The Saudis, backed by President Donald Trump, have of course denied that the murder was officially sanctioned, claiming that a rogue outfit was responsible after an argument got out of hand. However, the killing and dismemberment by the infamous bone saw were recorded in brutal detail by Turkish intelligence; and credible authorities, including senior intelligence officials such as Agnès Callamard, former UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, have been unequivocal in their verdicts. Callamard’s report into the “execution” is damning: “Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances… Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr Khashoggi, was being launched.” Just in case Prince William is in need of some small talk.

Of course, a visit by a senior member of the Royal Family is never just ceremonial. It is an act of diplomacy, and symbolism too. The moral endorsement of the British crown will be cherished by the Saudi regime, which likes to think of itself as “royal” in the grand tradition of the Western monarchies, despite its parvenu origins. But Prince William’s visit raises uncomfortable questions — not only about Middle Eastern realpolitik in an era of shifting alliances, but about the values that the United Kingdom claims to uphold.

These questions have become especially acute in the wake of a recent High Court judgment against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It concerned Ghanem al-Masarir, a Saudi dissident living in Britain since 2003. Through his popular YouTube channel, The Ghanem Show, recorded in Wembley, al-Masarir uses satire to expose corruption and human rights abuses within Saudi Arabia. His reach is vast, amassing over 300 million views, primarily from audiences inside Saudi Arabia who seek alternatives to state-controlled narratives and pro-regime bots.

But the authorities are aware of him too. Al-Masarir has been under constant harassment since 2004. He claims that a large check was forged in an effort to break him financially; that his phones were infiltrated with Israeli-manufactured Pegasus spyware; that he was followed and assaulted in broad daylight; and that he received explicit death threats from individuals linked to the Saudi royal court. The most violent incident, al-Masarir says, occurred in August 2018 he was followed from a cafe and assaulted by two men near the Brompton Road entrance of Harrods. Al-Masarir alleged that during the beating, the attackers repeatedly shouted: “Who are you to talk about the family of al-Saud?” and “How dare you curse Prince Salman, we won’t allow it!” They called him a “slave of Qatar” and threatened to “teach him a lesson”. When an English friend who was with al-Masarir told them they were protected by the Queen and British police, the attackers retorted: “Fuck London — their queen is our slave and their police are our dogs.”

In 2010, al-Masarir was befriended by an individual claiming to be a Master’s student in the UK who repeatedly attempted to persuade him to travel to Italy or Egypt. He later discovered this man’s true identity: Rajeh al-Baqmi, the head of Saudi intelligence at the Saudi embassy in London. He also encountered Maher Mutreb, a Saudi intelligence officer at the embassy, who made an explicit warning that he should never leave the UK. This might have been a back-handed threat with a hint of protection, suggesting that unlike their Russian counterparts who were prepared to murder co-nationals in London or Salisbury, Saudi mafiosi are more comfortable conducting their nefarious operations outside the UK, in countries such as Turkey.

Mutreb is clearly not to be messed with. A brigadier general commanding the Saudi hit squad or “Rapid Intervention Force”, it was he who led the team charged with killing and dismembering Khashoggi, assisted by Dr Salah al-Tubaigy, a forensic pathologist who is thought to have wielded the bone saw. In the audio recordings revealed by Turkish intelligence — the Saudis had failed to sweep the consulate for bugs — it is Mutreb’s voice that dominates. “Keep pushing, don’t remove your hand!”, followed by: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over,” with the sounds of plastic sheets and the whine of an electric saw. While there is no audio directly linking the Crown Prince to the Khashoggi murder, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. In a separate audio, leaked by the CIA, the phrase “tell your boss” occurs in a conversation between Mutreb and the Crown Prince’s de facto chief of staff, Saud al-Qahtani. As Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst, told The New York Times: “A phone call like that… is as close to a smoking gun as you’re going to get.”

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The disclosures implicating MBS in the murder will certainly be ignored in the current White House — whose incumbents include the Crown Prince’s close friend, Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law. But is it really always necessary for the UK to toe the US line? At the very least, the High Court ruling in the Ghanem al-Masarir case should give the Palace — and the Foreign Office — pause for thought. Saudi Arabia initially attempted to claim immunity under the 1978 State Immunity Act. However, the court ruled in 2022 that the Kingdom was not immune to these claims. After the Saudi state failed to pay court costs and its appeal was struck out, the final judgment was delivered on 26 January. Judge Pushpinder Saini found that on the balance of probabilities the Kingdom had been responsible for the physical attack on al-Masarir and for hacking his phone: “The KSA had a clear interest and motivation to shut down the claimant’s public criticism of the Saudi government.”

In its ruling, the court awarded al-Masarir more than £3 million in compensation for the psychiatric harm caused by hacking his phone as well as the physical assault. This marks a significant benchmark in the defense of human rights — though, given its refusal to take part in the legal proceedings, there is no certainty that the Saudi government will actually pay.

Nevertheless, any concerns that the British state has about criminality are outweighed by realpolitik. As David Hearst, an astute Middle East observer, has argued, a profound realignment is underway in the Arab world. It is not driven by palace intrigues, tribal rivalries, or the usual contests between regional proxies. Nor is it about Iran or political Islam — the two habitual anxieties of Sunni Arab rulers. And unlike the Arab Spring, it has not emerged from popular uprisings or mass protests. Yet its consequences could be just as far-reaching.

What has changed, according to Hearst, is that the region’s most populous Arab states — above all Saudi Arabia and Algeria, and potentially Egypt — have begun to recognize the threat of a shared project of Israel and the United Arab Emirates to reshape the Middle East. Their fear is that Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi intend to fragment Arab-majority or Arab-leaning states. This would enable the Israelis and Emiratis to control key maritime chokepoints, such as the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, and entrench military and economic dominance across the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and beyond.

