Mohammed bin Salman is now one of us
Mohammed bin Salman is now one of us. Those who have somewhat weak memories or those whose memories are so strong that they recall the consequences of oil market tensions in past decades and want to forget those days at any cost and cooperate with a country that might be able to control, if not completely extinguish, the fire in the oil market have forgotten the days of October 2018. The code name for the strange era of October 2018 was ‘saw’.
In the early days of October 2022, on the fourth anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s death at the hands of Saudi security forces in Istanbul, Turkey, the last words he uttered in his life are revived for journalists, political activists, and especially his colleagues: ‘I can’t breathe.’
The last week of July marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for the Saudi Crown Prince. He embarked on his first European trip in four years and was warmly welcomed by the Greek Prime Minister. After that, he spent his visit to France in special circumstances and with particular anticipation.
Before his European trips, the U.S. President had headed to the Middle East, and the outcomes of Biden’s visit had consequences that the young Crown Prince wanted to see the effects of. Bin Salman was waiting, and still is, to see what reactions there will be to the cooperation and concessions the U.S. made and what was done and not done in the oil market for Biden and his allies. We must wait for the post-November election period in the U.S. to reach a complete assessment.
What may be important are the achievements of these few months, which apparently suggest that bin Salman is becoming a ruler like other Middle Eastern rulers. Is this really the case?
The beginning of the story has not been forgotten.
Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz is not the first son of the Saudi king, but he is King Salman’s favorite son. King Salman is the last son of King Abdulaziz to sit on the throne of the world’s largest oil giant. After him, the future Saudi kingship was taken from Mohammed bin Nayef, the crown prince appointed by the Saudi Emirate Council, and transferred to his son, who had already made a name for himself in domestic and foreign politics.
The beginning of Mohammed bin Salman’s story and his crown prince status should not be forgotten. He is now officially holding the position of cabinet chief and has just turned 37, with his distance from the throne being as close as the heartbeat of his father, which occasionally becomes the top news and rumors worldwide.
The beginning of his story is tied to the massive Vision 2030 project in domestic politics, the grim Yemen war in regional politics, and Donald Trump’s rise to power in the U.S. These three areas are vital foundations in describing his current situation. Bin Salman’s special ties with international political figures in Israel and the UAE and his association with key figures in the world have shaped recent years’ developments and impacted the Middle East and other regions. In the initial sections of special reports on the Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, we address these initial points.
Vision 2030
In 2016, when Mohammed bin Salman was not yet 32, he announced the grand SAUDI VISION 2030 in the name of King Salman of Saudi Arabia, centered around himself. This grand plan, which presented the dream of Saudi economic, political, social, and cultural development, was entrusted to the Saudi Council of Economic and Development Affairs for management and execution, naturally chaired by King Salman’s beloved son.
At that time, bin Salman was the third person in the Saudi royal structure and the deputy crown prince. His important position during that period, which he maintained until recently, was the Ministry of Defense, which solidified his control over the military. With these positions and the conditions of involving his country in the grim Yemen war, the young bin Salman promised serious cultural reforms within the framework of Vision 2030. They promised to prioritize addressing women’s civil rights, granting them the right to drive, and then other social and cultural reforms would follow, dismantling the religious police and reducing the strictness and violations of citizens’ civil rights.
The proposed economic and development programs of this vision have involved and continue to involve historical expenses, with several major tourist, commercial, and industrial projects being designed and executed or at least initiated. The process of starting social reforms took place significantly after the unveiling ceremony of the plan, and many aspects of apparent reforms in civil rights discussions were seriously seen during the finalization of bin Salman’s crown prince status or in the months before that.
For bin Salman, competing with Dubai as a major tourism hub was more important than anything else, and building a new structure from the oil industry and Aramco, which naturally was an idea presented to him by his Western advisors, was not surprising. Major tourism projects, unprecedented cultural and artistic programs, opening cinemas, holding concerts, and such initiatives alongside extraordinary economic and construction projects began very easily and quickly.
It should be remembered here that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi had a deadly impact on bin Salman’s cultural and tourism programs. One example of these impacts was the severing of cooperation between major Western figures and the Saudis in managing and providing consultancy for attractive tourism and cultural projects.
Appreciation, Excitement, and Encouragement
A wave of promotional activities to spread and disseminate news about the young Saudi reformer swept the world. These developments occurred while the Obama administration, grudgingly, had to provide relative support for bin Salman’s programs and the Saudi military in Yemen. The Yemen war created excitement for war and defense in Saudi Arabia, and for the first time, the concept of patriotic militarism was promoted among Saudi citizens under the leadership of the young bin Salman.
This was alongside the continued suppression of the Shiite minority and serious pressures on civil activists. The reforms that had not yet started in 2016 and 2017 were not intended to have any leader other than bin Salman, and civil activists in the years following that experienced pressures, imprisonment, and torture to erase their memory and name. The reformer is bin Salman and no one else.
By the time bin Salman’s crown prince era arrived, appreciation and admiration for the initiated reforms had begun, and after his crown prince status, these appreciations and admirations were gradually intensified by a specific range of Western media. There is no doubt that Saudi money played the main role in the rise of these appreciations. It should be seriously noted that many of the significant events in the first year of bin Salman’s crown prince status were difficult to justify.
The public abduction of Saad Hariri and the attempt to force his resignation and change the course of Lebanese politics, the hostage-taking and torture of wealthy Saudi princes and the seizure of their assets, and other stories occurred while the media began a new round of praising cultural and social changes in Saudi Arabia.
To show the depth of this strange and unjustifiable propaganda, we should mention one of the heroes of this Saudi media campaign, none other than the famous journalist Thomas Friedman. In late November 2017, he published a famous article about his trip to Saudi Arabia and his conversation with Mohammed bin Salman. This article astonished many, as Friedman’s praise of the Arab Spring in Saudi Arabia with bin Salman’s reforms exceeded everyone’s expectations.
Friedman did not back down and moved from one news network to another, promoting his article and trip. However, much faster than he anticipated, he found himself cornered by American media and really had to defend himself. His interesting justifications had to describe all the events we mentioned as inappropriate and, therefore, very simply, Friedman and other promoters of bin Salman’s reforms, by acknowledging the badness of some of the Crown Prince’s actions, spoke of concerts, cinemas, women’s driving, and combating extremism.
This open space to justify bin Salman’s dirty deeds in that year and before all the 2018 stories happened thanks to Iran’s mistakes and its transformation into the number one enemy of the West and the Saudi money spread in the media.
Soon, in the next part of the report, we will narrate another section from the beginning of bin Salman’s story, a beginning that is tied to Trump, the U.S., and that country’s internal security.
The next part of this article titled ‘Mohammed bin Salman is now one of us, Part Two’ has been published in Iran Gate.
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