Trump's Iranian Oil Sanctions already a Bust

In "Despite Stigma of Khashoggi Killing, Crown Prince Is Seen as Retaining Power," by David Kirkpatrick and Ben Hubbard, the two reporters assess Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's standing a month into the Khashoggi affair. (The story today is that Khashoggi's body was dismembered and then dissolved.)

Elite opinion considers the U.S.-Saudi strategy of waiting out the public's outrage to be a winning one. The Trump administration appears confident that it can limit to the merely cosmetic any sanctions that congress might impose. Already military brass and banking "masters of the universe" are speaking up on behalf of the kingdom:

One person familiar with the White House deliberations said the administration expected that bipartisan pressure from Congress will force the imposition of some sanctions.

But the White House intends to keep the sanctions limited enough to avoid a rupture with Prince Mohammed. For one thing, he remains central to the plans of the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, Jared Kushner, including hopes to build an Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran and to pressure the Palestinians into a peace agreement.

Two people close to the Saudi royal court said Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed communicate often, including by text message, and multiple times since Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. A White House spokesman declined to comment about those communications.

[snip]

The crown prince’s stature in Washington may be stabilizing, with at least a handful of American voices extolling the importance of the Saudi-American alliance.

“There is no change in any military relationship we have with Saudi Arabia,” Gen. Joseph Votel, the top United States commander in the Middle East, told the military publication Defense One.

Major figures in finance signaled that they, too, intended to look past the killing. “I understand the emotion around the story,” John Flint, the chief executive of HSBC, told Reuters, “but it is very difficult to think about disengaging from Saudi Arabia given its importance to global energy markets.”

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said that he had accomplished “nothing” by dropping out of the prince’s investment conference and that his bank expected to continue to pursue business with the kingdom. “Being engaged is not a bad thing; it does not mean you condone everything,” Mr. Dimon said at a conference organized by the publication Axios.

Ms. Yahya, of the Carnegie Middle East Center, said such responses send an instructive message to other Arab strongmen.

“You can be even more brutal than you already are,” she said. “Just be smarter about it next time. Don’t kill a well-known journalist inside a consulate.”

The crown prince's public rehabilitation is a necessity because Monday Trump launches his oil sanctions on Iran.

Always a long shot, today's announcement of sanction waivers to some of Iran's biggest customers (India, Japan) is basically an acknowledgment of failure by the administration.

Gardiner Harris had a good write-up the other day ("As New Sanctions Loom, U.S. Push Against Iran Faces Steep Obstacles") about the delusional nature of Trump's Iranian oil sanctions:

The administration’s stated goal for its sanctions campaign is for Iran to make a dozen fundamental changes to its domestic and foreign policies, including ending its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Few analysts believe the present Iranian government could fulfill the demands and survive.

“There is no way the Trump administration will be able to achieve its 12 stated objectives because they’re utterly unrealistic,” said Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Unless significant changes are made, it’s a policy destined to fail.”