This strategy is already explicit in Israel’s actions: in its efforts to create de facto enclaves in Syria protecting the Druzes and Kurds; in its recognition of Somaliland, which gives it a foothold in the Horn of Africa; and in its general efforts to weaken Arab polities where national unity tends to be problematic. For the UAE, fragmentation has been a long-running method of power projection. It’s visible in Libya, where the UAE has provided military support to General Khalifa Haftar against the UN-supported government in Tripoli; in Sudan, where the UAE backs the genocidal Rapid Support Forces against the central government; and in southern Yemen, where the UAE armed and empowered the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in pursuit of a separatist state aligned with Emirati interests and open to ties with Israel.

Indeed, Yemen is the decisive fault line in the plan for regional fragmentation. What began as a campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood-linked al-Islah movement evolved into a broader attempt to carve out an Emirati client state in the south, centered on the port of Aden and extending east into the Hadhramaut valley. The separatists’ attempt to take over the port of al Mukalla in the Hadhramaut region at the end of last year proved a turning point. Saudi Arabia, now encircled on its southern frontier, felt that Emirati ambitions were now threatening its security — and duly responded with force. Backing official Yemeni government troops, it bombed STC positions in Mukalla, reversing much of Abu Dhabi’s decade-long project in a matter of days. Almost simultaneously, Israel’s recognition of the separatist government of Somaliland (it is the only UN state to formally do so) confirmed Saudi fears that these were not isolated moves but elements of a coordinated strategy across both sides of the Bab el-Mandeb.

The rift between Mohammed bin Salman and his former mentor, the Emirati president Mohammed bin Zayed, was now gaping. The pair were once close partners in resisting the Muslim Brotherhood and allied movements. Now, Riyadh has not only confronted Emirati proxies militarily but also publicly reframed Abu Dhabi as a destabilizing actor. The Saudi media attacks on Mohammed bin Zayed have been blistering, depicting the UAE’s president as a disruptive force rather than the trusted ally of yore.

And the break reflects a deeper recalculation. Saudi Arabia understands that its strategic weight — in terms of population, territory, and oil power — far exceeds that of the UAE. Once you remove the expat community living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there are barely one million Emirati citizens. Abu Dhabi may specialize in covert action and proxy warfare, but it cannot prevail against Riyadh when vital Saudi interests are at stake.

Meanwhile, Washington under Donald Trump has intensified Saudi unease by treating global energy resources as prizes to be seized and threatening to depress oil prices, undermining the kingdom’s fiscal stability. Riyadh has concluded that US military power does not equate to responsible governance, and that American adventurism routinely generates chaos it cannot manage.

So the Saudi turn is not moral but strategic. By resisting Emirati-Israeli plans for regional fragmentation, Riyadh is positioning itself as an autonomous Arab power, potentially aligning more closely with Turkey, Egypt, Algeria — and perhaps, even long-term, with Iran. What it favors is a regional security order independent of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Given the emerging regional configurations, the British government — and the Palace — would be right in thinking that Britain’s interests align more closely with the Saudi Kingdom which, like it or not, is emerging as a leading player in the region and a potential source of stability rather than with the disruptive UAE. But does all this mean that the heir to the throne must cosy up to his murderous Saudi counterpart?

Prince William has cultivated an image as a thoughtful, socially conscious public figure — engaged with environmental issues, interfaith dialogue, and the responsibilities of leadership. It does not befit that persona for him to associate himself too closely with a regime implicated in surveillance, murderous violence, and repression. If William proceeds with the visit, he will need to find ways of expressing a certain distance from his hosts. He should certainly decline any invitations to inspect MBS’s yacht, Serena. According to the anonymous Saudi activist who goes by the name Mujtahid, Jamal Khashoggi’s fingers are kept on board as a trophy.

In a bid to wean his nation off its oil addiction, de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has approved the building of numerous such resorts to lure high-end tourists to the kingdom. The most egregious, and least plausible, is a ski resort planned for the arid mountain town of Trojena, which plans to pump out snow for three months a year for the merriment of international ski bums. This energy-guzzling resort forms part of Neom, MBS’s futuristic giga-project in north-west Saudi Arabia. If you look it up online, you will find a fantasy world of yachting marinas, soaring buildings, and elegant people in European attire exploring the rugged beauty of Arabia and its dazzling Red Sea coast.

For many Western architects hedged by planning laws at home, the lure of building in Saudi Arabia’s wild west is irresistible — despite the nation’s abysmal record on human rights and the environment. Even after the murder and dismemberment of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, at the hands of a team sent specially from Riyadh, the architectural bonanza continues apace. According to Architects’ Journal, dozens of UK architecture firms are understood to be involved in Vision 2030, the array of projects overseen by MBS, of which Neom forms a part.

One of these firms is Foster + Partners. Although English architect Norman Foster stepped back from the board overseeing Neom after Khashoggi’s murder, his practice has only deepened its engagement. It is currently designing a two-kilometer-high tower near Riyadh, set to be the world’s tallest; a six-runway “aerotropolis”; and what is described as “the world’s first fully immersive experiential marine life center” at the Amaala Red Sea resort on the Gulf. For his role in building Neom’s airport, Foster has been strongly reprimanded by the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), which stated that “based on Saudi Arabia’s reputation for human rights abuse, slavery, and deaths in construction, working on projects there which are not critical would be unethical” — and contrary to the Royal Institute of British Architects’ professional code of practice.

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Meanwhile, more than a dozen beautiful football stadiums are also being designed by global architects including Populous and Foster + Partners. These are under construction or renovation ahead of the 2034 World Cup, which was awarded by FIFA to Saudi Arabia last December amid controversies about changed voting procedures and the concerns of human rights organizations.

In accepting such fantastical commissions, Western architects are choosing to overlook not only the murder of Khashoggi, but also the fallout from MBS’s massive construction projects. The region where Neom is located is the heartland of the Huwaitat tribe — rivals to the Al Saudi. According to human rights group ALQST, Saudi authorities have illegally displaced local tribes to make way for Neom, and cracked down violently on tribe members who resisted eviction. Several have been sentenced to execution. Today, the Huwaitats’ goat-hair tents have been replaced by temporary trailer-parks, housing more than 100,000 bureaucrats and construction workers.

