Behind the rise of Saudi Prince Salman

Last Updated on August 28, 2024 7:55 am

In January 2015, 90-year-old King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was on his deathbed in hospital. His half-brother Salman is set to become the next king. Salman’s favorite son, Mohammed bin Salman, was preparing to take over.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was known only by his initials MBS and was 29 years old at the time. At this age he had a big plan for his country, which was the biggest plan in history. But he feared that conspirators within his own Saudi royal family might eventually turn against him.

So one midnight that January, he summoned the top security officer to the palace, to be sure of his loyalty. The security officer, Saad al-Jabri, was told to leave his mobile phone on a table outside. MBS also does the same. The two were alone.

The young prince was so afraid of palace spies that he pulled the socket out of the wall to disconnect the only landline telephone there. According to Al-Jabri, MBS was then discussing how he would awaken his country from its ‘deep slumber’, so that it could take its rightful place on the world stage.

He will begin weaning his economy off oil dependence by selling a stake in state oil producer Aramco, the world’s most profitable company.

He would invest billions of dollars in Silicon Valley tech startups, including the taxi company, Uber. He will then create 6 million new jobs by giving Saudi women the freedom to work.

Amazed, Al-Jabri asks the Prince in simple terms, “Have you heard of Alexander the Great?”

MBS then ended the conversation. A midnight meeting, which was supposed to end in half an hour, went on for three hours. After Al-Jabri came out of the room, he found several missed calls on his mobile phone.

His government colleagues became worried as he was not found for a long time.

Here is a story about a man who has had a remarkable rise to power in Saudi Arabia. Who runs Saudi Arabia and whose control of oil has influenced everyone. The story begins with how he defeated hundreds of rivals to become the crown prince.

Over the past year, a BBC documentary team has spoken to both friends and opponents of MBS in Saudi Arabia. Also spoke to senior Western spies and diplomats.

The Saudi government was given the opportunity to respond to the claims made in this BBC documentary and this article. But they refused to comment.

Saad al-Jabri was so high in the Saudi security apparatus that he was friends with the heads of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British government’s international intelligence agency, MI-Six.

Although the Saudi government has called al-Jabri an incompetent former official, he is one of the country’s most well-informed people who has dared to speak out about how Saudi Arabia’s crown prince rules the country.

The rare interview he gave to the BBC contains a surprising amount of information. The BBC mainly covered the events that made MBS infamous.

These include the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and the start of a devastating war in Yemen.

With MBS’s father increasingly weakened, 38-year-old MBS is now in charge of the birthplace of Islam and the world’s largest oil exporter.

He began to implement many of the groundbreaking plans he had told Saad al-Jabri. He also faced allegations of human rights violations, including suppression of free speech, executions, and jailing of women’s rights activists.

The first king of Saudi Arabia fathered at least 42 sons, including MBS’s father, Salman. Traditionally, it was these boys who sat in succession. When both of them died suddenly in 2011 and 2012, Salman was elevated to the line of succession.

Just as Western intelligence keeps a keen eye on who can come to power in the Russian Kremlin, so who can sit next to whom in the Saudi parliament is increasingly becoming a matter of their interest.

At this stage, MBS was so young and unknown that he was not noticed by them. He grew up in relative obscurity”, says Sir John Sowers, head of MI-Six until 2014. “Because nobody thought he would be in power!

The crown prince grew up in a palace where there was no punishment for bad behavior. Although very insignificant.

He doesn’t think about the consequences of any decision before making it and takes it without thinking, the atmosphere in the palace may help explain his infamous habits. MBS first gained notoriety in Riyadh as a teenager, when he was nicknamed Abu Rasasa, or Bullet Father.

He was accused of sending a bullet in the post to a judge. That judge dismissed MBS’s claim over the royal family’s property dispute. His ruthlessness was a distinguishing characteristic, notes Sir John Sowers. He didn’t like being outdone.

But it also means that he has been able to bring about changes in Saudi Arabia that no other Saudi leader has been able to.

One of the most welcome changes was that he ended Saudi funding of foreign mosques and religious schools, institutions that had become breeding grounds for Islamic jihadism.

This move brings huge benefits to the security of Western countries. The former MI-Six chief said these things. MBS’s mother, Fahda, is a Bedouin tribal woman and Fahda is seen as the most beloved of his father’s four wives.

Western diplomats believe King Salman has been suffering from progressive vascular dementia for many years. And he looked to his son MBS for any help.

Several diplomats shared their experiences of meeting MBS and his father with the BBC. Yuvraj used to write notes on an iPad, then send them to his father’s iPad, giving him an idea of ​​what to say next.

The prince was apparently so impatient for his father to become king that in 2014 he suggested killing his uncle, then-Emperor Abdullah, with a poisoned ring obtained from Russia.

“I don’t know for sure if he just said the words in a mockery of Asfalan, but we took it seriously,” Al-Jabri said.

A former top security official said he had seen a secretly recorded surveillance video of MBS, in which MBS’s intention to poison the King emerged.

He was banned from court, for many days he was forbidden to shake hands with the king.

In fact, King Abdullah died of natural causes, leaving his brother Salman to ascend the throne in 2015. MBS was appointed as Defense Minister and wasted no time in going to war after taking charge.

Source: BBC