How Mohammed bin Salman went from ruthless pariah to modernising pragmatist
To the rest of the world, Mohammed bin Salman is an ambitious, sometimes reckless royal, who led a boycott of Qatar, oversaw a war in Yemen, detained the Lebanese prime minister and launched a spectacular feud with Canada, all in the span of three years after his appointment as defence minister in 2015 and crown prince in 2017.
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a one-time Saudi intelligence insider turned dissident, at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018 sealed the prince’s reputation in the West as a pariah. He has steadfastly denied that he knew his agents would dismember the Washington Post columnist and dissolve the remains in a tub of acid. The CIA concluded that the prince had authorised a “capture or kill” mission.
Donald Trump, who was the president then and is now preparing to receive Prince Mohammed on his first visit to Washington since the murder, had said that he tried to protect the prince, with whom he had developed personal and business ties.
After Khashoggi’s murder, the prince was shunned by Western capitals and turned his gaze inwards. A man in his late 30s who, unlike other Saudi royals, had studied and lived all his life in the kingdom, he launched plans to overhaul the ultraconservative country. His reforms neutered the religious police and ended gender segregation in many public places, while finally allowing women to drive.
Once known as a dour and ugly capital in the desert that had little to offer by way of entertainment, Riyadh began hosting music festivals and concerts that attracted tourists from neighbouring Gulf countries and scandalised clerics, some of whom were thrown in jail for objecting. The city is now preparing to host the World Expo in 2030 and the FIFA World Cup four years later.
The social reforms were accompanied by what some Saudis have described as economic shock therapy. Subsides were cut and a 15 per cent VAT was introduced, much to the discontent of citizens accustomed to generous cradle-to-grave handouts. Unemployment came down while home ownership rose by more than 50 per cent.
Once seen by some in Washington as a threat to Middle East stability, the prince in recent years has adopted a pragmatic foreign policy aimed at putting out fires in the Middle East so his country can focus on economic reforms. He led a rapprochement with Iran, extricated Saudi Arabia from Yemen, and took on a mediation role between Russia and the US.
The domestic reforms attracted critics, as did his purge of oligarchs who had traditionally acted as a pillar for the crown. They were locked up at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, accused of corruption, before the state wrung tens of billions of dollars from them that it said were ill-gotten gains. This was accompanied by a crackdown on dissidents in which many were jailed for long sentences.
But the changes won him popularity among Saudi Arabia’s under-35s, who make up 70 per cent of the population, many of whom care more for jobs, homes and entertainment.
More importantly for international financiers, the kingdom embarked on a spending spree for what it called “gigaprojects” such as The Line, a planned 180km-long, 500m-high skyscraper in the desert, which were meant to diversify the economy and attract tourism. Many of them are floundering or being scaled back as the kingdom downsizes its ambitions and pivots to investment in artificial intelligence. For Prince Mohammed, the timing is crucial.
His ailing father, King Salman, 89, has increasingly stepped back from governance and left the country to his son to run, and the prince wants it running smoothly by the time he finally ascends the throne.
The Times
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To his aides and confidants, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is outgoing, charming, has a startling memory and an eye for detail. He will sit patiently through long presentations before noting a contradiction between the slide on display and another shown at the start, as an official described.