Mohammed bin Salman
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The Magnanimous Gesture of Mohammed bin Salman
Donald Trump famously cultivated a personal friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). To critics of the evil prince, Trump claimed that his loyalty was justified by the hundreds of billions of dollars of arms sales their friendship generated. The fact that those weapons served to engage the US actively in yet another Middle Eastern war appeared to trouble no one in Washington. Despite a growing crescendo of condemnation from the public, US support of a catastrophic military campaign in the name of helping an ally foment a humanitarian disaster in Yemen has continued to this day. The new US president, Joe Biden, has promised to modify that commitment, but not necessarily to cancel it.
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MBS has made other headlines since becoming the effective head of state in the kingdom. Successfully drawing the US into a genocidal war of his own design is not his only claim to fame. Mohammed bin Salman got major headlines with the Jamal Khashoggi affair in 2018. Trump himself seemed only momentarily embarrassed by the Saudi regime’s gruesome killing of the journalist in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate. In the end, Trump proved wise to count on the passage of time to efface the crime from the public’s and the media’s memory.
But the unexpected outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the US meant bad luck for MBS. The Biden administration has promised to release the findings of the CIA’s assessment that pointed unambiguously to the crown prince’s personal responsibility in ordering the crime. Although announced in the days following his inauguration three weeks ago, we are still waiting. The media may soon stop wondering why, like so many other things on Biden’s promised agenda, it is still not forthcoming and focus on more pressing issues.
Back in 2018, the uproar in the immediate aftermath of the gruesome killing of a journalist working for The Washington Post drew a few bad reviews from Congress and even provoked the indignation of President Trump’s most loyal supporter in the Senate, Lindsey Graham. Two years have now passed since Graham’s insistence that MBS be “dealt with” and that there would be “hell to pay.” Senator Graham seems to have decided that that reckoning can now wait till the Last Judgment.
It is too early to have a clear idea of how the Biden administration intends to deal with Saudi Arabia. MBS has reason to worry now that his BFF Trump has checked out of the White House. Especially after Biden announced, as The New York Times reported, “that he was ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, including some arms sales.” The fact that this dramatic announcement concerns “some” arms sales rather than, say, simply “arms sales” may mean Biden is hedging his bets. Or simply it is intended to reassure those who are counting on the windfall of continuing arms sales. But its ambiguity should worry anyone who was expecting a reversal of traditional US obsequiousness to the Saudis, which has been the pattern since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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With the surprising announcement of the release of activist Loujain al-Hathloul after three years of imprisonment, MBS seems to be playing a similar game. It consists of announcing what appears to be a sudden change of policy, in this case, the loosening of his dictatorial grip on Saudi society. Most commentators see his gesture as an attempt to seduce President Biden, who MBS fears may be under pressure to keep his promises concerning both Yemen and the Khashoggi assassination.
Hathloul is a young Saudi female who has been incarcerated and tortured for the crime of publicly denouncing Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving, which MBS subsequently lifted. Biden has applauded the crown prince’s clemency. The Guardian quotes Lina al-Hathloul, the sister of Loujain, who isn’t quite so pleased: “What we want now is real justice. That Loujain is completely, unconditionally free.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Real justice:
An unattainable ideal in which most governments expect people to believe, while at the same time manipulating events and institutions in such a way that the workings of the judicial system conform to the reigning laws of hyperreal justice
Contextual Note
Nobody expects a dictatorship to be a paragon of justice. But even the most Machiavellian dictatorship needs to make its people believe it is capable of being just. The author of “The Prince” made that very point when he famously wrote in chapter 18 that “it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.” MBS is, of course, beyond Machiavellian, since, unlike Italian princes five centuries ago, who had to earn their position of power through acts of valor, he was handed power on a gold-plated platter. He never needed to cultivate Machiavelli’s art of appearances.
Despite the popular belief that democracies provide a recourse against injustice and offer — to quote the American pledge of allegiance — “liberty and justice for all,” the principle that determines how justice is meted out (or withheld) is eerily similar in democracies and totalitarian regimes, differing only in degree. Injustice will exist in any regime to the extent that power believes it can escape criticism for its injustice.
Any good lawyer will tell you that the law and justice should never be confused. Every nation has laws that permit — and may even encourage and reward — unjust acts. Their effective enforcement protects some forms of injustice and punishes acts that challenge the injustice. That protection and punishment is brazenly given the name of justice because it is managed and enforced by the nation’s judicial system. To those who criticize such a system, Machiavelli would object that “real justice” in the real world can only be an illusion.
