As the youngest post-85 monarch on the planet, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Salman Jr.) is undoubtedly the brightest rising star in Middle Eastern politics today.
Born in Riyadh in 1985, Salman Jr. was the eldest son of the then prince and later Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz (Salman Sr.) and his favorite third wife, Fahda.
At the age of 15, he began to report to his father about the national situation, and frequently read the biography of the emperor, in order to hear the dream of reaching the government.
Brother to brother, the throne was originally out of his reach.
However, the elder Salman survived the death of his two brothers and finally ascended the throne, and he resolutely reformed the succession system to the throne, making Salman Jr. the crown prince.
He is my successor, and the gray-haired old king has set aside his "holy decree".
For a time, the "Arab storm" swept across the entire Middle East.
An iron fist to defend royal power
Before Salman Jr. officially became crown prince, his most notable move was the anti-corruption storm in November 2017.
At that time, due to the fall in oil prices, the income of the Saudi royal family plummeted, and the increasing welfare expenses of the princes and nobles who lived in luxury made the national treasury worse.
In the face of internal and external troubles, Salman Jr. is determined to remove obstacles and consolidate power.
On November 4, more than 500 members of the royal family received orders and were placed under house arrest at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
The heavily armed guards at the gate kept them from acting rashly.
The next day, Salman Jr.'s statement was broadcast on television: All those who are derelict in their duties and corrupt and harm the interests of the country will not be forgiven!
Realizing that the tide was turning, the princes and nobles made "voluntary donations" to beg for mercy.
At one time, $800 billion was remitted to the state treasury.
And according to Salman Jr. himself, the actual "only" is 107 billion.
This kind of "ATM" behavior naturally made the descendants of the royal family miserable, but it was useless to complain, and the ministers had to bow their heads.
A coup d'état kicked off with a smile, and Salman Jr., who was the Iron Fist, quickly replaced his father as the real Saudi ruler.
"The brutality of the approach is breathtaking. So commented in the Western media.
But as a monarch, Salman Jr.'s move is not entirely unjustified – Saudi Arabia is a loose regime made up of various tribes, and the real power is in the hands of many members of the royal family.
This move is equivalent to eliminating the stumbling block on the road of Salman Jr.
Vision 2030 ambitions
After consolidating his royal power, the 30-year-old Salman Jr. has set out Vision 2030, an ambitious blueprint for economic and social development, in an attempt to diversify the oil empire and make it socially progressive.
As the world's largest oil exporter, 90% of export earnings and 70% of GDP come from oil.
This makes the Saudi economy highly dependent on a single resource, which is extremely risky.
Once oil prices fluctuate violently, the whole country will be in crisis.
Salman Jr. is aware of this hidden danger and has proposed to increase the share of non-oil GDP from 16% to more than 50% and become a truly diversified economy.
This means that Saudi Arabia needs to rapidly develop the private sector, covering new industries such as manufacturing, finance, tourism, and entertainment.
To this end, Salman Jr. pursued a very liberal business policy, drastically reduced bureaucracy, and hoped to attract more foreign investment to inject vitality.
But the problem is that almost all of Saudi Arabia's workforce is immigrants.
The local population is too lazy and largely depends on generous government subsidies to survive.
Salman Jr. was troubled by this, so he took measures to cut the welfare of the people, promoted the "Saudiization" policy, forced the proportion of employees to be at least 70% of his own citizens, and forced his own citizens to participate in social labor through these means to change the laziness of the people.
In the second goal of Vision 2030, Salman Jr. seeks to promote social progress and challenge the constraints imposed on people's lives by traditional conservative forces, and the most direct reform is the promotion of women's rights.
Therefore, under the new policy he introduced, Saudi women were finally free from oppression, and they could drive freely and travel on their own, without the need for a man to accompany them.
Traditional career restrictions for women have also been broken, with access to the military, stadiums and the opportunity to watch live football for the first time.
Along with sexism, religious conservatism has long enveloped Muslim societies.
Salman Jr. strictly ordered the clergy to reduce their voice in public affairs, and vigorously developed the entertainment industry as a new economic growth point, opening hundreds of theaters, concert halls and other entertainment venues.
However, Salman Jr.'s seemingly deviant New Deal has also provoked a strong social backlash.
The traditional social order has been broken, and the conservatives are furious – this is a blasphemy against Allah!
