But I also knew Saudi Arabia was strategically important. It was and still is a partner of convenience for the West. It's not about oil. The Saudis have to export oil to survive. And it's not about arms sales. It's about maintaining a power balance in the Middle East and in particular in the Persian Gulf.

There's no doubting the aggression and ambitions of the Iranian theocracy. They've been pushing their influence from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. They fund and arm Hezbollah and Hamas, deeply divisive and confrontational organisations. They have actively supported the attempted Houthi takeover of Yemen and Iran is deeply engaged in cyberwarfare.

In this febrile environment, Saudi Arabia is the ally of the West. Abandoning the relationship with Saudi Arabia would further weaken the interests and influence of the Western powers in the Middle East. And if you think that doesn't matter you're quite wrong. The Middle East is volatile enough without adding to that volatility by creating new power vacuums.

So back to the tragic murder of Jamal Khashoggi. My intelligence sources tell me he had worked as an intelligence agent for the Saudi intelligence service, GID, for around 20 years. At one point he was sent by GID to Sudan to meet Osama bin Laden and to try to lure him away from terrorism. He failed.

Khashoggi had always been close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the people who took over Egypt under Morsi following the so-called Arab Spring. The Muslim Brotherhood is a hard-line Islamist organisation dedicated to the introduction of Sharia and the creation of an Islamic caliphate. These people are no bleeding heart liberals. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed as a terrorist organisation in a number of Middle Eastern countries and is part of the Hamas support group. They have been implacably opposed to many of the more liberal reforms of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

To add to the complexity of the story, the Brotherhood is supported by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Qataris. This is a source of real tension between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and their regional allies on the one side and the Turks and Qataris on the other.

So Jamal Khashoggi – a former Saudi intelligence agent, a man who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood and a sworn opponent of MBS' reform program– was in the process of setting up a centre to promote the ideology of the MB. He was setting it up in Turkey with Qatari money. The Saudis wanted to stop him. In September they offered him $9 million to return to Saudi Arabia and to live there unhindered. They wanted him out of play. Khashoggi refused and the rest you know. The Saudis killed him.

Let me make two points. First, there is no justification for murdering Khashoggi. Secondly, this man wasn't some Western-oriented liberal brutally murdered because of his passion for freedom. This man was a player.

So it makes you wonder why the American press is so particularly outraged by Khashoggi's murder. Well, he was a columnist for the Washington Post and it's a standard bearer of American liberalism. But it's also been a great propaganda coup against Saudi Arabia in general. Many Westerners blame the Saudis for the tragedy of Yemen. More than that. President Trump has made a great play of embracing Saudi Arabia as America's ally – much more so than Obama who instead, against Saudi objections, did the nuclear deal with Iran. As for Erdogan, it's absolutely in his interests to milk the Khashoggi murder in Turkey for all it's worth. Erdogen wants Turkey to replace Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Islamic world.

You see my point. You can in government be swept up in the prevailing media narrative and if you design your foreign policy on that basis you will achieve nothing. The wise government is the government which has a clear strategic direction and manages ephemeral events often driven by others with ulterior motives.

Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007 and is a former high commissioner to the UK.