The case of Hathloul nevertheless tells a more extreme story. Like so many things in Saudi Arabia, it represents a total travesty of justice. Loujain was branded a terrorist and imprisoned for speaking her mind on an issue — allowing women to drive a car — that MBS himself turned into law shortly after she was thrown in prison. The point was that every good citizen must trust the rulers of the kingdom to determine what is just. Doubting their impeccable judgment is treasonous.
But the real travesty of this case concerns the nature of the punishment. The Saudi government denies the young woman’s claim of being tortured while in prison. Following her release, she has been subjected to a five-year travel ban and three years of probation. To survive, she must remain silent. If she so much as recounts the torture she claims to have undergone, she will be undoubtedly be punished, probably by further imprisonment and torture.
Historical Note
Dictatorships are not alone in producing unjust laws. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy in America” (chapter XV) that democracies are equally capable of passing and enforcing unjust laws: “When a man or party suffers an injustice in the United States, to whom can he turn?” Responding to his own question, the French aristocrat carefully listed the various possibilities of recourse and discounted each of them. So long as the majority adopts a position and passes laws, democracy is capable of enthroning certain forms of injustice as the law of the land.
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.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}Loujain al-Hathloul’s sister rightly demanded “real” justice as opposed to the purely legal justice of enforcing the written laws. But the real justice she cites is an abstraction that political regimes, in their pragmatism, have no need to recognize or comply with.
Saudi Arabia has the luxury of never having to speculate on the intellectual distinction between its established justice system and a philosopher’s ideal of justice. Democracies encourage intellectual activity, even when they avoid applying its lessons. Authoritarian regimes feel comfortable promoting justice as identical to the autocrat’s will. Mohammed bin Salman deemed that eliminating the discordant voice of Jamal Khashoggi was a form of justice. After all, it costs nothing to remain silent, so why should Khashoggi or Hathloul choose to make waves at their own peril?
The democracy known as the United States of America has recently demonstrated similar reasoning with the cases of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Like beauty, justice will always be in the eye of the beholder. But it will be concretely applied only by those beholders who have a firm grip on the reins of power.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Mohammed bin Salman’s Shaky Legacy in a Troubled Saudi Kingdom
Una Galani is the associate editor of Reuters’ Breakingviews division, which the news agency describes as “the world’s leading source of agenda-setting financial insight.” Last week, Breakingviews published her review of the book “Blood and Oil” by Wall Street Journal reporters Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck.
The book tells the story of the rise to power of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It focuses on his audacious game plan for remodeling the Saudi economy. While presenting MBS, as the crown prince is commonly known, as a reformer ready to break with tradition, the authors reveal the darker side of his character and weigh the significant risks this entails for his own future and that of Saudi Arabia.
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Galani seems to go one step beyond the authors’ critical judgment when, in the title of her article, she refers to Mohammed bin Salman as “Saudi Arabia’s sharpest prince.” The epithet appears justified at least in the comparative sense that previous Saudi leaders had a reputation for being seriously dull and plodding. By way of contrast, “sharp” may seem appropriate as a description of MBS. Or perhaps Galani was thinking of the well-sharpened cutting edge of the bone saw that MBS allegedly provided to the hit squad that was sent to Istanbul to dismember journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018.
Galani writes that “it’s tempting to see [Mohammed bin Salman’s] ruthlessness as a broom to the kingdom’s problems, even as admirable,” but she avoids the temptation and entertains no illusions about his errors and failures. She lists the obvious ones: “a war in Yemen, the role of his close confidantes in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the blockade of Qatar, and the effective kidnapping of Saad Hariri, who was Lebanon’s prime minister at the time.” Galani then highlights the fatal character flaw that explains those human disasters, explaining that “the prince’s inability to tolerate dissent and black-and-white view of the world may lie at the root of his multiple misadventures.”
Here is today’s 3D definition:
Misadventures:
A serious and even dreadful crime committed by someone with money and power, just as the misadventure of a citizen with neither money nor power (especially if black) will be deemed a crime worthy of incarceration
Contextual Note
Galani was undoubtedly being ironic when she characterized Mohammed bin Salman’s crimes and brazen assaults on people, nations, colleagues, family and journalists as “misadventures,” to say nothing of human rights advocates who have no place in Saudi society. At another point, she mentions his “adventures in power.” Her image of the crown prince is clearly that of a hyperreal antihero, not far from that of a cartoon character.
