From pariah to partner, the Saudi leader defies threats to isolate him
President Biden vowed to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a “pariah” over killing and maiming a dissident during his White House quest. Last fall, he again threatened the prince with “consequences” for ignoring American wishes about oil policy.
Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator, called Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom, a “wrecking ball” who “could never be a leader on the world stage.” And Jay Monahan, the head of the prestigious golf PGA Tour, suggested that players who joined a rival Saudi-backed league betrayed the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks – carried out by hijackers who were mostly Saudi nationals. goods.
Now their words sound hollow.
Mr Biden, who visited Saudi Arabia last year, punched Prince Mohammed when they met and regularly sends officials to him – including his foreign minister, Antony J. Blinken, last week. Senator Graham grinned next to the prince — known by his initials MBS — during a visit to Saudi Arabia in April. Also this week, Mr. Monahan shocked the world of professional golf by announcing a planned partnership between the PGA and the fledgling Saudi-backed LIV Golf League, which would suddenly give the kingdom tremendous global influence over the sport.
“It just tells you how money talks because this guy is on top of this oil well and all this money, so he can basically buy his way out of anything,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, the Saudi director of the Freedom Initiative, a rights group. in Washington and an outspoken opponent of the monarchy.
During his eight-year rise to power, Prince Mohammed, 37, has time and again defied expectations that his rule was in jeopardy, using the kingdom’s wealth, his dominion over the oil markets and his interest in the Arab and Muslim world to to evade repeated threats. to punish him with international isolation.
Along the way, he has not only sharpened his vision for Saudi Arabia’s future as an assertive regional power with a growing economy and increased political clout, but has also learned lessons from his setbacks to refine his methods to achieve his goals, analysts say. and officials. said.
At least for now, he seems to be riding high.
The strong demand for oil in recent years has filled the kingdom’s treasury. It bought an English football club, paid an eye-watering sum for Cristiano Ronaldo to play in its national league, and is also trying to recruit other international stars.
If the golf deal goes through, a close associate of Prince Mohammed would become one of the sport’s most powerful figures, giving Saudi Arabia another important platform to reshape its international image.
In recent years, heads of state from Turkey to the United States, who once rejected Prince Mohammed, have accepted him as Saudi Arabia’s future. And he has deepened the kingdom’s relations with China, contributing to a diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Iran, old regional rivals.
That all represents significant progress for a young prince who was widely seen as a dangerous upstart after his father became king in 2015.
That same year, the prince launched a military intervention in Yemen that caused massive civilian deaths and sank into a swamp. He later shocked the diplomatic community with the kidnapping of Lebanon’s prime minister and stunned the business community by locking hundreds of wealthy Saudis in a luxury hotel for weeks as part of an alleged anti-corruption drive.
His international prestige took a sharp dive in 2018 after a Saudi heat team killed and dismembered dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. Prince Mohammed denied any prior knowledge of the plot, but the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that he likely ordered the operation.
That may have been his low point.
But in the years since, the crown prince has regained much of his power, aided by his country’s considerable wealth and power.
Early on, he sidelined rivals to consolidate his control at home. Social changes he has made, such as allowing women to drive and expanding entertainment options in a country that used to ban movie theaters, have earned him fans among the kingdom’s youth.
He also knows that as court queen in a monarchy, he can play the long game. He will never run for re-election and he is already facing his third US president, with many more likely to come and go as long as he stays.
His eventual recovery from the Khashoggi affair showed that the kingdom’s money could go a long way and that no matter how much Western governments talked about human rights, other interests eventually took precedence.
“The Gulf Arab states think it’s a joke,” Dina Esfandiary, senior adviser for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, said of human rights criticism. “They really understand what they are worth to the Western world, as partners, as energy producers, as countries with economic power, so they say, ‘We can handle this empty threat because it’s only part of the relationship.'”
President Trump was in office when Mr Khashoggi was killed and firmly defended the prince, saying, among other things, that Saudi arms purchases benefited the United States.
Mr Graham, the South Carolina senator who said after Khashoggi’s assassination that Prince Mohammed was not fit to lead, turned to praise him during a visit to Saudi Arabia in April when he thanked Saudi Arabia for buying American jets.
