“It’s too early for strategies now,” he said. “We have to wait and see how big this conflict is going to be.”
MBS’s rehabilitation over the past five years has been remarkable. In the aftermath of the 2018 Khashoggi assassination in Istanbul by Saudi operatives inside the Saudi consulate, world leaders recoiled from MBS, whom they now viewed as a bloodthirsty prince opposed to values of free speech and human rights. The years of goodwill he’d built up as a young Saudi changemaker went up in flames overnight, and many commentators seemed to think his own family would remove him from power to protect the Saudi royals from further blowback.
Instead, MBS slowly rebuilt his stature deal by deal and decision by decision. Freshly elected, Joe Biden told reporters he wouldn’t meet with MBS because he wasn’t the head of state. Four years later, outside the gilded Jeddah palace, photographers captured Biden fist-bumping MBS on a trip to ask favors—namely to increase oil production after Biden pledged not to import oil from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
Once he had secured this invaluable photo opportunity, MBS politely informed the White House that its request was denied. It was the kind of snub no recent predecessor of MBS would even contemplate. The message resonated: Saudi Arabia is no longer a dutiful puppet of the US in the Middle East.
For MBS, the decision was as economic as it was political. He’s about eight years into a global spending spree designed to radically reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on selling barrels of oil, a program so audacious—and possibly quixotic—that it is hard to comprehend.
In addition to outmaneuvering the Biden administration, MBS restored ties with Qatar, made moves to end a war he had started in Yemen, and, most unbelievably of all, patched up his relationship with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey. It was Erdoğan who had released secret recordings that exposed MBS’s involvement in the Khashoggi murder in 2018, and photos of the two men shaking hands last year proved that the crown prince was willing to put political considerations above personal grudges.
The secret to MBS’s power is his ability to spend lavishly, without checks and balances. It makes Saudi Arabia and its powerful sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, one of the world’s most sought-after financial institutions. On top of remaking the country’s economy, Saudi Arabia is plowing billions of dollars into sports, entertainment, and gaming, all areas that improve the country’s standing with young people around the globe.