Since then, The Wall Street Journal has exposed malpractice and corruption at the highest level of Neom, with senior executives who were banned for corruption in Europe still practicing freely in Arabia. As the newspaper put it, MBS “allows what many consider bad behavior as long as an executive delivers on his vision”. Meanwhile, on the ground, workers on The Line are reportedly subjected to 16-hour days and poor working conditions. An ITV documentary aired last October, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, estimated that 21,000 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh have died since 2016 while working on Saudi’s giga-projects.

If bad behavior won’t give MBS pause, perhaps the project’s finances will, as hoped-for foreign investors are deterred less by human rights abuses than Neom’s dubious economic prospects. According to the WSJ, a draft board audit last summer estimated the amount required to complete Neom by 2080 at $8.8 trillion — that’s 25 times more than the annual Saudi budget. The audit found “evidence of deliberate manipulation” of finances by “certain members of management”, aided by McKinsey & Co.

Yet it seems little will tear MBS from his futuristic vision. And so it is worth asking what Neom’s design reveals about its autocratic patron. The jewel in Neom’s crown is The Line, a steel and glass structure some 170 kilometers long with mirrors for walls and cascading terraces with plants and ponds. Nothing about its design seems “Islamic”. The original model was devised by veteran American architect Thom Mayne, who, unlike the late Tom Payette, designer of the impressive Aga Khan hospital in Karachi, has no experience of working in Muslim environments. Before designing the hospital, Payette, at his client’s request, visited numerous sites from Spain to Pakistan to study different styles of Islamic architecture. The idea was to learn how qualities of Muslim living as well as architecture could be incorporated into the hospital’s design. So far Mayne has made no such efforts.

It might not be too outlandish to describe Mayne’s linear vision as “Islamically illiterate” in terms of both its aesthetic as well as its social vision. While there may not be a consensus about what constitutes “Islamic architecture” globally, the rhythmic opposition of earth-bound domes and soaring minarets that characterize iconic masterpieces like the Taj Mahal in India or the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, Turkey, are conspicuously absent. As Mayne himself explained to the Saudis, The Line’s rectilinear structure was inspired by deconstructing a map of New York.

In awarding the contract to Western designers oblivious of Muslim contexts, MBS and his apparatchiks demonstrated either an ignorance of the aesthetic and cultural traditions prevailing in the Muslim world, or, more probably, a disdain for them. Such contempt was on full display when the Al Saud clan destroyed the Ottoman fabric of Mecca, turning the holy city of Islam into a replica of Las Vegas.

In a recent plea to UK architects, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan, told the Architects’ Journal: “I’m proud that you are helping Saudi Arabia to develop, and this is what Jamal wanted, but please speak to them [Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family] and remind them there is unfinished business here, which is Jamal.” It seems unlikely that in Saudi Arabia, a Disneyland for ambitious British architects, that Hanan’s plea will make the slightest headway. As J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, supposedly said when asked to explain the appeal of working on atomic weapons: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it.”

The message from Donald Trump’s peace talks on Tuesday is clear: Saudi Arabia is now the most influential Arab country. Far outranking Egypt, the kingdom is well placed to benefit from America’s freewheeling new foreign policy, especially given that MBS enjoys remarkably close relationships with figures at the very heart of Trumpworld. From making peace with Israel to securing nuclear weapons, the second Trump term could transform Saudi foreign policy.

From a Saudi perspective, arguably the most significant US presence at the talks in Riyadh was not Rubio, or even National Security Advisor Mike Walz, but rather Steve Witkoff. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and sometime golf buddy, was the President’s pick to meet Putin in Moscow last week. According to Trump, the encounter lasted “for a very extended period” — and that isn’t the only sign of his influence.

Witkoff, like Trump, is a billionaire real estate magnate who knows how to get things done. Even before his boss was formally inaugurated, and as the Biden administration faced blockages with the Gaza hostage deal, Witkoff defied convention (being Jewish himself) by conspicuously insisting that Benjamin Netanyahu break the Sabbath to meet him. Though not at that point officially in post, Witkoff then flew to Doha, where he spent time with Biden’s own Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk, who for his part praised the meeting, telling the Washington Post of a “very close partnership” that even extended to friendship.

As Trump’s envoy to a notoriously unstable region, Witkoff will doubtless face formidable obstacles. But in a diplomatic landscape where personal fixers are increasingly replacing professionals from the State Department, he’s unlikely to be outflanked by officials who work by the book. And in MBS, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, he also finds a partner deeply familiar with the world of Washington-Riyadh diplomacy.

Trump himself has always set great store on his relationship with the Saudis. During his first presidency, in May 2017, Riyadh was the first foreign capital he visited. In part, this preoccupation can be understood strategically, with the country a huge market for American weaponry, and a key to shoring up Israel and US Gulf allies against pressure from Iran.

Yet he had friends there too. In his May 2017 visit, Trump was accompanied by his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The latter had formed a strong personal bond with MBS, at that point the kingdom’s deputy crown prince. Over the course of private conversations, and hinting too at Kushner’s friendship with the Netanyahus, the pair likely decided they could short-circuit the usual diplomatic process and forge a peace between Israelis and Palestinians — all while outflanking other regional actors. Never mind that Kushner had no knowledge of the region, beyond his family’s support for Israeli non-profits supporting Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank: his friendship with MBS made him influential.

Some American officials believed that the Saudis and their Emirati allies were treating Kushner as a “useful idiot” in their designs against the Islamic Republic. But Kushner and his friends in the White House could also see the advantage in having an ally in the Saudi court at a time of growing, if unacknowledged, alignment between Israel and the Gulf monarchies. As Martin Indyk, a former US diplomat, told the New York Times: “The relationship between Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman constitutes the foundation of the Trump policy not just toward Saudi Arabia but toward the region.”

