"And so what we've done by the actions that we've taken is really not to rupture the relationship but to recalibrate it," Blinken said.
He argued the release of the intelligence report was in itself a significant step, shining a "bright light" on Khashoggi's murder. And he said the Biden administration was conducting an ongoing review of weapons sales to ensure the U.S. stopped shipping offensive arms to the kingdom.
Blinken's remarks are likely to anger and disappoint lawmakers and human rights advocates.
“The Biden administration and other international governments should hold MBS accountable for Khashoggi’s murder by imposing on him the full range of sanctions, including asset freezes,” the group, Democracy for the Arab World Now, said in a statement Friday. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation also should open a criminal investigation into the murder of a U.S. resident, as they have of other Americans executed abroad.”
Lawmakers have applauded Biden's initial steps, but they want a more sweeping overhaul of the U.S-Saudi alliance and direct action confronting Saudi Arabia over its human rights record.
“Today the United States government finally acknowledged what the rest of the world has already known: Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman personally approved the operation in which Saudi assassins brutally kidnapped, dismembered, and murdered journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi," Sen. Bob Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday.
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