What Washington should do about the Saudi power play
Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi king-in-waiting, pushed a huge number of chips to the center of the table over the past couple of days in a spectacular all-in bet rarely seen since Michael Corleone eliminated all his enemies while being crowned godfather.
On Sunday, the 32-year-old Saudi crown prince, nicknamed MbS, eliminated major internal rivals, putting dozens of top movers and shakers under house arrest (reportedly in Riyadh’s swanky Ritz Carlton) and charging them with corruption.
And Monday, the Saudis blamed Iran for supplying a missile fired at their capital over the weekend, saying such a move could be considered “an act of war.”
The detainees include Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a heavy investor in top US corporations, as well as the commander of the powerful Saudi national guard, several cabinet ministers, top businessmen — the works. Anyone looking at this objectively can see instantly this was a major power grab.
By ordering peers gone, MbS is trying to eliminate top contenders and those wary of his uncharacteristically (for Saudis) fast-paced reforms and tightening up on the reins of power.
As the United States — not to mention the rest of the world — figures out how to deal with the developing reality, it should look for opportunities to milk.
Clearly, the situation is tense. On Sunday, the Saudis reported that the Iran-backed Houthis in neighboring Yemen fired a missile across the border into the Saudi kingdom. (The Saudis’ American-made defense system intercepted it.) The next day, Riyadh directly pointed a finger at Tehran, claiming it had supplied the missile to the Houthis and calling that “a blatant act of military aggression.”
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That followed the resignation Sunday of the Saudis’ ally, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who traveled to Riyadh to make the announcement. Lebanon, Hariri explained, has fallen prey to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Iranian puppet. (Hariri’s father, Rafik, was assassinated by Hezbollah in 2005.)
Hariri’s move was likely an MbS-orchestrated escalation of his pushback against Iran. Some in the region even claim MbS is itching for a proxy war against Iran on Lebanese soil.
MbS is Saudi Arabia’s most aggressive anti-Iran player in memory. He’s already claimed Arab leadership in fighting Iran’s “resistance” forces — proxies that, under Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ tutelage, slowly take over Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and threaten US allies, including the Saudis, Jordan and Israel.
At the same time, the ascendant prince has promised a host of reforms. He wants the kingdom to turn away from the doomed petrol-based economy and develop other industries. He vows to stamp out corruption.
MbS has even started, tentatively, to modernize a society stuck in the Middle Ages. A new Coca-Cola ad on Saudi TV, for example, depicts a man teaching his young daughter to handle a car — in a country that’s banned women from driving for decades.
All of which offers America strong reasons to back the new powerhouse — and perhaps encourage his better angels. Remember, one of President Trump’s regional strategic goals is reversing the dangerous advances Iran made during the Obama years. This is also a rare opportunity to nudge Saudi Arabia away from its extremist-leaning form of Islam, which has been so malignant throughout the Mideast and beyond.
Perhaps he could prove a valuable ally in fighting Sunni terrorism, along with pushing back against Iran’s expansionism, and even maybe help dissolve Arab enmity to Israel.
At the moment, though, MbS is stuck in Yemen and has lost ground to Iran elsewhere.
Plus, Trump has yet to fully reverse President Barack Obama’s tilt toward Iran: In Iraq, we didn’t push hard enough against an Iranian-backed assault on our allies, the Kurds. In Syria, we’re desperately looking for a way out, even as Iran toils to control the entire country. So there’s much to do on both ends.
Certainly, MbS will need help from us. Forces, inside and out, will fiercely fight him. Left isolated, he may reverse course, join his enemies to survive in power and renege on his reform promises. Yes, there are risks; we don’t want to find we’ve backed another Shah of Iran, who is toppled by people who then regard us as a top enemy.
But the opportunities here are too great to do nothing. To help the new power, America must regain the leadership role it lost in a region we’ve hoped to leave to its own devices. The more involved America is, the more we can nudge MbS, the Saudis and perhaps the entire region away from their worst instincts.
Twitter: @bennyavni