After the shocking murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist killed at his country’s consulate in Istanbul, Kushner’s relationship with MBS came under growing public scrutiny. Revelations about their “bromance” took an especially sinister turn when it appeared that Kushner might be less interested in brokering Middle East peace than in having the Saudis rescue his own family’s finances in exchange for helping them acquire nuclear weapons.

Thanks to a disastrous investment in a New York property, complete with the apocalyptic address of 666 Fifth Avenue, the business Kushner shared with his father Charles was in dire straits. Kushner Jr looked to the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, but they turned him down. He was rescued instead by Brookfield Asset Management, a company that owns Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear services business hoping to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has always claimed it wanted the technology for civilian purposes, even as it insisted on producing its own nuclear fuel, rather than buying it more cheaply abroad.

Shortly after being rebuffed by the Qataris, and in his role as Trump’s senior foreign policy advisor, Kushner provided critical US support for a diplomatic assault on Qatar. After a long period of tension, with Qatar seen as much more friendly to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Iran, with which it shares the world’s largest field of natural gas, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ultimately blockaded the country. According to media reports at the time, Kushner was instrumental in undermining efforts by the then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — a seasoned oil man familiar with the region — to end the standoff. Soon enough, Tillerson himself was out, peremptorily dismissed by Trump in March 2018.

The Khashoggi scandal initially embarrassed the first Trump administration, not least because the victim was well known in Washington and had friends on Capitol Hill. The manner of Khashoggi’s death — he was first strangled, then brutally dismembered — hardly helped. Yet after talking on the phone to both Saudi’s king and its crown prince, Trump bought into the story that the killing had been the work of rogue actors. Here, Kushner’s role appears to have been pivotal. Though officials had tried to restrict his communications with MBS, in accordance with protocols that members of the National Security Council should participate in all calls with foreign leaders, the two men continued to talk and text on WhatsApp. With US intelligence agencies concluding that the killing may have been ordered by MBS himself, Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House, perhaps unsurprising when the duo are on first-name terms.

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MBS can now rest assured he has a powerful friend in the White House. Yet challenges remain, particularly since the horrors of the Hamas massacre and the annihilation of Gaza that followed. From a personal perspective, the crown prince has said he has no interest in the “Palestinian issue” — but must take account of the fact that his young population does. Before the Hamas attack, his aims were clear enough. In return for “normalizing” relations with Israel in line with the Abraham Accords, signed by the UAE and Bahrain, the Saudis would secure a comprehensive security deal with the United States. Notably, that included backing for its stop-start nuclear ambitions. The October 7 atrocity put paid to that project. As even Joe Biden acknowledged, one of the reasons Hamas attacked Israel was because the Saudis were about to “sit down with” their old rivals in Tel Aviv.

On this particular issue, Trump’s foreign policy could yet cause the Saudis problems. Think about it like this: can MBS really go along with Trump’s mad scheme to take over Gaza, and ethnically cleanse its Palestinian population, while also maintaining that there must be an irreversible “pathway” to Palestinian statehood — a scheme Netanyahu has devoted his whole career to wrecking. It would be ironic indeed if Kushner’s friendship with one Middle Eastern ruler scuppered his plans with another.

There may of course be some wiggle room here. On Fox News, Steve Witkoff suggested that Trump’s resettlement plan — rejected by Jordan and Egypt — was really his way of starting a new conversation: “Now you have the Egyptians saying we have a plan, the Jordanians are saying we have a plan, and people are really engaging in really important cogent discussions…We are actually engaged in a productive conversation around what is best for Gaza and how do we make peoples’ lives better.” At a summit in Cairo later this month, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan are expected to put forward the Arab plan for Gaza. Having dangled before Trump a $600 billion investment in the US and the promise of a reduction in oil prices, MBS won’t be without leverage.

***

Malise Ruthven’s latest book, Unholy Kingdom: Religion, Corruption and Violence in Saudi Arabia (Verso), is out on 25 February.

The unexpected collapse of Assad’s regime, propped up by Russia and Iran, was the result of years of meticulous planning by Hussain al-Shara’a, known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — an offshoot of al-Qaeda based in the Turkish-protected enclave of Idlib outside of Assad’s control. An astute operator who currently appears to prioritise governing Syria over messianic dreams of global jihad, Jolani timed his offensive to benefit from the US-sponsored ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, when the latter’s fighters had been withdrawn from Syria or neutralised. Meanwhile, Russia was preoccupied with Ukraine.

Assad’s fall is a major blow to Iran and a victory for Israel in its drawn-out contest with the Islamic Republic. But the biggest winner is probably Turkey, whose leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a “soft” supporter of Islamism. The power vacuum created by the fall of the Assad’s regime, with soldiers abandoning their units, leaves the country with a number of forces outside of Jolani’s control. These include the Syrian National Army —  a militia supported by Turkey — as well as Iran-linked Iraqi militias and Kurdish forces in the north-east. The southern border has its own cluster of militias, including some manned by the Druze minority.

Jolani has signalled inclusiveness, ordering his fighters not to “instil fear” into people of different sects. The Shi’ite minorities, such as Alawites and Ismailis, will be feeling especially vulnerable, given the extent to which they relied on Assad’s Alawite-dominated Baathist regime for protection. Yet there is no guarantee that Jolani will succeed in asserting his authority over the mosaic of Syria’s different faith or ethnic communities, which tend to arm themselves in times of civil strife. While a majority of Syrians are Sunni, its society contains a large diversity of ethnic and religious communities including Alawis, Armenians, Assyrians, Chechens, Druzes, Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Ismailis and Turkomans. Before the civil war erupted, in 2011, polarising religious forces between Salafist-oriented groups supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Syria had an impressive record of permitting pluralist religious spaces, though not political dissent.

