Six weeks after the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and U.S. resident, the White House appears as committed as ever to absolving Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince widely believed to have ordered Khashoggi’s death, and finding a way to resume its ordinarily chummy relationship with Riyadh. Balancing competing imperatives to redress the killing of a prominent journalist without imperiling a desired alliance, on Thursday the Treasury Department announced sanctions targeting more than a dozen Saudis allegedly involved in the plot against Khashoggi. (Saudi prosecutors claim Khashoggi was accidentally killed during a rogue extradition attempt in Istanbul. The crown prince, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has denied any knowledge of the operation.)

Among longtime Saudi observers, however, approval for the sanctions was tempered by a sense that it was all just an attempt to save face. “The Trump administration deserves some limited credit for imposing sanctions on the 17 named individuals,” Rob Berschinski, the senior vice president for policy at Human Rights First, told me. “In isolation, today’s action is the minimum that we should expect in response to such an egregious killing. There should be no doubt that there are sighs of relief in Riyadh at the moment, and no one should describe today’s actions as a win for accountability or human rights.”

Indeed, the sanctions list appears to reflect a mutual understanding between Washington and Riyadh. Among those targeted are at least three high-profile officials—Saud al-Qahtani, a former top aide to Mohammed bin Salman; the Saudi consul general in Istanbul, Mohammed al-Otaibi; and Maher Mutreb, who the Treasury accused of having “coordinated and executed” the operation. But the notable absence of Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy former head of the kingdom’s intelligence services and close confidant of Mohammed bin Salman, a reported architect of the murder plot, softened the message. “While this may seem an important step, it is still below what the Trump [administration] can and should do here,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident and the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs. (Friday night, The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. has concluded Mohammed bin Salman, not one of his deputies, was responsible for Khashoggi’s death, but Trump remains skeptical.)

Within the State Department, there was already pervasive skepticism that Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would take substantive action against Saudi Arabia and M.B.S., who is a key ally of the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner. The president, after all, has repeatedly declared that the U.S.-Saudi relationship—and specifically, a multi-billion-dollar arms deal—shouldn’t become collateral in the Khashoggi affair. As I previously reported, Pompeo’s initial “grip and grin” meeting with M.B.S., and subsequent promises to “get to the bottom” of what happened, prompted disgust across Foggy Bottom. Diplomats fumed when Riyadh changed its story, again and again. Why should the United States continue to support Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, where an estimated eight million people are on the brink of starvation, if the kingdom could not respect its American patrons? According to one former State Department official still in touch with his former colleagues, there is lingering dissent over Pompeo’s decision to certify that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are doing enough to limit civilian casualties in Yemen. “The decision was lambasted because it was so absurd on its face,” this person said.

The White House’s credibility on human rights was further thrust into question Thursday after it was reported that administration officials had considered an outrageous plot to muffle criticism by Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Turkey, which has been strategically leaking evidence from Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. According to NBC News, Trump officials had discussed extraditing Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, an enemy of President Recep Erdoğan who has been living in exile in Pennsylvania, with the hope that the peace offering would get the Turks to back off the Saudis. “At first there were eye rolls, but once they realized it was a serious request, the career guys were furious,” a senior U.S. official involved in the process told NBC News. (A National Security Council spokesperson denied any knowledge of the alleged plot.)