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Galani rightly reserves her judgment of Mohammed bin Salman’s place in history, which she nevertheless predicts will be a “highly disruptive legacy.” At the same time, she points to his failure to achieve his primary non-controversial goal, when she observes that he “hasn’t secured the inward investment needed to underwrite his economic transformation plans.” The simple truth is that Saudi Arabia today finds itself in a deep crisis aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The image of MBS that emerges from Galani’s review and Hope and Schenck’s book contrasts singularly with the points made last week in an article on Fair Observer by award-winning Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari. Seeking to develop a contrast between Saudi successes and Iranian failures, Ziabari believes that “the future Saudi king has undoubtedly scored significant gains both domestically and internationally.”
Ziabari doesn’t call MBS “sharp,” but he deems him “a strong social reformer.” He cites the “notable steps the crown prince has taken to socially liberalize a conservative country.” He mentions in passing but seriously minimizes the “misadventures” Galani ironically mentions.
To justify Mohammed bin Salman as a model to be emulated, Ziabari cites a statistic from May 2018, months before the assassination of Khashoggi. As he recounts it, “more than 90% of young people in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 18 and 24 endorse the crown prince’s leadership.” In terms of journalistic accuracy, Ziabari should have written “endorsed” in the past tense. He may be unaware that the level of “trust” in MBS has since seriously deteriorated throughout the region as a recent Pew poll shows (even if the poll did not sample Saudi Arabia, for the obvious reason that it would not have been allowed to conduct its survey in the kingdom). Recent events have undoubtedly shaken the confidence of a lot of young Saudis.
Had Ziabari been interested in more recently observed trends, he might have noticed one expert’s assessment in May: “The erosion of the social contract between the rulers and the ruled will lead to serious problems, especially in a tribal society.” The expert in question, Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center think tank, described MBS in these terms: “He’s not the sophisticated operator that he portrays himself to be. He’s less like a businessman or politician and more like a gangster.”
Historical Note
Most people acknowledge that 2020 has become a watershed moment in history. The year 2019 now appears to represent an unrecoverable past and 2021 an utterly unpredictable future. This is true everywhere in the world, even in a despotic kingdom ruled with an iron hand by an authoritarian prince with the capacity to imprison or execute at will members of his own family. And yet, Kourosh Ziabari relies on testimony from what now appears to be the distant past to highlight the success of Mohammed bin Salman.
He approvingly reports that “The New York Times has described the measures [MBS] introduced as ‘Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring.’” He fails to point out two important facts: that the article was posted in November 2017 — nearly a year before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi — and, more tellingly, that the author of that article was the comically unreliable, ever mistaken Thomas Friedman, a celebrity writer who still seems to believe the world is flat because US technology and the economic culture associated with it has become the universal parasite of state economies.
To justify Mohammed bin Salman’s image as a reformist, Ziabari offers several quotes, all of which predate not just the current health and economic crisis, but also the Khashoggi affair. On the basis of those by now ancient remarks, he concludes that MBS has “introduced reforms that are meaningful and important in a troubled region riddled with conflict and the absence of democracy.”
Skipping forward, he cites as proof of progress the recent decision of the supreme court to abolish flogging, as reported by the BBC. But he neglects to cite the damning conclusion in the same article: “But waves of arrests of every type of dissident under the king and the crown prince – including of women’s rights campaigners – undercut this claim, our reporter says.”
Ziabari’s real focus is on Iran, not Mohammed bin Salman. His wish for radical change in Iran makes perfect sense. But suggesting that the model MBS provides might be, as he claims, a “benchmark” would seem to be wishful thinking if not dangerous folly. As a point of comparison, it is historically accurate to call Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler modernizing reformers with ambitious programs, who were adored by a majority of their people. But no one today would treat them as role models.
Concerning Iran, Ziabari is right to hope for a development that might “put an end to decades of hostility with the US and the West.” But, isn’t that exactly what had begun to take place when Barack Obama pushed through the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, which MBS opposed and US President Donald Trump canceled at the first opportunity?
More realistically, Una Galani offers this assessment: “One positive for [MBS] is that it’s unclear how much of a difference the Khashoggi affair has really made. Investors were quick to mingle again with the prince, albeit somewhat more in private, but still with the hope of extracting funds.”
Galani recognizes that it’s all about the decisions people with money make, not about the wise policies of political leaders. Ziabari seems to agree when he remarks that Mohammed bin Salman “has a favorable public image in the eyes of Western political and business elites.” Still, success with people who control piles of money should not turn him into a role model.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
What Iran Can Learn From Saudi Arabia
Over three years have passed since Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The challenges he has faced throughout this time have been too colossal for a 35-year-old leader to accommodate. Yet the prince has sought to give the impression of a strong social reformer. Indeed, some of the changes he has introduced will significantly transform the public image of Saudi Arabia and global attitudes toward the kingdom, at least in the long term.
