A U.S.-Imposed Punishment for Jamal Khashoggi’s Death

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — While President Trump’s claimed $110 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia remains “fake,” and shouldn’t be even considered “news,” there are deliveries of past sales in the pipeline to the Saudis that should be held up in response to the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.

Start with halting delivery of additional F-15SA Strike Eagle fighter-bombers to the Royal Saudi Air Force, purchased under a $29 billion-dollar-sale concluded in December 2010, during the Obama administration. The Saudis bought 84 of what was, at the time, the most advanced F-15 built, with deliveries beginning in December 2016.

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