Back in from the cold

A $1tn deal helps wipe slate clean

- Andrew Roth

Strongmen can have comeback stories too. Seven years ago, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, became an international pariah after intelligence officers said to be acting on his orders abducted and murdered the Washington Post columnist and opposition critic Jamal Khashoggi.

In a gruesome coda, it later emerged the Saudi agents had dismembered his body with a bone saw to dispose of the evidence.

Yesterday, Prince Mohammed was met with the most extravagant reception of the second Trump administration, as the two men said they would cement $1tn in deals and made a public show of bonhomie that marked perhaps the most important bilateral relationship of this administration.

It was far more than a simple normalisation of relations as Trump abandoned concerns over Khashoggi's murder to pursue his latest triumph as the self-declared dealmaker-in-chief.