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Ben Hubbard March 19, 2020 I Want You to Know That Saudi Arabia Has Not Always Been As It Is Now

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Ben Hubbard March 19, 2020 I Want You to Know That Saudi Arabia Has Not Always Been As It Is Now Saudi Arabia’s Oil Price War & the Rise of Mohammed bin Salman | Ben Hubbard March 19, 2020 I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better. — Jamal Khashoggi INTRODUCTION Ben Hubbard is the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times. An Arabic speaker with more than a decade in the Middle East, he has covered coups, civil wars, protests, jihadist groups, rotten fish as cuisine, religion and pop culture from more than a dozen countries, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Yemen. His first book is MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman. Before becoming a journalist, Mr. Hubbard studied history in Chicago, Arabic in Cairo and journalism in Berkeley, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa. A Colorado native, he lives in Beirut with his wife. WHY DO I CARE? According to Ben Hubbard, when King Salman of Saudi Arabia ascended to the throne in January 2015 and began bestowing enormous powers on his 29-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman, it sent minds reeling. Given Saudi Arabia’s importance as the wealthiest country in the Middle East and a key partner of the West, foreign officials, journalists, experts, and spies had long scrutinized the Saudi royal family to anticipate who might come to power in the future—and MBS, as he was known, had remained far off the radar. Who, they wondered, was this inexperienced young prince who swiftly asserted his control over the kingdom’s oil, military, finances, and domestic and foreign policy? And could he be trusted? In his new book, Ben Hubbard closely tracks MBS’s trajectory to shed light on the man and the critical country he controls. He explores Saudi Arabia’s closed and opaque society and tracks Mohammad bin Salman from his earliest days in power. With vows to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil, loosen its strict Islamic social codes, and champion the fight against extremism, the young prince won admirers on Wall Street and in Washington, 1 Silicon Valley, and Hollywood with his grand The kingdom had never been a democracy — visions for a new Saudi Arabia and a reordered more of a soft-gloved autocracy, where citizens Middle East. In 2017, Saudi Arabia made global kept up appearances in public but could mostly headlines by announcing that it would lift its say what they liked in private. But as Prince long-time ban on women driving and hosting a Mohammed rose, the limited margins for free lavish “Davos in the Desert” conference, where expression shrank. — Ben Hubbard MBS wowed international financiers with plans for a new $500 billion city that he said would be powered by sustainable energy and staffed by robots—serving as “a roadmap for the future of civilization.” However, Hubbard’s reporting from a half-dozen countries and hundreds of interviews with a range of sources reveals that a harsher reality was building quietly behind the hype. To secure his path to the throne and quash opposition to his plans, the young prince empowered a covert team to silence critics at home and abroad while deploying new technologies to consolidate his authoritarian rule. He soon made headlines again, for forcing the resignation of the prime minister of Lebanon; locking hundreds of princes, businessmen, and government officials in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton on allegations of corruption; for the hacking by Saudi operatives of cell phones of Saudi dissidents, journalists (including a suspected From the regime’s point of view…if there are attempt on Hubbard himself), and others who only a few thousand accounts driving the supported views critical of the Saudi regime; and discourse, you can just buy or threaten the most infamously for his links to the operatives who activists, and that significantly shapes the killed Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the conversation. — Alexei Abrahams, research Saudi consulate in Istanbul. fellow at Citizen Lab MBS, Saudi Arabia, & the Context of his Rise to Power — You write that “M.B.S.’s rise rode the waves of global trends,” and that “as more of the world’s wealth was concentrated in fewer hands, populist authoritarians used nationalist rhetoric to rally their people while shutting down outlets for opposition.” Q: What is the larger context of MBS’s rise to power and prominence in the Kingdom? Q: On balance, is MBS’ rise a good thing or bad thing for Saudi Arabians and the world? 