The palace in Riyadh is in crisis. The initial disappearance and now the confirmed murder in Istanbul of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has over the weekend been traced directly to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often referred to as MBS.

Across the world, the shock and awe is overwhelming and it is open to question whether a royal reshuffle is imperative. In his dotage, the 82-year-old king is much too old to be disturbed with the outrage, far less to intervene and readily effect a shake-up. For all the essay towards a booming economy and a reformist agenda, pre-eminently allowing women to drive, there is little doubt that Saudi Arabia faces the gravest diplomatic crisis since 9/11, and most particularly in its relations with the West.

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The enormity of the tragedy has severely undermined Salman’s seemingly Machiavellian praxis of governance; arguably it has even neutralised the import of the reforms. It is a collective disgrace for the government in Riyadh, and the King-in-waiting has lost the goodwill that he had initially reaped. It has taken a while to establish that the killing of Khashoggi was a diligently crafted state-sponsored operation ~ the despatch of the killers masquerading as the royal security staff on a flight from Riyadh to Istanbul and Saturday’s dismissal of the Crown Prince’s security aides.

In the net, the Crown Prince had sent a 15-man hit squad to exterminate a dissident. As it turned out, the journalist was tortured and killed and his body dismembered. The operation could scarcely have been more hideous. If indeed Salman approved a plan to abduct and kill a critic in Istanbul, it is hard to escape the conclusion that his despotism is of a piece with that of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, who had once used their embassies to terrorise exiles. Clearly, Crown Prince Salman cares little for universal rights or the liberal international order and has been emboldened by his cordial relations with the likes of Donald Trump, whose first port of call as US President was to Riyadh.

Khashoggi’s disappearance had emitted a sinister signal, specifically that even cogent criticism about growing repression in Saudi Arabia and the conflict in Yemen were deemed as sufficient excuse for murder. Khashoggi’s body is said to have been carved up with a bone saw and smuggled out in a black Mercedes van. Small wonder that delegates are pulling out of the kingdom’s annual “Davos in the Desert” conference. Investors have also fled the Saudi stock market.

Britain and America are said to be mulling sanctions, a probability that the Saudis have greeted with the threat to “weaponise” the vast oil reserves and buy arms from Russia. The Crown Prince’s sobriquet “MBS” has in certain circles been distorted as “Mr Bone Saw”. The desert kingdom’s standing in the comity of nations has plummeted to an immeasurable degree. The loss in terms of international standing is no less shattering than the grief that Khashoggi’s family has suffered.