Pariah turns peacemaker as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman brokers talks
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has emerged as a key player in international diplomacy.
IT was not long ago that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a pariah, shunned by many world leaders over the 2018 murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
There were two notable exceptions: President Trump and President Putin – who went out of his way within weeks of the murder, to high-five the Saudi leader.
Trump later said that he had sought to protect the crown prince, who has spent billions on US weapons.
At the time, the de facto Saudi leader was seen as a reckless young man who in a span of three years had embroiled Saudi Arabia in a war in Yemen, led a boycott of Qatar, declared diplomatic war on Canada and allegedly held the Lebanese prime minister hostage.
Much has changed since. In recent years every major banker and investor has made the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, hoping for an audience with the prince, often called MBS, or one of his lieutenants who have billions at their disposal.
He has grown wiser, his aides say, and he is now focused on reforming the country to attract tourism and investment, while turning it into a diplomatic power that puts out fires instead of starting them.
Over the past two years, the kingdom has played a leading role in mediating prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, and the US and Russia.
For several weeks, Russian officials had suggested that Saudi Arabia would be the ideal location to host a summit between Trump and Putin. The former confirmed the meeting on Wednesday.
The United Arab Emirates, another American ally whose leader is friends with Putin, was also a choice, but unlike the UAE, Prince Mohammed has also managed to create a relationship with President Zelensky of Ukraine.
In 2023, he invited Zelensky and Russian representatives to an Arab League summit. By then, Ukraine had received millions in Saudi aid, while Saudi investors had put hundreds of millions into Russian equities as the country faced sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
The Arab League summit was a display of Saudi power that irked some in the US and other Arab countries.
For the Saudis, the event pointed to their stature as a neutral meeting ground for world powers to resolve differences, something Trump’s announcement of a meeting with Putin has underscored.
The Times
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