LONDON — A month after the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, the growing international consensus that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind it has done almost nothing to weaken his grip on power over the kingdom. The crown prince owes his apparent impunity partly to the nature of power in Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy and to his own proven ruthlessness. But he also owes it to the Trump administration. It has decided to stand by him, according to three people familiar with the White House deliberations. Barring a surprise intervention by his aging father, King Salman, there is every expectation that Prince Mohammed, 33, will succeed him and dominate Saudi Arabia for a half-century to come. White House officials knew from an Oct. 9 phone call with Prince Mohammed that he considered Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist, a dangerous Islamist, two people familiar with the call said, so the officials knew he had a potential motive for the killing. But having invested deeply in Prince Mohammed as the main driver of the administration’s agenda for the region, and under pressure from allies who support him — notably the leaders of Israel and Egypt — the Trump administration has concluded that it cannot feasibly limit his power, the people familiar with its deliberations said. Instead, the White House has joined governments around the region in weighing what effect the stigma of the Khashoggi killing may have on the crown prince’s ability to rule — and what benefit can be extracted from his potential weakness. “Everybody is milking this,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. With the crown prince now in need of external assistance to rehabilitate himself, she said, “everybody is trying to turn this to their advantage and try to get what they can out of it.” For the Trump administration, the people familiar with its thinking said, that means pressuring the crown prince for steps to resolve the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar and the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have both issued calls for a cease-fire in Yemen as part of that plan. Officials in the Trump administration had discussed proposals like urging King Salman, the 82-year-old father of the crown prince, to appoint a strong prime minister or other senior official to help oversee day-to-day governance or foreign policy, according to the people familiar with the deliberations. But such ideas were quickly discarded, partly because no one would risk taking such a job, or dare appear to counter Prince M
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