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Assad’s fall is sure to have unnerved Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), along with other wealthy Gulf rulers. While they may relish the Iranian setback — two of Iran’s “axis of resistance” allies, Assad and Hezbollah, have effectively been sent off the field — the deeper implications of Syrian regime change must seem threatening. After years of civil war, during which some half a million people were killed and 14 million displaced, and which saw cities such as Aleppo pulverised by Russian air power and Syrian air force barrel bombs, the situation appeared to have been stabilised. The mainly Sunni rebels were safely contained in the north-western enclave of Idlib. And in May 2023, Syria was readmitted to the Arab League, a mark of “normalisation” supported by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Now, the region has fallen to chaos again. The kings and emirs of the Gulf have good reasons to fear that the recent scenes of jubilation in Damascus and other Syrian cities could become harbingers of a new Arab Spring. After all, popular feeling against repressive political structures often poses a threat to incumbent regimes, especially to dynastic rulers such as the Assads or Sauds. As the Israeli analyst Zvi Bar’el observes: “When militias take over a country, regardless of their ideology, it threatens traditional regimes that rely on authoritarian control. Such success as was seen in the Arab Spring, is contagious and encourages the revival of organisations and rebel movements.”

Saudi Arabia was relatively unaffected by the Arab Spring in 2011. A “Day of Rage” announced on Facebook aimed at imitating the massive street protests occurring in Cairo and other Arab capitals, but the movement fizzled out after would-be demonstrators received messages on their phones threatening fines or national expulsion. By contrast, in neighbouring Bahrain, where a Sunni dynasty presides over a restive Shi‘a majority, there were weeks of sit-ins and protests. The Saudis eventually sent troops across the causeway to assist the island’s government in restoring order.

The Assad regime may come to loom large in the annals of human torture and misery after a decade of civil war. But the Western-friendly Saudis, who are not currently facing the threat of internal conflict, can hardly be described as laggards in this area, with their high levels of political repression. Since MBS became the de facto ruler in 2015, around 1,400 people have been executed by the state, including minors.

The triumph of Jolani, and his Turkish backers, poses a dilemma for MBS. He and other Gulf rulers may be happy to see the anti-Western “axis of resistance” defanged, based as it is on a “Shi‘ite crescent” stretching from Iran to the Shi‘ite heartlands of southern Lebanon. The Saudi kingdom was founded on an alliance between the tribal power of the Al Saud family and the explicitly anti-Shi‘ite ideology of Wahhabism — and, for a long time, its strategy was to foster a disdain towards or even hatred of Shi’ism that persists to this day. When the Sunni minority in Iraq felt vulnerable after the US invasion that removed the (Sunni) Saddam Hussein, Saudi clerics spread fear of the Shi’ite danger, warning against the murder, torture and displacement of Sunni Iraqis. After the Arab Spring uprisings that lit the fuse of civil war in Syria, the Saudi government adopted a policy of “‘sectarianisation”. Madawi al-Rasheed, a historian and anthropologist, sees this as “a deliberate counter-revolutionary strategy…deployed to exaggerate religious differences and hatred and prevent the development of national non-sectarian politics”.

More than a decade ago, the emergence in Syria of a Sunni-dominated regime of neo-fundamentalist or “salafist” colouring would have suited the Saudi agenda perfectly. Over the years, the Saudi regime has spent billions of petrodollars promoting salafism (a neo-conservative type of religiosity, with emphasis on outward observance) throughout the Islamic world. According to several estimates, the sums spent by the Saudis on dawa (evangelism) prior to 2016 ranges from $70 billion to $100 billion. This dynamic dates back to the oil-boom years of King Faisal (r. 1964-75), who saw the Muslim Brotherhood and other salafist movements as necessary counterweights to the secular-oriented Arab nationalism promoted by Egypt’s charismatic leader Abd al-Nasser. Muslim Brotherhood exiles, such as Muhammad Qutb, brother of the movement’s leading intellectual Sayyid Qutb, were welcomed to teach in the Saudi kingdom, where Muhammad’s students included the young Osama bin Laden.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 and, more strongly, the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 (with 15 of the 19 hijackers hailing from Saudi Arabia) led to an eventual volte-face in Saudi religious orientation. The change was epitomised by a state-sanctioned sermon delivered by Shaikh Abdulrahman al-Sudais, imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, hailing the vision of MBS as the “young, ambitious, and divinely-inspired” crown prince, comparable to the great Umar ibn-al-Khattab, second caliph of Islam or “deputy” to the Prophet Muhammad. The sermon, broadcast live on cable networks and social media, was delivered less than three weeks after the murder and physical dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A former champion of the Saudi regime, Khashoggi was like Erdoğan a “soft” supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood — a movement that includes not only hardened jihadists such as Jolani, but constitutionally minded politicians such as Rachid al-Ghannouchi, leader of the Ennahda Party in Tunisia. The Brotherhood, once championed by King Faisal, is now anathematised in both the Gulf (with the exception of Qatar) and Washington as the primary threat to dynastic rule.

The Saudi volte-face was a necessary prerequisite to the Abraham Accords signed between Israel, Bahrain and the UAE in September 2020, (and later with Sudan and Morocco). It was negotiated in part by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a family friend and political supporter of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In September 2023, Saudi Arabia was on the point of “normalising” relations with Israel, with Riyadh allowing journalists to write op-eds in their favour, and MBS himself telling the US Fox News that “every day we get closer” to a deal. The October 7 attack by Hamas, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and taking several hundred hostages, put paid to these prospects, as Israel’s counter-attack on Gaza produced Dresden-like scenes of urban devastation and many thousands of civilian casualties. Last November, at a gathering of Islamic leaders in Riyadh, the Crown Prince even used the “G-word”, accusing Israel of carrying out “collective genocide” against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Although the Gaza war may be coming to an end, “normalisation” between the Saudi kingdom and Israel now seems a distant prospect — even if Kushner returns as his father-in-law’s Middle East adviser next year. The international outrage caused by the Gaza counter-attack, along with genocidal statements by some Israeli leaders and the evident failure of the Biden administration to restrain its Israeli ally, has put the lid on normalisation for the foreseeable future. While Saudi Arabia, unlike Qatar, lacks a free press, polls are sometimes permitted. A rare poll published in December 1993 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that 90% of Saudis think that Arab countries should sever all ties with Israel “in protest against its military action in Gaza”.

