Dubai: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman He has shaken up his conservative state with head-spinning reforms, while rejecting any threat to his position as de facto ruler – a role he assumed five years ago.
The hard-charging heir has earned praise for allowing women to drive and envisioning an economy less dependent on oil, but he has also sparked widespread protests over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and other state abuses.
A giant man with a full-faced beard, a deep growling voice and seemingly boundless energy, Prince Mohammed is best known for his super-sized ambitions to build a futuristic megacity known as NEOM. From waging a seven-year-old war in neighboring Yemen. ,
The 36-year-old, said to be fond of fast food and the “Call of Duty” video game, is also fabulously rich, with a $500 million yacht, a French chateau and, according to officially discredited reports, $ Owns 450. Million Leonardo da Vinci painting.
Unlike other Saudi princes with British accents, edgy suits, and Oxford degrees, they have adopted the country’s Bedouin roots, usually donning traditional robes and sandals, and serving a meal of roast lamb with friends and relatives in luxury desert camps. treat for.
Having worked his way to power from relative obscurity, he has seen one of the biggest changes in modern history. Saudi ArabThe world’s top crude oil exporter and host to two of Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina.
Under his rule, the Islamic religious police have been removed, cinemas have been reopened, foreign tourists have been welcomed, and Saudi Arabia has hosted a film festival, opera, a Formula One Grand Prix, professional wrestling and A huge rave festival is staged.
Yet they have jailed critics and, in a sweeping purge of the country’s elite, detained and threatened some 200 princes and businessmen in a 2017 anti-corruption crackdown at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, which saw its rise to power. tightened the grip.
Khashoggi’s image was most severely tarnished by the brutal murder and decapitation inside the state’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018, which sparked an international outcry, despite Riyadh’s insistence that rogue agents carried out the killing.
“MBS is a highly divisive character, praised by supporters as a long-awaited game-changer and dismissed by foes as a ruthless dictator in the making,” said Ben Hubbard. The Rise to Power Off”. Mohammed bin Salman”.
“He is determined to give the Saudis a bright, prosperous future and uses an unshakable will to crush his enemies. Combined in various doses, those qualities will guide his actions in the future.”
– ‘Mr Everything’ – Prince Mohammed was born on 31 August 1985 as one of hundreds of grandchildren of the country’s founder King Abdulaziz ibn Saud. He grew up in a Riyadh palace with his mother, Fahda, one of his father’s four wives, and his five brothers.
“As the sixth son of the founding king’s 25th son, there was no reason to expect that he would rise to prominence,” Hubbard wrote. “And for most of their lives, few people did.”
He earned a law degree from Riyadh’s King Saud University but never studied abroad, and soon worked as a special adviser to his father, the then Riyadh governor.
When King Salman took the throne in early 2015, he named Prince Mohammed as Defense Minister.
Soon the young man coordinated economic policy, overseeing the kingdom’s oil company Saudi Aramco, and overseeing the kingdom’s military intervention in Yemen.
Within a year, he had so many departments that diplomats called him “Mr.
The prince – now a father of three boys and two girls, who has only one wife unlike other Saudi royals – reportedly worked 16 hours a day and drew inspiration from Winston Churchill and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”.
His astonishing ascent almost seemed like Shakespeare. He succeeded his older cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef to become the heir to the throne in 2017. Three years later Prince Nayef, along with a brother of King Salman, was reportedly detained.
Prince Mohammed has promised to create a “moderate” Saudi Arabia and has attracted international investors for his comprehensive Vision 2030 plan to diversify the oil-dependent economy.
“We want to live a normal life,” he once told business leaders in Riyadh. “We are just doing what we were – a liberal Islam open to all religions and open to the world.
“Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30 and, honestly, we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas. We will destroy them today.”
– ‘The Fire of Ideas’ – As he rose to prominence, he toured the United States and attracted leaders in the White House and Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
New York Times writer Thomas Friedman described how, in a late-night interview, Prince “worn me with a fire hose of new ideas to change my country”.
Perhaps his most over-ambitious project is the $500 billion NEOM project on the Red Sea coast, to be powered by solar power and powered by robots, which Prince describes as a “civilization leap for humanity”. Huh.
Reflecting the hopes of the country’s young population, Prince Mohammed has eased restrictions on women’s rights, allowing them to attend sporting events and concerts with men and obtain passports without the approval of a male guardian .
With the reforms, however, dissidents, including intellectuals and women’s rights activists, were cracked down on dissidents, part of an apparent strategy to stamp out any traces of opposition before the formal transfer of power from King Salman.
Internationally, he has pursued a more assertive foreign policy, plunging the kingdom into a quagmire of regional rivalry: the Yemen War, hostilities towards Shia power Iran, a three-year blockade of Qatar until 2021, and the alleged assassination of the Lebanese prime minister. Under arrest. Many stressful days.
Prince Mohammed, who once publicly rebuked US President Barack Obama for criticizing Saudi Arabia’s rights record, has formed a strong bond with Donald Trump and especially his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is known to be Khashoggi’s Will serve them well after death.
Prince faces renewed scrutiny of his human rights record under US president Joe Bidenwho released an intelligence report that said MBS had “sanctioned an operation” to capture or kill Khashoggi.
However, Biden did not take action against the future king. And next month, the US president plans to visit Saudi Arabia, a major reversal, after vowing to make the country a “fairy one” during a debate in 2019.