Within a week of the new policy, more than 3,000 clerics signed an open letter denouncing the policy for undermining core values in Muslim society.
They launched an "anti-Salman Jr." campaign in major mosques, calling on people to support the return of the retro.
This act was tantamount to an open rebellion against the king, and Salman Jr. immediately sent troops to disperse the protesters, arrested a large number of key elements, and the whole movement was severely suppressed in the bud.
In the face of resistance from traditional conservative forces, Salman Jr. took a tough stance.
He openly explained that these reforms were not a departure from Islam, but a return to true enlightenment.
As a "devout Muslim", Salman Jr. emphasized that he believes that true faith will make people happy, not imprisoned, and that he must shake off the shackles of the past in order to embrace a better future.
In his view, these reforms are just to make the lives of the Saudis happier and richer, and he believes that most people will support them.
Sure enough, in the wave of change, the vast majority of civilians welcomed a new life with hope.
Saudi Arabia is emerging from its conservative cocoon and rejuvenating.
And Salman Jr., who promoted all this, has also gained unprecedented prestige and influence in the hearts of the people.
A tyrant riddled with controversy?
However, while Salman Jr. has pursued progressive policies, his hard-line style has also attracted a lot of criticism.
The media labelled a "tyrant" and questioned whether his methods of power struggle were too brutal.
The main controversies focused on three main areas: coup-style purges of dissidents, house arrest of mothers, and murder of dissident journalists.
The veracity of these allegations has yet to be verified, but they have had widespread repercussions at home and abroad.
1. Eliminate dissent and establish prestige
When Salman Jr. came to power in 2017, he preemptively carried out a political purge in the name of anti-corruption.
The move is mainly aimed at members of the royal family.
In the "anti-corruption storm", a large number of princes were accused of corruption and imprisoned.
Among them is Salman Jr.'s cousin, Prince Nayef, the former crown prince.
Nayev was not only involved in U.S. counterterrorism operations, but was also assassinated several times as a result.
He was later promoted to Minister of the Interior, and his career was very successful.
Unexpectedly, when the power was handed over, he was "retaliated" by Salman Jr.
At the same time, hundreds of industrial tycoons in the business community have been jailed on charges of corruption.
This made the outside world see the decisive and ruthless methods of Salman Jr.'s power struggle.
These moves strengthened Salman Jr.'s power base, as it was difficult for a weak monarch to gain popularity in Saudi royal politics.
However, the price of this power politics is to give Salman Jr. the name of "tyrant".
2. Detaining his own mother for two years
In addition to the political persecution, Salman Jr. is facing another major charge of house arrest for two years by his mother, former Princess Fahdadam.
In fact, Fahda and Salman Jr. have political differences.
She opposed her son's seizure of the throne through power tricks, and even intended to support her mother's family to enter the royal family to compete with Salman Jr., and the contradiction between the two became increasingly acute.
After Salman Jr. became deputy crown prince in 2015, Fahda's dissatisfaction became more and more apparent.
In order to defuse his mother's political threat, Salman Jr. chose to place her under house arrest for up to two years.
During this period, Fahda was isolated from the outside world and placed under residential surveillance.
It was not until the elder King Salman learned of her detention on his deathbed that this situation was overcome.
3. Murder of dissident journalists at home and abroad
In addition to these appalling moves, the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 brought Salman Jr. to notoriety.
Khashoggi once wrote an article in the Washington Post criticizing the authoritarian rule of the Saudi government and Salman Jr.'s actions.
This made Salman Jr. extremely angry.
In October 2018, Khashoggi went to the consulate in Istanbul to register his marriage, but has not been heard from since.
Turkish authorities found that he was ambushed and murdered by Saudi secret services, and his body was missing.
Although Salman Jr. has denied the accusations, international public opinion generally believes that he was the mastermind behind the tragedy.
The governments of Turkey and the United States have condemned and imposed sanctions on several of the officials involved.
"This assassination proves that Salman Jr. is no different from a tyrant of the Middle Ages. Quite a few commentators pointed out so.
At the beginning of the case, millions of netizens jointly condemned Salman Jr.'s barbaric acts.
Salman Jr. only smiled indifferently in the face of the accusation.
He seems to have been Xi to it for a long time.
Far-fetched "allies".
After a period of power struggle at home, Salman Jr. shifted his strategic focus to foreign relations.