2 MBS Origins — Q: Where did MBS come from? Q: What is his origin story? Q: What can you tell us about his rise to power? MBS as Defense Minister — In March 2015, barely two months after he took over the Defense Ministry, M.B.S. ordered the until then mostly decorative Saudi Air Force to start bombing Yemen, which was in the midst of a civil war. Q: What is the reason for the War in Yemen and what was MBS’ rational for entering the conflict? Q: What has been the cost and verdict of the War in Yemen? Iran vs. Saudi Arabia — Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been at odds with one another. Q: The general view is that Saudi Arabia is first and foremost committed to preventing Iran from becoming a regional hegemon, but does MBS have grander visions for Saudi Arabia’s role as Arab leader in the region? Q: How does his vison compare to those of Iran’s leadership or Turkey’s Erdoğan? Israel & Saudi Arabia — Through intermediaries, M.B.S. courted Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, a contemporary of the young prince who had been given the difficult Middle East portfolio. Kushner knew virtually nothing about the region apart from what he had learned over the years from the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close family friend. M.B.S. offered to explain things. His money and connections and his vision could solve every problem, it seemed, and he was quick to say that Israel was not his enemy — Iran was. Plus, there was money, money, money on the table. Q: How has Saudi Arabia’s relationship to Israel changed under the current crown prince? Q: How strong is this US- Israeli-Saudi diplomatic triangle and who are the key players who are behind it? Qatar — In the spring of 2017, when M.B.S. became the official heir apparent to the Saudi throne, his operations to consolidate personal power went into high gear. He broke relations with the neighboring emirate of Qatar, claiming it supported terrorists and was too cozy with Iran, and demanded that it shut down the contentious Al Jazeera television network. Trump initially backed the play until he was told more than 10,000 U.S. troops use Qatar as a vital regional base. Al Jazeera is still on the air. Q: How have relations with Qatar changed under MBS and what are the objectives of the Saudi’s in this case? Q: Where does the United States stand on the matter? 3 2017–19 Saudi Arabian Purge at the Ritz — In what has since been described as a stunning operation, M.B.S. imprisoned hundreds of the kingdom’s richest and most influential men in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, beginning in early November 2017, forcing them to sign over to the government — his government — tens of billions of dollars’ worth of assets he claimed were ill- gotten gains. Despite the opulent surroundings of their “prison,” many of those held at the Ritz-Carlton suffered real abuse, according to Hubbard. Q: Can you give us the back-story on the now infamous imprisonment of more than 30 of the Kingdom’s most senior figures under the guise of fighting corruption? Q: What was this really about? 2017 Lebanon–Saudi Arabia dispute — At about the same time as the anti-corruption crack- down was going on, the crown prince invited Saad Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon, to Riyadh, where he was put under arrest and forced to announce his resignation. Under duress Hariri appeared on television denouncing the role Iran and its client militia Hezbollah played in his country, which was a good way to start a new civil war there. Hubbard writes that is exactly what M.B.S. wanted: “Gradually, the details of the Saudi plot came out. They were crazier than anyone expected.” The Saudis apparently believed troops from Hezbollah were fighting against them and their clients in Yemen, and if there was civil war in Lebanon, they’d have to return home. In the end, virtually nobody accepted that Hariri had resigned in good faith, but it took an intervention by the French president Emmanuel Macron to extract him from Riyadh. Q: What can you tell us about this crazy story where the prime minister of Lebanon (a sovereign country) was effectively kidnapped and forced to deliver a statement provided to him by Riyadh denouncing Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon? Q: Is this part of a larger proxy-war between Iran and Saudi Arabia? 4 Stripping the Religious Police — In April 2016, the religious police suddenly were stripped of their powers. “With a single royal decree,” Hubbard writes, “M.B.S. had defanged the clerics, clearing the way for vast changes they most certainly would have opposed.” Q: What was this about? Women Drivers — M.B.S. eventually allowed women in the kingdom to drive cars, ending a prohibition that activists had campaigned against since he was a preschooler. But he also threw in jail and tortured some of the women who had fought so long and hard for that right.
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