“You bought $37 billion worth of planes made in my state and my country. I think there’s more to come,’ Mr Graham told the Saudi television channel Al Arabiya. “So as a United States Senator, I reserve the right to change course.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose government leaked details of Mr Khashoggi’s assassination to harm Prince Mohammed, also eventually overruled his objections. Last year, a Turkish court referred the case against Mr Khashoggi’s killers to Saudi Arabia, ending the latest case seeking to secure liability for the crime. Not long after, the kingdom set aside $5 billion in deposits for Turkey’s central bank to help bolster its finances.
The PGA made a similar turnaround.
For months, Mr. Monahan, the PGA commissioner, denounced Saudi Arabia, even asking players considering joining the rival circuit, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”
As a result, many were shocked when he announced the new collaboration.
Chris Murphy, a Democratic Senator, wrote on Twitter that PGA officials had recently argued to him that “the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from a stake in a major American sport.”
Senator Murphy added, “I think maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?”
Many of Prince Mohammed’s decisions in recent years have been influenced by a growing sense within the kingdom that the United States has become an unreliable partner.
The prince has faced three US presidents from both sides who all want to scale back US involvement in the Middle East. The risks of such a withdrawal for Saudi Arabia became apparent in 2019, when drone and missile attacks that the United States accused Iran of orchestrating Saudi oil facilities hit, temporarily halting about half of the kingdom’s production.
President Trump declined to comment directly, leading Prince Mohammed and his counterparts in the United Arab Emirates to conclude that the United States was no longer behind them and that they should look after their own safety.
“Now it’s very etched in their minds: ‘We can’t count on Washington to defend us, so we have to do it ourselves,'” said Ms Esfandiary of the International Crisis Group. “This has led to a realignment of certain matters in their foreign policy,”
It has also made it less likely that Saudi Arabia will automatically comply with US requests.
Prince Mohammed refused to join Western sanctions aimed at isolating President Vladimir V. Putin after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Saudi Arabia has since instead ramped up imports of discounted Russian oil products.
After Mr Biden met Prince Mohammed in Saudi Arabia last July, the government urged the kingdom to maintain oil production to help lower gas prices in the United States ahead of the midterm elections in November. But in October, the kingdom agreed with the other members of the oil cartel known as OPEC Plus to cut production instead, aiming to keep prices high.
That angered Mr Biden, and White House officials accused Saudi Arabia of reneging on a deal. Months later, as demand for oil declined, the Saudis insisted they had been right in resisting political pressure and cutting production.
The “consequences” promised by President Biden never materialized, making it clear that even the United States considered economic ties with Saudi Arabia too vital to disrupt.
The perception that the US is withdrawing from the Middle East has prompted Prince Mohammed to expand Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic relations, particularly with China, the kingdom’s main trading partner and largest consumer of Saudi oil.
In recent years, the crown prince has cultivated China’s president, Xi Jinping, hosting him at a Sino-Arab summit in Riyadh in December 2022. At that meeting, the two leaders discussed China’s role as a mediator to resolve the conflict with the Iranians. Reduce.
A few months later, the relationship led to a surprising diplomatic breakthrough, when Saudi Arabia and Iran announced they were restoring normal diplomatic relations.
It was a double victory for Prince Mohammed, who in one deal reduced the likelihood of conflict with his main regional foe while also giving a world power other than the United States a stake in the outcome.
Saudi officials have said they would prefer to keep the United States as their main ally, but the lack of US commitment means they need to diversify. And the United States was unable to negotiate an agreement between the Saudis and the Iranians because of its own strained relationship with Tehran.
Even some former critics of the kingdom see positive signs in Prince Mohammed’s efforts to pacify the region.
“You have this building behind bridges and trying to curb some of the more donkey activities, reaching out and trying to be a more constructive force in the region,” said Dennis Horak, a former Canadian ambassador who was removed from office. put. message in Riyadh in 2018 via Twitter posts criticizing the arrests of Saudi activists.
The question, he said, was whether this would continue.
“The problem always with MBS, of course, is that he can switch on a dime,” he said. “But maybe that is changing. Maybe he’ll mature a little bit.”
Vivian Nereim contributed reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.