The change is perhaps an acknowledgment that Prince Mohammed, still in his 30s, could rule Saudi Arabia for half a century or more.
The hard-charging heir has earned praise for allowing women to drive and envisioning an economy less dependent on oil, but he has also sparked widespread protests over the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and other state abuses.
A giant man with a full-faced beard, a deep growling voice and seemingly boundless energy, Prince Mohammed is best known for his super-sized ambitions to build a futuristic megacity known as NEOM. From waging a seven-year-old war in neighboring Yemen. ,
The 36-year-old, said to be fond of fast food and the “Call of Duty” video game, is also fabulously rich, with a $500 million yacht, a French chateau and, according to officially discredited reports, $ Owns 450. Million Leonardo da Vinci painting.
Unlike other Saudi princes with British accents, edgy suits, and Oxford degrees, they have adopted the country’s Bedouin roots, usually donning traditional robes and sandals, and serving a meal of roast lamb with friends and relatives in luxury desert camps. treat for.
Having worked his way to power from relative obscurity, he has seen one of the biggest changes in modern history. Saudi ArabThe world’s top crude oil exporter and host to two of Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina.
Under his rule, the Islamic religious police have been removed, cinemas have been reopened, foreign tourists have been welcomed, and Saudi Arabia has hosted a film festival, opera, a Formula One Grand Prix, professional wrestling and A huge rave festival is staged.
Yet they have jailed critics and, in a sweeping purge of the country’s elite, detained and threatened some 200 princes and businessmen in a 2017 anti-corruption crackdown at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, which saw its rise to power. tightened the grip.
Khashoggi’s image was most severely tarnished by the brutal murder and decapitation inside the state’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018, which sparked an international outcry, despite Riyadh’s insistence that rogue agents carried out the killing.
“MBS is a highly divisive character, praised by supporters as a long-awaited game-changer and dismissed by foes as a ruthless dictator in the making,” said Ben Hubbard. The Rise to Power Off”. Mohammed bin Salman”.
“He is determined to give the Saudis a bright, prosperous future and uses an unshakable will to crush his enemies. Combined in various doses, those qualities will guide his actions in the future.”
– ‘Mr Everything’ – Prince Mohammed was born on 31 August 1985 as one of hundreds of grandchildren of the country’s founder King Abdulaziz ibn Saud. He grew up in a Riyadh palace with his mother, Fahda, one of his father’s four wives, and his five brothers.
“As the sixth son of the founding king’s 25th son, there was no reason to expect that he would rise to prominence,” Hubbard wrote. “And for most of their lives, few people did.”
He earned a law degree from Riyadh’s King Saud University but never studied abroad, and soon worked as a special adviser to his father, the then Riyadh governor.
When King Salman took the throne in early 2015, he named Prince Mohammed as Defense Minister.
Soon the young man coordinated economic policy, overseeing the kingdom’s oil company Saudi Aramco, and overseeing the kingdom’s military intervention in Yemen.
Within a year, he had so many departments that diplomats called him “Mr.
The prince – now a father of three boys and two girls, who has only one wife unlike other Saudi royals – reportedly worked 16 hours a day and drew inspiration from Winston Churchill and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”.
His astonishing ascent almost seemed like Shakespeare. He succeeded his older cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef to become the heir to the throne in 2017. Three years later Prince Nayef, along with a brother of King Salman, was reportedly detained.
Prince Mohammed has promised to create a “moderate” Saudi Arabia and has attracted international investors for his comprehensive Vision 2030 plan to diversify the oil-dependent economy.
“We want to live a normal life,” he once told business leaders in Riyadh. “We are just doing what we were – a liberal Islam open to all religions and open to the world.
“Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30 and, honestly, we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas. We will destroy them today.”
– ‘The Fire of Ideas’ – As he rose to prominence, he toured the United States and attracted leaders in the White House and Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
New York Times writer Thomas Friedman described how, in a late-night interview, Prince “worn me with a fire hose of new ideas to change my country”.
Perhaps his most over-ambitious project is the $500 billion NEOM project on the Red Sea coast, to be powered by solar power and powered by robots, which Prince describes as a “civilization leap for humanity”. Huh.
Reflecting the hopes of the country’s young population, Prince Mohammed has eased restrictions on women’s rights, allowing them to attend sporting events and concerts with men and obtain passports without the approval of a male guardian .
With the reforms, however, dissidents, including intellectuals and women’s rights activists, were cracked down on dissidents, part of an apparent strategy to stamp out any traces of opposition before the formal transfer of power from King Salman.
Internationally, he has pursued a more assertive foreign policy, plunging the kingdom into a quagmire of regional rivalry: the Yemen War, hostilities towards Shia power Iran, a three-year blockade of Qatar until 2021, and the alleged assassination of the Lebanese prime minister. Under arrest. Many stressful days.
Prince Mohammed, who once publicly rebuked US President Barack Obama for criticizing Saudi Arabia’s rights record, has formed a strong bond with Donald Trump and especially his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is known to be Khashoggi’s Will serve them well after death.
Prince faces renewed scrutiny of his human rights record under US president Joe Bidenwho released an intelligence report that said MBS had “sanctioned an operation” to capture or kill Khashoggi.
However, Biden did not take action against the future king. And next month, the US president plans to visit Saudi Arabia, a major reversal, after vowing to make the country a “fairy one” during a debate in 2019.
The change is perhaps an acknowledgment that Prince Mohammed, still in his 30s, could rule Saudi Arabia for half a century or more.