Saudi Crown Prince Quotes

Here again Trump accepted the words of a foreign autocrat, just as he had believed Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman did not order the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and as he had believed Russian president Vladimir Putin did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump said that Kim “felt very badly,” but claimed to only know about Warmbier’s case after the fact. “He tells me that he didn’t know about it,” Trump said, “and I take him at his word.

The men were not watering the grass; they were spraying it an emerald green. This was Ireland in an atomizer. The workers were coloring the dead, hurrying to finish before the Crown Prince's gaze would zoom by, perhaps peering through the bullet-proofed, tinted, heavily-armored glass of his German car. So much about the Kingdom concerned outward appearances. Veneer was as important as substance, perhaps more so.

During his tenure as king, from 2005 to 2015, Abdullah did promote women’s education with the royal scholarship program that offered full scholarships to women, as well as men, to travel abroad for university degrees. However, he did not end the prohibition against women driving or relax many other restrictions on women. Only two and a half years after King Abdullah’s death, his brother, King Salman, assisted by his 32-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, decreed that Saudi women would be permitted to obtain driver’s licenses starting in June 2018. Other restrictions that hindered women from accessing government services without a guardian’s permission were also relaxed a few months earlier.

the Israeli state has used NSO to further its national security agenda, perhaps most prominently in securing the support of Arab dictatorships: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. For example, in 2020, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman called then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to demand that his country’s access to Pegasus be restored when the Israeli Defense Ministry declined to renew the tool’s license after the Sunni theocracy had abused it.6 He was soon granted his wish because Israel viewed Saudi Arabia as a key ally against Iran in the Middle East.

The United Arab Emirates reportedly had its contract with NSO cancelled in 2021 when it became clear that Dubai’s ruler had used it to hack his ex-wife’s phone and those of her associates. The New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard, Beirut chief for the paper, had his phone compromised while reporting on Saudi Arabia and its leader Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a man who has invested huge amounts of money in commercial spyware.45 Palestinian human rights activists and diplomats in Palestine have also been targeted by Pegasus, including officials who were preparing complaints against Israel to the International Criminal Court. NSO technology was used by the Israeli police to covertly gather information from Israelis’ smartphones. Pegasus had become a key asset for Israel’s domestic and international activities.46 Saudi Arabia is perhaps the crown jewel of NSO’s exploits, one of the Arab world’s most powerful nations and a close ally of the US with no formal relations with the Jewish state. It is a repressive, Sunni Muslim ethnostate that imprisons and tortures dissidents and actively discriminates against its Shia minority.47 Unlike previous generations of Saudi leaders, bin Salman thought that the Israel/Palestine conflict was “an annoying irritant—a problem to be overcome rather than a conflict to be fairly resolved,” according to Rob Malley, a senior White House official in the Obama and Biden administrations.48

Salman bin Abdulaziz had not expected to inherit these problems. He was only a few years younger than his two full brothers, Sultan and Naif. Both of them had been named crown prince and both had died younger than Salman would be when he ascended the throne. Although fate made Salman an unexpected king, he was not unprepared. He had been governor of Riyadh Province for forty-eight years. Intelligent, pragmatic, hardworking, well organized, and disciplined, he was also strict, demanding, and humorless. He made firm decisions and would become known locally as the “King of Decisiveness.

From that bitter defeat, the Al Saud learned another strategic lesson: above all else, do not use force against each other; keep family disputes peaceful and private; and unite quickly and firmly against anyone who violates this rule. Modern-era Kings Faisal, Khalid, Fahd, and Abdullah all respected this stabilizing principle. King Salman and his ambitious Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, have not.

Chaired by the king, the Council of Ministers meets weekly. It makes most routine decisions by majority vote, with the king and crown prince not always being in the majority. The king usually acts in his capacity as President of the Council of Ministers, and issues new policies as Council of Ministers Decrees. He can, and sometimes does, bypass the Council, issuing Royal Orders in his own name. The most common example of this is his appointment and dismissal of ministers, who have no more independent political authority than American cabinet secretaries.