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Thanks largely to the Gaza war, and to the failure of the Trump administration to retaliate in support of the Saudis after an Iranian attack on the oil refinery at Abqaiq in September 2019, Saudi Arabia has pivoted away from US dependency. The Saudi-Iran rapprochement in 2023 was brokered, not by Kushner or the White House, but by President Xi Jinping of China. When the Chinese president visited Riyadh in December 2022, he was given fulsome honours. Not only was he greeted with a purple carpet, but Saudi jets escorted his plane streaming the green and white colours of the national flag. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to visit, MBS kept him waiting for some 12 hours before granting him an audience.

Saudi Arabia’s orientation away from the West and towards the global south is heralded by its upcoming membership of Brics. It will join the existing acronymic members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — alongside Iran, the UAE, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia. Though faced with declining oil revenues, MBS may be heartened by the fact that he is now able to trade oil products in the Chinese currency, avoiding the sanctions imposed on Russia by US dollar leverage. And despite the cutbacks on his ambitious plans for Vision 2030, aimed at weaning his economy off oil, a future in a world market dominated by China and the global south could be rosy indeed. That is provided he is clever enough, or lucky enough, to avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi — or, indeed, of Bashar al-Assad.

But the question remains: what does MBS want? At the heart of all Saudi foreign and domestic policy is the instinct to preserve the Al Saud dynasty. The monarchy has sought to achieve this in three ways: by providing security for the Saudi people, by promoting economic development, and by protecting Islam. Foreign policy has played an important role in meeting all three objectives.

Towards this end, King Salman and his son MBS have been racing to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and bring its social policies more in line with global norms. Though this transformation plan, known as Vision 2030, clearly indicates a shift in tactics, the overall strategic objectives of Saudi foreign policy remain largely the same as ever.

Saudi foreign policy cannot be properly understood without a grasp of its volatile regional politics, characterised by hostility between Sunni and Shia Muslim states and, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Saudi Arabia has borders with eight different nations and must defend two long coastlines with limited manpower. In previous decades, Egypt, Iraq, and Israel have stirred up trouble for the Saudis; today, the most likely threats come from Iran, Yemen and the likes of Al-Qaeda and Isis.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, an aggressive, terrorism-sponsoring regime, is an unfortunate neighbour to have. It has challenged Saudi interests in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen through the use of violent proxy forces such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, and its large missile forces sit within easy range of Saudi Arabia’s critical oil and desalination facilities. At times, it has even sought to delegitimise the Sunni Saudi administration of Mecca and disrupt the Hajj. But above all, many in Riyadh fear Tehran’s continuing efforts to enrich uranium.

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Yemen, an impoverished country with a population nearly as large as Saudi Arabia, poses a whole other set of problems. Riyadh has long been concerned about drug and weapons smuggling out of the civil war-stricken country, as well as illegal immigration. But now it fears that Al Qaeda forces pushed out of Saudi Arabia have reestablished themselves in Yemen. On top of this, Houthi insurgents in the country, who are armed and funded by Tehran, and harbour irredentist claims to southern Saudi Arabia, are threatening to establish an Iranian-aligned government on its southern border.

Yet it was Al Qaeda, not Iran or Yemen, that has come closest to overthrowing the Saudi government. Between 2003 and 2007, Al Qaeda launched a terrorist campaign that killed dozens of Saudi citizens and more than 100 Saudi police officers. It targeted oil facilities, government offices, and even the American consulate in Jeddah where five employees were killed. The Saudis are determined not to let this happen again, doing its utmost to challenge Al Qaeda’s ideology and prevent the establishment of foreign training camps and operations bases.

Faced with such threats, where does diplomacy fit in? Throughout its history, Saudi Arabia has relied on powerful friends for support. It is unlikely the nation would ever have been established without British political, financial, and military support in the aftermath of the First World War. And since the Second World War, American support has proved vital, especially when Egypt threatened Saudi Arabia’s border in the Sixties, and when Iraq did the same in the Nineties. Likewise, British and American counterterrorism assistance helped to defeat Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

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Saudi foreign policy has also made astute use of its abundance of oil. No nation exerts greater influence on the price of oil — and therefore global energy prices — than Saudi Arabia, and it uses this to gain influence abroad. Not only has oil allowed this militarily-weak nation to maintain a global network of dependent customers, but its vast oil income means it can effectively distribute large amounts of cash to allies quickly and quietly. In their eyes, it is Riyadh’s ability to influence oil prices and finance its friends that has made it worth defending.

Yet oil money isn’t the only source of Saudi foreign influence: control over Mecca and Medina as well as the annual Hajj pilgrimage give it a unique position in the Muslim world. Like the Ottoman Sultans before them, Saudi kings have adopted the title Protector of the Two Holy Mosques, one of the most respected accolades in Islam. In the past, Saudi Arabia explicitly used religion to confront secular Arab nationalism in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as well as during the atheist Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Today, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Islamic Development Bank and the Muslim World League are all based in Saudi Arabia and are often used to promote its interests abroad.

When Salman bin Abdulaziz became King of Saudi Arabia in 2015, his mastery of diplomacy was immediately put to the test. At that time, the Arab world was in a state of chaos not seen since the 13th-century Mongol invasions: the continued existence of Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen were in question; Isis had become the first terrorist organisation with its own capital city and oilfields, and Iran-backed Houthi insurgents had just seized Yemen’s capital of Sanaa and were on the verge of capturing the entire country.

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Yet Saudi Arabia’s traditional foreign policy tools were in poor condition. The Saudi budget was deep in the red, with oil prices ending the year below $40 a barrel. And Riyadh was alarmed by the alacrity with which the Obama administration had abandoned Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak to the Arab Spring and withdrawn from Iraq. Those decisions had handed one of Saudi’s neighbours over to the Muslim Brotherhood and the other to Isis and Iran. On top of that, King Salman’s plans to modernise the economy and reform its society had placed him at odds with many conservative religious scholars. All of this was made worse in 2018 when the assassination of Khashoggi turned MBS into a global pariah.

