Saudi Arabia asked the world to forget Khashoggi at Davos. It’s working.

By Ishaan Tharoor
January 25 at 11:28 AM

DAVOS, Switzerland — Just a few months ago, Saudi Arabia was placed under the heat lamps of international scrutiny. The steady drip of revelations surrounding the covert abduction and killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inflamed the U.S. Congress, led to protests in various capitals around the world and blackened the reputation of the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA found had ordered the plot.

But Mohammed and the Saudis were defiant in the face of international censure. They were defended by the Trump administration, which focused its ire instead on Iran, and received only timid reproach from European governments wary of isolating a key customer for military hardware. And if it wasn’t clear that the West had largely moved on beyond the whole Khashoggi affair, events this week at the World Economic Forum made it all the more obvious.

The Saudis sent a large delegation to the Swiss Alps, including their economy, finance and foreign ministers. The country’s oil giant, Aramco, staged a lavish party Wednesday evening for executives and bankers attending the forum. In various conversations, Western politicians and business executives indicated their unwillingness to turn their back on the kingdom.

“We have long since dealt with the Khashoggi case,” Swiss President Ueli Maurer told local news agency SDA. “We have agreed to continue the financial dialogue and normalize relations again.”

At a panel alongside two Saudi ministers and Morgan Stanley chief James Gorman, the head of French oil company Total, Patrick Pouyanne, urged the audience to put the nastiness of Khashoggi’s killing behind them: “Let’s look more positively and move forward.”

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