But, the piece de resistance is Jared Kushner securing a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi Crown prince

According to analysts, 666 Fifth Avenue had about a 30 percent vacancy rate and only generated about half of its annual mortgage. It was rumored that the largest tenant was planning to move out. A Canadian company named Brookfield Property Partners took a ninety-nine-year lease on 666 Fifth Avenue. Brookfield paid the rent for the entire century-long lease, upfront, which amounted to about $1.1 billion—removing Kushner’s biggest financial headache (a $1.4 billion mortgage on the office portion of the tower due in February 2019). Brookfield got its financing for this deal from a $750 million mortgage from ING Group, a Dutch multinational and financial services corporation, and a $300 million mezzanine loan from Apollo Global Management.9 However, the Qatar Investment Authority, the government-run agency that made decisions about the nations’ financial investments, bought a $1.8 billion stake in Brookfield Property Partners. As the second largest shareholder, they had a lot to say about what should be purchased; in this instance, they apparently used Brookfield to bail out 666 Fifth Ave. This investment was a godsend to Kushner, who was now out of debt just as Qatar was suddenly no longer blockaded by Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia (known colloquially as MBS), and his allies.

And on the other side of the world, there was Mohammed bin Salman—the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who was embittered at Bezos for the Washington Post’s coverage of the murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and who some cybersecurity experts would come to believe had hacked Bezos’s cell phone.

The genuine sorrow over King Abdullah’s passing was accompanied by relief at the smooth succession that followed. Crown Prince Salman immediately became the new king and promoted his half-brother, Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin, to be the new crown prince.

On the day of King Abdullah’s death, King Salman appeared to resolve this difficult issue by appointing his nephew, the 55-year-old Prince Mohammed bin Naif or MBN to be the deputy crown prince and third in line of succession. This move to a third-generation prince was an historic event, which effectively ended the political hopes of Abdulaziz’s few remaining sons. Many in Riyadh believed that by making the transition to third-generation leadership while a second-generation king was still on the throne to supervise the process, King Salman had taken the most important step of his reign on his first day in office.

The entire world saw Mohammed bin Salman kneel and kiss the hand of his deposed cousin, promising to always seek his advice. Mohammed bin Naif shook his younger cousin’s hand and swore allegiance to him as the new crown prince. No new deputy crown prince was named then—or has been since. The following month an entirely new security agency, reporting directly to the king through the Royal Diwan and Mohammed bin Salman, was created. Known as the Presidency for State Security, it took over nearly all police and internal intelligence work

Within four years of ascending to the throne, King Salman has thus dramatically changed Saudi Arabia’s political structure. The old system—in which various senior princes ran independent, uncoordinated ministries and where senior technocrats were allied to one senior prince or another—has been dismantled. The king has appointed dozens of new judges and replaced every minister and military service chief, some more than once. Across the Saudi government, all senior technocrats now owe their position not to a variety of princely patrons but solely to the patronage of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

King Salman appears to have engineered a peaceful handover of power from the sons of King Abdulaziz to his grandsons. Third-generation princes now serve not only as crown prince but in nearly all provincial governor, deputy governor, and royal cabinet positions. Like the young team of brothers that King Faisal assembled in the 1960s, the grandsons of King Abdulaziz installed by King Salman and MBS expect to govern Saudi Arabia into the foreseeable future.

Saudi Arabia now suffers from what investors call “key man risk.” Too much is riding on one person. Should Mohammed bin Salman leave the scene for whatever reason, all bets would be off with regard to Saudi stability. There is no obvious replacement. No deputy crown prince has been named,

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been very careful to show respect for the tribes, their sheikhs, and tribal culture.

Saudi Arabia established a robust alliance with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These two neighbors created a very powerful bloc, producing between them nearly half the Arab world’s GDP and 40 percent of OPEC’s oil. Their crown princes, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, were close personally and professionally. Although their interests were not completely aligned, from 2015 onward the two neighbors fought together against the Iranian-supported Houthis in Yemen. In June 2018, their de-facto alliance was given a formal structure through a new Saudi–Emirati Coordination Council. Led by the two crown princes, the new body issued a “Strategy for Resolve” listing forty-four joint economic and military projects that the two nations planned to carry out over the following five years.

It is worth remembering that in March 2015, Mohammed bin Salman was not the king of Saudi Arabia nor the crown prince or even the deputy crown prince. He was the newly appointed minister of defense. The experienced Saud al-Faisal, though ill, was still foreign minister. The popular view that 30-year-old Mohammed bin Salman recklessly took his country to war and that ten sovereign states, including Britain and the United States, blithely followed him, is a misreading of history. King Salman made the decision in order to stop the “Hezbollahization” of Yemen. Major Western powers supported the Saudis in order to prevent the expansion of Iranian influence into the Red Sea, especially in the strategically important Bab al-Mandeb strait, and to maintain Saudi support for then-ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran.

