More than a week after Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist, commentator and intellectual disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the United States is starting to realize it may be time to hold the government in Riyadh accountable for its reckless behavior and its violations of human rights.

On Oct. 10, Bob Corker and Bob Menendez, the top Republican and Democrat in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, triggered the Global Magnitsky Act, a bipartisan bill to punish human rights violators, to force the Trump administration to investigate and consider sanctions against Saudi Arabia. The crisis over Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance piles on to growing — if belated — concern over Saudi Arabia’s disastrous war in Yemen, which has produced little geopolitical gain and much human suffering.

If American officials really want to encourage a change in Saudi policy, they should begin by looking at Saudi Arabia’s largest imports from the United States: weaponry. Cutting off the flow of American arms to Saudi Arabia would be an effective way to put pressure on Riyadh with little cost to the American economy or national security.

President Trump, however, is skeptical. “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country,” he said on Thursday. “They are spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs for this country.” This figure is vastly inflated, but there’s a reason Mr. Trump is inclined to believe it. While the amount of new deals approved under President Trump is closer to $20 billion, the Saudi government has visibly linked itself as the foremost client of the administration’s export push.