Over the past few years, King Salman and his son have sought to revive Saudi’s fortunes. They have not abandoned the three traditional principles of Saudi foreign policy, but they have, however, significantly changed how they rely on allies, influence energy markets, and promote Islam.

Most obviously, in an increasingly multipolar world, the Saudis have adopted a multi-partner foreign policy. For much of its history, the kingdom was firmly aligned with the West economically and politically. While those relations remain important, they are no longer exclusive. Today, China is the kingdom’s largest trading partner, and it is the Chinese who have more recently developed the kingdom’s railroads, ports and telecommunications networks. Last year, Riyadh and Beijing officially raised the level of their relations to that of strategic partnership.

Elsewhere, in an effort to increase their influence over global energy markets, the Saudis have created a new partnership with Russia known as Opec Plus. Saudi energy policy always seeks to keep oil prices as high as possible without driving its customers into recession or promoting the development of alternative energy sources. Now, their expanded cartel has brought together the world’s two largest oil exporters. It has allowed Saudi Arabia and Russia to weather the Covid crisis and maintain higher oil prices than either could have done individually. It has also allowed Saudi to effectively remain neutral in the Ukraine war: it has provided financial aid to Kyiv, but still purchased discounted Russian oil for its own use.

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Finally, the version of Islam Saudi Arabia promotes has also shifted in recent years, becoming more tolerant of both other Muslims and other religions. At home, women can now drive and the religious police have largely disappeared. The sermons preached in Mecca have become less conservative and less anti-Shia, while rabbis and priests are allowed to quietly conduct their own services. Overseas, Saudi missionaries have become less active and less strident while Saudi charities have become much more tightly controlled.

The results of these tactical adjustments have been overwhelmingly positive. Doubting American resolve in deterring Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Riyadh has sought closer ties with Tehran, in a deal that was brokered by Beijing. As a result, the war in Yemen has largely come to an end, thus securing the kingdom’s southern border and freeing up resources for its economic development. The Saudi-Russian energy alliance, meanwhile, has clearly helped elevate oil prices, bolstering the sovereign wealth fund which has eroded the blowback from Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Saudi relations with Iraq, Qatar, Pakistan, India and Turkey have all also improved, while security and economic relations with Israel have also quietly grown.

Ultimately, though, Riyadh has no intention of abandoning its close relations with the West, which remains the source of most of its military equipment. Just this month, Washington and Riyadh jointly sponsored a conference in Jeddah seeking to end the war in Ukraine. It is increasingly clear, however, that the Saudis are seeking to diversify their security relations. All the signs suggest that Saudi Arabia is following a more independent, Saudi-first foreign policy, one which doesn’t see any qualms with having Russia as a partner on the one hand, and Britain on the other.

First, some history

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was based on a key pact between two men in the 18^th century, long before the state of Saudi Arabia existed from 1932 onwards.

One was Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a religious leader and theologian from the remote Nejd region of Arabia. He adopted the austere and intolerant creed of the medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyya, who was a controversially puritanical figure even in his own medieval lifetime – think Jan Hus on steroids.

Wahhab opposed Muslims paying their respects to the tombs of the Prophet and his companions (the original ‘salafi’) or hoping for saints to intercede on their behalf, which he condemned as polytheism. With views like these Wahhab needed political protection, much like Luther and Calvin had in early modern Europe.

In 1744, Wahhab took an oath of allegiance to the ruler Muhammad bin Saud. Saud, in Riyadh, would rule his modest tribal domain according to Wahhab’s interpretation of Islam. Wahhab, in turn, would preside over the Saudi clerical hierarchy or ulema, as they still do today.

Eventually a descendant of Saud called Ibn Saud wrested Saudi Arabia from the Ottomans, aided by a fanatic army which espoused Wahhab’s ideas. He slaughtered the army shortly after.[1.  Michael Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab. Makers of the Muslim World (Princeton 2014) for these details]

Black gold

Oil production took off in Saudi Arabia with the formation of the Arabian American Oil Company. Over several decades, the Saudis increased their revenue share of the company until 1988 when they finally secured 100% control and called it Saudi Aramco. One of the few parts of the Kingdom to run with clockwork efficiency is the huge Aramco compound at Dhahran, where 11,000 expats live.[2.  For the history of Aramco see Daniel Yergin, The Prize. The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York 2012) pp. 392ff]

Not all Saudis have been content with these developments, or the hedonistic lifestyle that took hold. Wealth is very unevenly spread and the Kingdom is notoriously corrupt. A few years ago, for example, billions were spent on a sewer network in Jeddah. In reality, after the funding was embezzled, manhole covers were laid without adding pipework below ground, and the city was flooded in waste.[3.  See Lawrence Wright ‘The Kingdom of Silence’ The New Yorker 5 January 2004 on Jeddah’s sewerage crisis.]

In 1986 the Saud family opportunistically decided to change their royal title to ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Places’ and began to invest in propagating Wahhabism abroad. The main vehicle for this was, and is, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which also appoints murky clerical ‘diplomats’ within the Saudi diplomatic service.

Experts estimate that $6 billion has been spent building Wahhabist-influenced mosques and madrassa schools the world over, not to mention books from the world’s largest press. From Nigeria to Malaysia and via London and Birmingham, these inculcate Wahhabism through rote learning of the Koran. It’s telling that when ISIS needed school textbooks for schools in the erstwhile Caliphate, it used Saudi imports without altering a line.[5.  Michael Burleigh, The Best of Times, The Worst of Times. The History of Now (London 2017). On Wahhabism in Africa see Yaroslav Trofimov ‘Jihad Comes to Africa’ Wall Street Journal 5 February 2016]

With a sizeable constituency of religious zealots at home, Saudi policy has been to simply export them. The Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan after December 1979 was a good opportunity for this, especially with the West eager to arm these ‘mujahadeen’. Some of the mujahedeen evolved into Al Qaeda, under their Saudi warlord Osama bin Laden. It was inevitable that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. [3.  From many, many accounts see Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower. Al Qaeda’s Road to 9/11 (London 2006) and Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens. The Story of A Family And Its Fortune (London 2008), both excellent on the Saudi background.]