The Crown Prince is betting on demographics. Most Saudis are under 30 and half of them are female. His strategy has been to win the support of the majority in the center by giving them what they want, while firmly suppressing outliers at both ends of the political spectrum

There is now a Shia minister of state, president of Saudi Aramco and chairman of the Crown Prince’s mega-project NEOM, an ambitious and yet unproven concept for an entirely new futuristic city to be built near the border with Jordan.

Saudis posting messages critical of the crown prince have been pressured to publish apologies.

General Motors dealer, Al Jomaih, was based in Riyadh.16 The king and crown prince no doubt also recognized that the Nejd, with its tribal orientation and religious conservatism, had been, and probably always would be, the region of the kingdom most devoted to the House of Saud. They began an affirmative action program for Nejdis in both business and government.

The king and crown prince no doubt also recognized that the Nejd, with its tribal orientation and religious conservatism, had been, and probably always would be, the region of the kingdom most devoted to the House of Saud. They began an affirmative action program for Nejdis in both business and government.

Of his thirty-four living sons, only Faisal was with him at the end. When Saud arrived from Jeddah, Faisal rose to greet him and immediately swore allegiance to his older brother as the new king. Faisal then took a ring off their dead father’s finger and presented it to his brother in a gesture of loyalty.12 As his father had instructed him to do, King Saud publicly proclaimed Faisal his crown prince and confirmed his appointment as Viceroy to the Hejaz.

Only Abdulaziz’s half-brother, Mohammed, would not swear allegiance to Crown Prince Saud. Mohammed did not dispute his older brother’s right to rule, but he had been part of the band that took Riyadh in 1902 and had fought in many campaigns during the Wars of Unification. Mohammed felt that he or his eldest son, Khalid, had a legitimate right to be considered Abdulaziz’s successor. It was the future King Faisal who finally persuaded his uncle to pledge allegiance to Crown Prince Saud—thus playing a role very similar to the one his own son, Khalid al-Faisal, would play sixty years later in resolving another succession dispute.

Abdulaziz confirmed this interpretation of the treaty in 1933 when, shortly after unifying the Nejd and Hejaz into one kingdom, he designated his eldest son, Saud, the crown prince.

Saud was also devoted to his father. In 1936, when a knife-wielding Yemeni assassin attacked King Abdulaziz in Mecca, the crown prince spontaneously stepped in front of his father and took the blade in his own shoulder. Many believe it was this incident that compelled Abdulaziz not to sideline Saud for his more able half-brother, Faisal.

Of his thirty-four living sons, only Faisal was with him at the end. When Saud arrived from Jeddah, Faisal rose to greet him and immediately swore allegiance to his older brother as the new king. Faisal then took a ring off their dead father’s finger and presented it to his brother in a gesture of loyalty.12 As his father had instructed him to do, King Saud publicly proclaimed Faisal his crown prince and confirmed his appointment as Viceroy to the Hejaz. King Saud remained prime minister; Crown Prince Faisal became deputy prime minister and established the link between those two positions that continues today.

in October 1953—in a belated effort to establish some sort of institutional structure that could replace his fading personal rule, and in what was to be his last decree—Abdulaziz created the Council of Ministers to serve as a cabinet. He appointed Crown Prince Saud to be the first prime minister or, as the position is known in Saudi Arabia, President of the Council of Ministers.

In Riyadh, King Saud’s brothers became convinced that his foreign policy bungling, combined with his economic mismanagement, was putting their family at risk. The elder brothers agreed that Saud should keep his throne but relinquish all executive authority to Faisal. King Saud accepted this arrangement in March 1958. Crown Prince Faisal became prime minister, appointed himself finance minister, and began to balance the kingdom’s budget. He cut spending across the board, suspended development projects, canceled agriculture subsidies, delayed payments to contractors and tribal sheikhs, imposed import controls on luxury goods, and devalued the riyal. He reduced stipends for royal family members and obtained new loans from Aramco as well as leading merchants, including Osama bin Laden’s father Mohammed.24 At the same time, oil production increased by more than 50 percent from 1 million barrels a day in 1957 to 1.6 million barrels a day in 1962.25 The kingdom’s budget was balanced and its currency stabilized. The inflation rate fell sharply. By 1960, Faisal’s austerity had reduced not only the national debt, but also his own popularity with the tribes, merchants, and princes.

