Mnuchin Defends Trip to Saudi Arabia Amid Uproar Over Khashoggi Killing

JERUSALEM — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday defended his decision to meet with Saudi officials this week, saying his trip was aimed at reinforcing ties at a critical moment, as the United States tries to ratchet up pressure on Iran.

Mnuchin, speaking during a stop in Jerusalem, said the economic and strategic relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia was too important to be derailed by an international uproar over the Saudis’ killing of a dissident journalist.

The trip to Riyadh comes as Saudi Arabia is facing an intense global backlash over the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for The Washington Post who lived in Virginia. The Trump administration is under pressure to deliver a forceful response, but President Donald Trump has offered shifting reactions to Saudi accounts of the killing. He hardened his tone late Saturday, telling The Washington Post that the Saudis had engaged in “deception.”

Mnuchin described what happened to Khashoggi as a “terrible situation” and said that the United States would not go easy on countries that violate human rights even if they have close economic ties.

“I think the human rights issues are very important issues, and I think that the United States needs to play a leadership role on human rights,” he said.

But Mnuchin said it was important to wait for more facts to emerge before determining if Saudi Arabia should face sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act — which authorizes the government to penalize human rights offenders — and added that it was “premature” to even discuss sanctions at this point.

Last week, Mnuchin became one of the final high-profile figures to withdraw from an investor conference that begins in Riyadh on Tuesday, ultimately determining that it would be inappropriate to mingle with global business leaders weeks after Khashoggi was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.

“I did not think it was appropriate to go and speak at the conference,” Mnuchin said in an interview Sunday.

But he said the United States must preserve its ties to Saudi Arabia, particularly as the United States tries to stop Iran from participating in the global financial system. “We have an important relationship with Saudi, focused on combating terrorist financing and focused on our common interests of stopping Iran’s spread of both terrorism and other issues,” he said, adding that he was planning to “meet with my counterparts and continue to focus on what’s in the Treasury’s domain, as it relates to this issue.”

Despite the global outrage at Saudi Arabia, Mnuchin said he did not intend to scold his Saudi counterparts about rights abuses.

“I’m sure I’ll be speaking with the president before I go there,” he said. “If he has a message that he wants me to deliver, I will obviously deliver it. That is not the focus of my trip.”

While Trump has acknowledged that the Saudi government was not forthright in its explanations of what happened to Khashoggi, he has continued to express admiration for Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, as someone who loves his country.

The prospect of the United States’ imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia has raised concern that the country could slow oil production in retaliation. Mnuchin said, however, that he had no reason to believe that Saudi Arabia would not honor its oil-production commitments.

Mnuchin planned to visit the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, which the United States leads with Saudi Arabia, and meet with the Saudi finance minister, the energy minister and other economic officials in Riyadh.

A year ago, Mnuchin made his first trip as secretary to Saudi Arabia to speak at the investor conference and unveil the terrorist financing center. He said that the initiative still needed more work and that he planned to keep coming back to oversee its progress.

In Israel, the Treasury secretary was on the first stop of a six-country trip through the Middle East focused on the battle against terrorist financing. He is also visiting Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait.

Earlier Sunday, he met with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to discuss joint efforts to corral Iran.

With Mnuchin by his side, Netanyahu said in his office: “Pressure is the only thing that arrests the forward movement of the Iranian nuclear program, and pressure is the only thing that rolls back Iran’s aggression in the region.”

The United States withdrew from the multicountry Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, this year, and sanctions against Iran are to be reimposed next month. That has made preserving strong ties with Saudi Arabia even more important, as the United States is relying on the Saudis to increase oil production to make up for lost access to Iranian oil.

The withdrawal from the Iran agreement by the United States has frustrated the European Union, which wants to keep the deal intact and preserve ties to Iran. Many European companies do business there and have been looking for ways to continue financial ties with Iran without running afoul of U.S. sanctions. Earlier this month, a European Union official said that the bloc was setting up a “special payments entity” that would work to shield non-American companies from U.S. economic actions against Iran.

In the interview Sunday, Mnuchin said that he had not yet seen a workaround that concerned him, but that he was monitoring such efforts.

“We very much intend to enforce our sanctions,” he said.

The sanctions are scheduled to go into effect Nov. 4. Mnuchin is also engaged in delicate talks with a financial messaging service that is run by a Belgian cooperative called SWIFT. The service plays a crucial role in moving money around the international banking system by notifying banks when their customers intend to move money. As a result of the U.S. sanctions, it could soon face penalties for remaining connected with Iran.

Although a resolution is still in the works, Mnuchin said that the Treasury Department would ensure that SWIFT would not be used for prohibited transactions.