The mind plays strange tricks sometimes, especially after a tragedy. When I sat down to write this story about the Saudi regime’s homicidal obsession with the Muslim Brotherhood, the first person I thought I’d call was Jamal Khashoggi. For more than 20 years I phoned him or met with him, even smoked the occasional water pipe with him, as I looked for a better understanding of his country, its people, its leaders, and the Middle East. We often disagreed, but he almost always gave me fresh insights into the major figures of the region, starting with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, and the political trends, especially the explosion of hope that was called the Arab Spring in 2011. He would be just the man to talk to about the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, because he knew both sides of that bitter relationship so well.

And then, of course, I realized that Jamal is dead, murdered precisely because he knew too much.

Although the stories keep changing, there is now no doubt that 33-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the power in front of his decrepit father’s throne, had put out word to his minions that he wanted Khashoggi silenced, and the hit-team allegedly understood that as “wanted dead or alive.” But the [petro]buck stops with MBS, as bin Salman’s called. He’s responsible for a gruesome murder just as Henry II was responsible for the murder of Thomas Becket when he said, “Who will rid me of that meddlesome priest?” In this case, a meddlesome journalist.

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If you had to pick a year in the past decade when the contradictions of the American-Saudi relationship seemed likeliest to explode into crisis, 2018 would not be the obvious choice.

You might pick 2011, when Arab Spring protests compelled the United States to support Middle Eastern democracy movements that the Saudi government saw as mortal threats, or 2013, when Saudi Arabia supported an Egyptian military coup that the United States had tried to prevent and that signaled the end of the region’s democratic moment.

Or perhaps even 2016, by which point the Saudi-led war in Yemen had become one of the worst humanitarian disasters in years, and one in which the United States had gotten itself entangled.

But you would be wrong. Instead, the informal alliance has reached its greatest point of crisis this year, when circumstances would seem to point toward its strengthening. The two countries are aligned on every major policy issue, particularly Iran. Their leaders are closer than at any point in a decade.

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