My guess — Khashoggi was a CIA, or somebody’s, agent. The new leader, MbS, wanted threats to his control, and foreign channels to his opposition within the ruling elite, eliminated.
He did it rather clumsily.
You don’t have to guess. Muslim Brotherhood. With sympathy and contacts with al Qaeda and other terror groups. And I don’t believe for an instant the King wasn’t aware and approving. It was clumsy, that’s why our Presidents use drones and Russia uses poison.
Good term. I think I’ve used both clumsy and inartful. Here’s an earlier post I made on this:
Anyone upset over Khashoggi doesn’t understand that part of the world, and looks at them through a Western lens. Which is ultimately very, very misleading. There are basically no good guys involved. The Saudis got rid of a Muslim Brotherhood operative they saw as a threat, but did it very inartfully.
There was a thread on this recently wherein 10mm gave a brilliant short summary:
“Can someone tell me why I’m supposed to care that a terrorist nation had a terrorist murdered in another terrorist nation?
I’m more concerned with why the Washington Post had a known terrorist on their payroll.”
Also, that “another terrorist nation” is Turkey. Erdogan has done worse to real journalists, and no one in the Biden Administration is saying a thing about that, and Turkey is still in NATO for some reason.