Trump administration believes blaming Ahmed al-Assiri for death of journalist could offer way out of the crisis

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have bowed to US pressure to blame one of his favoured generals for the death of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a move the Trump administration believes could allow Washington and Riyadh a way out of the escalating crisis.

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The sacking of Gen Ahmed al-Assiri, one of the embattled crown prince’s most trusted security officials and deputy head of Saudi intelligence, was announced on state television. Assiri was a senior air force officer who was the Saudi face of the Yemen war for more than a year before being thrust into the role. He was entrusted with the most sensitive state secrets.

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Officials in Washington have suggested for the past three days that a senior figure in Riyadh was central to the apparent plot to lure Khashoggi into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he was believed to have been tortured and killed by state security officials.

However, their insistence had been met with blanket rejections by Bin Salman, who denied any Saudi link to Khashoggi’s disappearance.

It was only late on Friday evening BST that Saudi state television said that Khashoggi was dead. The news, which cited preliminary findings from an official investigation, said a fight broke out between Khashoggi and people who met him in the consulate, leading to the death of the reporter.

While the US administration has said it would not cut loose a leader in whom much of Donald Trump’s foreign policy is invested, mounting pressure at home and relentless international outrage surrounding Khashoggi’s apparent murder prompted Washington to take an unusually robust stance.

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Officials had been increasingly irritated at the crown prince’s intransigence – a view that led them to name Assiri as a man who could take the blame. The general has no family connections to the Saudi royal establishment, but had been an enthusiastic and polished advocate of the kingdom’s involvement in Yemen, a role that caught the 33-year-old crown prince’s eye.

Sandhurst-educated, US-trained and fluent in English, he had a steady rise through the Saudi air force. His trajectory was at odds with his humble origins from a village in the country’s south-west, but was seen by other senior officers as meritorious.

His switch to deputy intelligence chief was less popular, but cemented his power with the royal court, where only a small network of advisers are entrusted with calling the shots.

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That Washington, rather than Riyadh, constructed what many claim is a fall guy, speaks to the wide divergence in positions in the two capitals. Trump officials said privately that Saudi Arabia’s stance was indefensible. The US president again warned on Thursday of “severe consequences” if the brutal crime were traced to Bin Salman. However, he appears reluctant to make that link.

Until Friday night, the crown prince showed no sign of bowing to demands. Until the fight story was reported, neither he nor his officials had provided any plausible explanation for how Khashoggi vanished after entering the Saudi diplomatic mission in Istanbul on 2 October.

Bin Salman appeared to view himself as a strongman who could not show weakness, especially while under pressure. His denials had been widely supported domestically. In conversations with the Guardian over the past week, two senior Saudi establishment figures have said that Bin Salman could make concessions only if they were on his terms and not the result of force.

Under Trump, Saudi Arabia has been central to the US’s aggressive projection towards Iran and the key benefactor of his administration’s move to redirect Barack Obama’s pivot towards Tehran. The crown prince has also been central to other plans, such as Trump son-in law Jared Kushner’s so-called peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinians. He has courted connections in elite US business circles and investors had clamoured to join next week’s investment conference in Riyadh.

However, the US treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, is understood to have pulled out as Bin Salman had been previously seen as rejecting Washington’s “solution”.