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A Year As Crown Prince: Forward Progress Or Sideways Shift?

by Senior Analyst Talal Kapoor

June 21, 2018 represents one year since King Salman issued a royal decree installing his 31-year-old son, Muhammad, as heir to the throne, in the process ensuring that the succession would skip a generation and finally move to the grandsons of the Kingdom's founder. In that tumultuous time, the new crown prince, Muhammad (known as MbS) has fundamentally altered the political landscape in ways no one could have predicted; indeed, the royal family may be at a tipping point - the disruptive young prince is determined to see his vision through, despite alienating the religious establishment and overturning decades of royal tradition.

MbS already held the position of Minister of Defense at the time of his appointment, and it was with this portfolio that he established his reputation as ambitious and attention-seeking, if not reckless. The campaign in Yemen began in 2015, as Saudi charged in to support the government against Iran-supported Houthi rebels, and MbS was its visible face, appearing nightly on TV to champion the Kingdom's forces. Few had even heard of him before his rapid promotion, and this became his chance to become a public figure, an opportunity which he seized and a role which he relished. Spokesmanship of the war effort soon devolved to military men for media broadcast, but MbS had made his mark. The impression he made could hardly have been overdone - for most of the public, images of the resolute prince against a backdrop of swooping fighter jets, or riding the bridge of a warship, were their first introduction to the man who would quickly come to dominate affairs.

Fortunately for him, as the war's cost has mounted, and casualties and disruption have turned Yemen into a humanitarian catastrophe, MbS has managed to disassociate himself from the human suffering and lack of success in the adventure. His formal role in the Kingdom has expanded to such an extent that Defense is far from the first thing in mind when his name comes up. Yemen has receded into the background, despite the financial cost and lack of progress, as rapid fire change elsewhere occupies the attention, allowing MbS to avoid the taint of potential failure. Others before him have had their careers destroyed along the southern border (Khalid bin Sultan was unable to achieve any success against a low level conflict there), but the crown prince has used the Yemeni war as a means to pivot to a broader strategy of containing Iran, a goal which colors everything being undertaken. He has accused Iran of "direct military aggression" by supplying ballistic missiles to the Houthi rebels (and indeed, hardly a day passes without a ballistic missile being intercepted in Saudi airspace, often as far north as Riyadh) and the battle raging in the south keeps the Iranian threat front and center in the public mind. To an extent unmatched in Saudi history, the Iranian 'project' (the Islamic Republic's supreme leader has been compared to Hitler by MbS) is regarded as an existential menace. The Kingdom has made clear that it will develop nuclear weapons if its rival obtains them, and celebrated when the United States withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement in May.

Playing up the threat of an external enemy is a handy tool for rallying political support, and MbS has opened himself up to this charge, seen against the backdrop of the convulsive changes underway domestically. Society is being shaken to its roots, as even the existence of the contract with the religious establishment, whereby the royal family secures legitimacy to rule in return for giving free reign to the clerics' hardline doctrinal interpretation, is being called into question. A direct challenge to clerical authority would have been unthinkable previously; King Abdallah made some tentative steps towards curtailing their power but never confronted the issue head on. Now, the shakeup is real, and Saudi is entering uncharted terrain.

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