“Mr Everything” takes control in Saudi

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has “ousted” his nephew as crown prince and replaced him with his favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman.

Emily Hohler
By
published
in Features

850-Salman-634

Mohammed bin Salman is the new heir to the Saudi throne
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has "ousted" his nephew as crown prince and replaced him with his favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman, 31, says Martin Chulov in The Guardian. The move stunned the Saudi establishment, which has watched the young prince's influence soar since his 81-year-old father became king in January 2015.It is the latest big change in the conservative kingdom, which in recent weeks has recalibrated relations with the US and launched a diplomatic offensive against Qatar. This is all against a backdrop of an "ambitious economic and cultural overhaul" at home and a war in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is fighting Shia rebels it believes are backed by Iran.

Mohammed bin Salman, nicknamed "Mr Everything" by foreign diplomats, has played a key part in these changes. The "colourful, aggressive, ambitious, impulsive and internationally minded" prince has imported Western advisers to create "Vision 2030", a programme of reforms aimed at weaning the economy off oil, and getting young Saudis to work for a living, says Richard Spencer in The Times.

But critics are alarmed by the situations in Yemen and Qatar. Mohammed bin Salman's willingness to compromise here will be a "telling marker" of his "political nous", and of whether the "war of words" between Saudi and Iran will "escalate into conflict or be resolved into a working relationship". Meanwhile, the crown prince will start playing an "even more influential role" in oil markets at a time when the major oil producers are "struggling to prop up prices", says Stanley Reed in The New York Times.

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He has brought in bankers to arrange an initial public offering of national oil company, Aramco. Backers say he will use the kingdom's "most valuable export" to diversify the economy. Critics, however, say he is inexperienced and unpredictable. Initially he claimed that oil prices didn't matter, then backed production cuts to shore up prices. Yet with prices "on the slide" since his promotion, the Saudis may be headed "for another crunch", and "there do not seem to be any good options" left.

Emily Hohler
Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.

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