Little or none of which has impacted on the West’s official view of the Saudis as swing oil producers and customers for enormous arms sales. And since western human rights NGOs keep harping on about the repressive aspects of Saudi Arabia (there is a Chop-Chop Square in Riyadh, not to mention floggings and stonings), the ruling dynasty periodically essays modernizing reforms. Most have been cosmetic.

Where we are now

MbS is a self-styled technocratic reformer, keen to diversify the Kingdom away from hydrocarbons, and towards what is outlined in a revamped McKinsey report called ‘Saudi Vision 2030.’ One chronic problem is a bloated public sector in which people are paid for doing nothing. MbS’s aim is to create private sector work for the many idle young Saudi hands, in finance, entertainment, tourism and so on, while reducing the 11 million strong army of expats and dependents.

Other issues are the absence of working women (they need male chaperones) and an acute lack of affordable housing, which since marriage depends on a home, means many frustrated young males without partners.[7.  See Laura El-Katiri ‘Saudi Arabia’s New Economic Reforms’ Harvard Business Review 17 May 2016 and Shmuel Even and Yoel Guzansky ‘Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030: Reducing Dependency on Oil’ INSS Insight nr 819, 6 May 2016]

At the same time, MbS wants to undermine the social power of the joyless Wahhabi clergy and the ubiquitous Muttaween religious police who serve the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice.

Although MbS has struck at a few freelance Islamist clerics with huge Twitter followings, he has not laid a glove on the Establishment whose stipends his regime pays, and nor has he curtailed the money spent globally propagating Wahhabism. Has he rescinded school textbooks which advocate killing apostates and ‘sorcerors’, or a jihad against all infidels? Has he told the clergy to desist from calling the oppressed Saudi Shia in the oil rich Eastern Province ‘heretical snakes’ and the like? Of course not. What his calls for a ‘moderate’ Islam mean are actually an apolitical version under a revamped authoritarian monarchy for MbS says nothing about representation and consent.[8.  James Dorsey ‘ Crown Prince Mohammed’s Vow to Moderate Saudi Islam: Easier Said Than Done’ Lobe Log  3 November 2017]

Instead, MbS’s latest (preposterous) gambit is to entice foreign investors to help him fund a $500 billion high tech city called NEOM on the Gulf of Aqaba, that sum being significantly more than the Kingdom’s annual budget or its foreign currency reserves. Since he does not like much of conservative small town Saudi Arabia, MbS’s aim seems to be to build himself another version more to his tastes, where young people can drink cocktails and wear bikinis while designing software. Half the ‘population’ will be robots. Western tourists will be able to visit pre-Islamic pagan sites. One wonders how the Wahhabis will regard that?[9.  Andrew Torchia ‘Saudi Arabia plans an investment zone to expand its economy beyond oil’ Reuters/Christian Science Monitor 24 October 2017.]

As MbS prepares to take over when his father Salman abdicates, he has one further trick up his sleeve, which we have witnessed in recent weeks. Though he does not shrink from the luxuries of life – in 2015 MbS paid £453 million to a Russian vodka oligarch for his super yacht Serene after spotting it in the Med – he has decided to copy Xi Jinping’s autocratic playbook with an anti-corruption campaign.[10.  Although the arrests of the likes of News Corp and Twitter shareholder Prince Alwaleed bin Talal generated many headlines, the judicial mechanics are opaque. See ‘New Saudi Committee to investigate public corruption opens ‘new era of transparency’ The National (UAE) 5^th November 2017. Some regard MbS as a puppet of his older mentor the UAE ruler ‘MbZ]

Conveniently this has struck down various potential rivals, who found their bank accounts blocked along with their private jets held at Jeddah and Riyadh airports. They are currently sleeping on mattresses locked in the ball-room of the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, where a couple of weeks ago thousands of investors were gathered to put money into NEOM. Another potential rival died in a helicopter crash near the Yemeni border.

Even the loftiest visions can hit obstacles, as indeed the Serene did when symbolically it ran aground on rocks in 2017 off Sharm al Sheikh after navigational errors.[11.  Felix Sowerbutts ‘134 m ‘Serene’ runs aground in Red Sea’ Superyachtnews 25 August 2017]

MbS had to dip heavily into royal coffers when public sector employees objected to downsizing this summer. The Saudi economy is flat-lining and bond auctions are filling gaps in public finances. MbS’s foolish war in Yemen is costing $58 million a week, with no signs of progress, and the Qataris are resisting Saudi attempts to isolate and depose their ruler for supporting Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Emir of Qatar is under Russian, as well as Iranian, Turkish and US protection. The Saudi proxy war against Assad in Syria has been a disaster too, and now the prime minister of Lebanon, a Saudi puppet, has joined the president of Yemen in exile in Riyadh, as the Kingdom intensifies hostilities on the Lebanese front of its struggle with Iran. Riyadh has also been meddling in Iraq and Kurdistan too.

By contrast, the more sophisticated Iranians are on the advance at all points of the compass, notwithstanding MbS’s ludicrous claims that all Islamist terrorism can be parked at Tehran’s door since 1979.

So far the self-styled ‘Prince of Youth’ relies on the fact that he is popular among younger Saudis who yearn for change. For sure they do, if you ask them about attending cinemas, football matches and rock concerts. But then ask them if they would be relaxed about a stranger dating their sister, and a certain froideur ensues.[12.  For such a survey see the Dorsey article above.]

It is relatively easy to adopt the external trappings of western modernity, like the soulless architecture of Saudi cities, but far harder to adopt the West’s liberated spirit.

Having made many enemies in his precipitate rise to the top, MbS may find that a war with the descendants of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab is a step too far, even for such a Promethean figure as him. Another kind of war, with Iran, would be a disaster for all of us.