Having abandoned the free princes, dismissed the liberal technocrats, frightened the ulama, alienated merchants, and cooled relations with the United States, King Saud had few friends left. In October 1962, the Al Saud family and the ulama again pressured him into accepting the return of Crown Prince Faisal as prime minister. Faisal immediately removed Saud’s sons from the cabinet and installed the team of brothers and half-brothers that would govern Saudi Arabia for the next fifty years.

Faisal had appointed Mohammed’s younger full brother, Khalid (1913–1982), deputy prime minister in 1962. That implied, but did not confirm, that Khalid would become crown prince. Only in 1965 did King Faisal officially decree that Khalid would be his successor

within hours of Faisal’s death the Council of Senior Princes declared Crown Prince Khalid the new king. As expected, the Second Deputy Prime Minister Fahd became the new crown prince.12 In what had become an established pattern, the new king became prime minister and the new crown prince became deputy prime minister. The putative third in line, Abdullah, became the new second deputy prime minister.

Because of his declining health and preference for desert camping over cabinet meetings, Khalid allowed Crown Prince Fahd to act as day-to-day ruler. A Royal Decree issued in May 1975 granted Fahd full responsibility for the routine management of the kingdom.

King Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995, which left him increasingly weak and unable to govern during the last decade of his life. When he died in August 2005, his younger half-brother, Abdullah (1924–2015), who had been crown prince for twenty-three years and effective regent for ten, was immediately declared king. Fahd’s younger full brother, Prince Sultan (1928–2011), remained minister of defense and became crown prince and deputy prime minister. The number-three post of second deputy prime minister, which King Faisal had created, was left vacant for the first time in thirty-eight years. Many had expected this third position to go to Sultan’s full brother, Interior Minister Naif (1934–2012), but King Abdullah baulked at the prospect of two full Sudairi brothers becoming king one after the other. In fact, from the beginning of his reign, King Abdullah sparred with the six remaining Sudairi brothers, who still firmly controlled the Ministries of Defense and Interior as well as the governorship of Riyadh. Only in 2009, when Crown Prince Sultan’s health had deteriorated to the point at which it became clear that he would never be king, did King Abdullah declare Prince Naif second deputy prime minister.

Had King Abdullah overseen the effective use of the Allegiance Council, the evolution of succession in Saudi Arabia might have been very different. As it was, when the Council approved Mohammed bin Naif as crown prince in 2015 and Mohammed bin Salman as crown prince in 2017, it was regarded as little more than a rubber stamp for the king’s decision. As stated in the Basic Law of Governance, succession remained very much the prerogative of the king.

the Allegiance Council, in which the Sudairis could be outvoted.29 The Council, created in 2007, represented an interesting but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to institutionalize the Saudi succession process. It consisted of King Abdulaziz’s surviving sons and a grandson representing each son who had died. It was intended that a new king would propose up to three candidates for crown prince to the Allegiance Council, which would attempt to form a consensus around one name.

Consequently, there has long been a clear distinction between the large “Royal Family” comprising thousands who play no role in politics and the much smaller “Ruling Family,” which is itself divided into two sections. There are those princes who may be consulted on various important issues; these include the surviving sons of King Abdulaziz, his most prominent grandsons, and a few leading members of cadet branches of the family—most notably, the descendants of Abdulaziz’s cousin, Saud al-Kabeer, and his brother, Abdullah bin Abd al-Rahman. Then there is a very small group of princes who actually run the country on a daily basis: the king, crown prince, royal ministers, and provincial governors.

After lunch, the Queen had asked her royal guest whether he would like a tour of the estate. Prompted by his Foreign Minister, the urbane Prince Saud, an initially hesitant Abdullah agreed. The royal Land Rovers were drawn up in front of the castle. As instructed, the Crown Prince climbed into the front seat of the front Land Rover, with his interpreter in the seat behind. To his surprise, the Queen climbed into the driving seat, turned the ignition and drove off. Women are not – yet – allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a queen. His nervousness only increased as the Queen, an Army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time. Through his interpreter, the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.