It took Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman three years and six months to come to the same conclusion that some of us reached days into the blockade of Qatar: that it was doomed to failure. The project to silence the voice of an independent neighbour was doomed the moment that then-US defence secretary James…
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was reluctant to accede to demands from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to an attack on Iran when they met last Sunday in Neom, Saudi sources with knowledge of the meeting told Middle East Eye. Bin Salman’s reluctance was said to be for two reasons. Firstly, he read…
You can detect the shadow of Donald Trump fading from the Middle East in the nervous twitches of his closest allies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accelerating settlements before the inevitable freeze or pause in construction in January when President-Elect Joe Biden takes over. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is releasing just a fraction of…
It was the enduring image from Donald Trump’s 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, in his first trip abroad as president of the United States. In it, Trump appeared alongside Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with their hands placed on a glowing orb of unexplained meaning or purpose. The photo immediately…
It appears as if Saudi de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is on a mission to destroy the world oil giant by one after the other ill-conceived economic decisions. Now, as MbS orders yet new desperation cuts in Saudi oil prices, his economy is imploding from all sides—from the stupid Vision 2030 plan…
The removal of military commander Prince Fahd bin Turki is the latest in a series of purges carried out by the paranoid crown prince. There have been at least five major purges and one mass execution in Saudi Arabia since Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) came to power as crown prince: These were the arrests of the Muslim…
