Michael Doran:

Let me just first address the question of the refugees in the United States.

There are 10 million people uprooted in Syria by the coalition of Iran, the Syrian regime and the Russians. It's that kind of event that we are trying to prevent. We are trying to stabilize the Middle East, so that we don't have millions of refugees, and we're trying to — and the Saudis are very important partners in that effort.

So to completely throw away our strategy to stabilize the region in order to take action against the leader of Saudi Arabia makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me strategically. It makes no sense to me morally.

Without regard to the Magnitsky Act, all this is — these kinds of suggestions or proposals are based on the idea that we have the ability to enforce our will on the Saudis, and they will simply take whatever we do, that they need us much more than we need them.

I think that is a — I think that that is a very dangerous assumption. We could end up destabilizing Saudi Arabia. The crown prince has very significant enemies inside Saudi Arabia who want to see him go down. He has enemies outside Saudi Arabia. We could also end up pushing Saudi Arabia into the arms of the Russians and the Chinese.

I think you have to be — we have to be very, very clear-eyed about the real choices that we're making.