will also be unveiled today, which will allow State to restrict and revoke visas to any individual believed to be involved in targeting/harassing/surveilling dissidents and journalists extraterritorially.
Then White House chose not to penalize the crown prince directly despite intel report concluding he approved the operation that led to Khashoggi's murder. One senior administration official said that to do so would put the U.S. in an extremely “hostile” position wrt KSA.
"The aim is recalibration, not a rupture, because of the important interests that we do share" with Saudi Arabia, the senior admin official said. U.S. officials and departments will continue to deal with MBS at the appropriate levels.
More from SAO on why MBS was not sanctioned: "The United States as a matter of practice has not generally applied sanctions on the highest leadership of countries with whom the US has diplomatic relations. Nor even generally speaking on the leaders of countries with which 1/
the US has no relations. And having looked at this extremely closely over the last 5 weeks, there was unanimous conclusion that there were other more effective means to dealing with these issues going forward."
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