His assertive stance has made Western allies feel quite troublesome, and it also heralds the reshaping of the political situation in the Middle East.
In June 2017, at the behest of Salman Jr., Saudi Arabia suddenly joined forces with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt to sever diplomatic relations with Qatar, a small Gulf country.
This seemingly sudden severance of diplomatic relations is actually a major reshuffle of the situation in the Middle East after Salman Jr. took office.
Qatar has long followed a pro-Iranian line and is in competition with Saudi Arabia.
The severance of diplomatic relations is an attempt to trim Qatar's geopolitical influence.
As soon as the news came out, what surprised the world was the subsequent change in Saudi Arabia's attitude towards Iran.
These two old Middle Eastern rivals actually began to have an ambiguous relationship, and even talked about the possibility of establishing a strategic cooperative relationship.
Some analysts have pointed out that he is trying to contain Qatar by wooing Iran, and then reconstruct the power structure in the Gulf region.
If the move to sever diplomatic relations with Qatar is a regional adjustment, then Salman Jr.'s hardline behavior on the US issue has made it even more difficult for Western allies to sit on the edge.
Unlike Saudi Arabia's traditional pro-American stance, Salman Jr. has adopted a more independent diplomatic strategy.
Americans are not permanent friends, what he emphasized at domestic meetings.
When the Trump administration tried to interfere in Saudi Arabia's internal affairs, Salman Jr. unceremoniously stopped the US side's transgressive moves, and pointed out that "we are partners, not vassals", and his attitude made Trump helpless.
After the Democratic Party came to power in 2022, Biden publicly criticized Saudi Arabia as a "failed state", which made Salman Jr. quite angry.
In the first meeting with Biden, when reporters repeatedly asked the question, the embarrassed Biden could only pretend not to hear, while Salman Jr. smiled playfully.
In Salman Jr.'s view, the long-standing "alliance" with the United States is inherently unequal, and that Saudi Arabia provides the world's largest energy exports, but does not provide real security, and he believes that this relationship should be revised.
This is also the reason why Salman Jr. has frequently made his position clear and acted strongly in Middle East affairs.
Of course, Salman Jr.'s great-power game strategy is also quite risky, and his relationship with the Western State Council has become a major problem in American political circles, and once the situation changes drastically, Salman Jr.'s throne will also be in jeopardy.
However, looking at the situation in the Middle East today, this kind of hard-line posture may be forced by the times, and it is difficult for weak countries to survive in the volatile geopolitics.
And Salman Jr.'s power is the key to Saudi Arabia's bottom line on the cusp.
A two-sided life of extravagance and low-key
In addition to power struggles and political maneuvers, Salman Jr.'s private life is often widely reported.
As a billionaire, the luxurious life he has is difficult to describe in words.
Hundreds of mansions, convoys, private jets, and the precious falcon that accompanied him all showed that the new monarch's extravagance seemed to be an exaggeration to describe it as a "spendthrift".
But there are also reports that Salman Jr.'s daily life is extremely low-key, he has only one wife, has four sons, and his whereabouts are secretive, and he rarely even appears in public, which is very reverie.
Conformism or new thinking?
As the youngest person in power in the Middle East today, Salman Jr.'s brilliance casts an equally deep shadow.
His mysterious, profound, tough and arbitrary personality has made him receive unprecedented support at home, but it has also attracted suspicion from all sides.
"Where will he lead Saudi Arabia?" is the question that looms on the minds of many people.
There is a view that he will continue the old strongman politics of the Middle East and eventually become a tyrant.
But there are also those who believe that Salman Jr., a new-minded young man, is a long-lost historical figure in the region who will lead the Saudis into a new era of prosperity.
Whatever the road ahead, Salman Jr. represents the fierce collision of new thinking and old forces in this rapidly changing era.
We have to face up to this "Arab storm" that shook the world.
It is already profoundly affecting the fate of hundreds of millions of Muslims and will reshape the political landscape of the entire Middle East.
However, the storm eventually stalled or moved forward, and it was all up to Salman Jr. to think about it.
Resources
Shangguan News." Alternative" Saudi Crown Prince2022-12-09
The Saudi crown prince who loves to read "The Art of War": "Saudi Arabia's car must move forward"2017-11-10
Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, PricewaterhouseCoopers: Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" process is nearly halfway through the process, and the results are remarkable2023-09-18