Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman named prime minister

Role marks another boost for day-to-day ruler of kingdom after his international isolation tied to journalist’s killing in 2018.

Mohammed bin Salman arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris in July. Picture: AFP

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has named his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as prime minister, boosting the profile of the 37-year-old, day-to-day ruler of the kingdom as he tries to end years of international isolation over a journalist’s killing.

Prime minister, a title traditionally held by the Saudi monarch, will extend Prince Mohammed’s tight grip on power, as he already oversees the country’s most sensitive portfolios — the economy, defence and oil. King Salman also sees his son as a national figure who represents the kingdom’s restless younger generation.

Prince Mohammed is leading an economic overhaul to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil, ushering in a more muscular Saudi foreign policy, and granting new social freedoms. He also is punishing dissent and limiting free speech.

The king overnight on Tuesday also named as defence minister his younger son Khalid bin Salman, the former deputy defence minister and ambassador to Washington.

As prime minister, the king had overseen a cabinet of ministers in charge of government functions ranging from the oil industry to health, a role that will formally go to Mohammed now. The announcement, in a royal decree, said Salman will continue to chair weekly cabinet meetings.

Salman, the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, has had health problems. The 86-year-old monarch underwent bladder surgery in 2020 and had his pacemaker battery replaced in March. In May, he had a nine-day stay in a hospital in Jeddah after a colonoscopy.

Mohammed is only now re-emerging after years of international isolation following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in 2018. The US intelligence community concluded that the prince approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi.

The Saudi government initially denied involvement in Khashoggi’s death but later acknowledged that government officials carried out the killing and said the crown prince wasn’t personally involved.

Tuesday’s royal decree could potentially give Mohammed immunity from prosecution and lawsuits in US courts, where foreign heads of state are generally immune from action. The prince’s appointment came days before a Monday deadline for the Biden administration to tell a federal court whether the prince has sovereign immunity in a civil lawsuit filed against him by Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatic Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World Now, a human-rights organisation he founded before his death.
DAWN said the appointment represents an attempt to shield the crown prince from accountability for his crimes committed overseas.

The prince’s isolation has eased in recent months with visits to Saudi Arabia by the leaders of Britain and France, followed most recently by Joe Biden, who greeted him with a fist bump outside his seaside palace and spent two hours discussing what the US President called “significant business.” In July, Mohammed had a multiday tour of Greece and France after years of restricting his official visits to friendly Arab countries nearby. He hasn’t visited the US or other European countries since 2018 and skipped international summits last year.

The West is re-embracing Mohammed despite concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia, where dozens of people have been arrested in a clampdown on political freedoms.

The Wall Street Journal