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Under Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, Saudi Arabia has repealed a longstanding ban on women driving, allowed female singers to perform publicly, relaxed male guardianship laws on women, implemented employment discrimination protection and allowed women into sports stadiums. These are some of the most notable steps the crown prince has taken to socially liberalize a conservative country. Add to the list the curbing of the religious police’s powers and efforts to appeal to international tourists by introducing an e-visa system and you could say that Saudi Arabia is changing.
The crown prince has also faced his fair share of criticism. The assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Riyadh’s deadly and costly war in Yemen, a diplomatic spat with Qatar, deteriorating relations with Syria and tensions with rival Iran are only some of the issues that have caused critics to rail on Mohammed bin Salman.
MBS Is Popular in Saudi Arabia
Despite this, the future Saudi king has undoubtedly scored significant gains both domestically and internationally. MBS, as the crown prince is commonly known, is popular among young Saudis, and he has a favorable public image in the eyes of Western political and business elites.
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In 2018, the Arab Youth Survey found that more than 90% of young people in Saudi Arabia between the ages of 18 and 24 endorse the crown prince’s leadership, believing that he is moving the country in the right direction. The Economist has dubbed the reforms spearheaded by MBS as a “social revolution,” and The New York Times has described the measures he introduced as “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring.”
What is important is that MBS has admitted that Saudi Arabia has enforced a rigid reading of Islam for a long period of time. This is reflected in the restricted level of civil liberties and social freedoms granted to its citizens over the years, as well as the stringency of Saudi Arabia’s bureaucratic and judicial processes. The prince thinks it’s time for a change.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2017, MBS said Saudi Arabia has been “not normal” for three decades. “What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East,” he added. The prince promised that Saudi Arabia will be pivoting to “moderate Islam” in preparation for changing the kingdom for the better. He echoed the same sentiments in a 2018 interview with Time magazine: “We believe the practice today in a few countries, among them Saudi Arabia, is not the practice of Islam.”
And he was right. In a country labeled as the “most profoundly gender-segregated nation on Earth,” carrying the accolade of one of the most conservative cultures in the world, change was and is still needed. To abandon an unprogressive reading of Islam as a government-prescribed lifestyle is the first step.
MBS has embraced those changes and introduced reforms that are meaningful and important in a troubled region riddled with conflict and the absence of democracy. It was only on April 24 that Saudi Arabia’s supreme court announced it had abolished flogging as a form of punishment, which will be replaced by imprisonment or fines. Moreover, the kingdom has rescinded the death penalty for juvenile offenders and minors who commit serious crimes, and the maximum sentence that can be handed down to them is a 10-year prison term.
Saudi Arabia is still far from becoming a democratic state. However, the prince’s boldness in busting dogmas that were so entrenched in Saudi society that they couldn’t even be debated publicly should serve as an example for other Muslim countries that continue to curtail their citizens’ civil liberties and human rights. Iran, another religiously conservative nation, is a case in point.
Meanwhile, in Iran…
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are regional rivals and have barely maintained cordial relations in recent decades. In denominational terms, they are on the two extremes of the spectrum. Iran is a Shia-majority nation at the helm of which is a Shia jurist who is the ultimate authority on all matters. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-majority country founded on the puritanical doctrine of Wahhabism — an ultraconservative branch of Islam — that is deeply at odds with Shia Islam.
Yet the two rivals are socially similar. In Iran, like Saudi Arabia, a conservative interpretation of Islam is practiced. Public celebrations that are not based on religion are rare. Some degree of male guardianship is enforced. For example, women need the consent of a male relative to apply for a passport. Iran’s compulsory hijab rules are highly strict, and religious police penalize non-Islamic, non-pious public behavior, including drinking and eating during Ramadan and dressing styles that violate governmental edicts. Foreign visitors are also subject to restrictions, including being required to follow the mandatory Islamic dress code of the state. Other than a few occasions since 1979, female spectators have not been allowed into sports stadiums. And the list goes on.
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Although the revolutionary zeal of the early 1980s has subsided and civil liberties have grown to some extent, Iran is still a conservative country, and the government sees the orthodox enactment of Islamic decrees as its top priority.
Characterized by tens of executions per year, a strict dress code for women and constant intrusion into people’s lives, Iran has not yet woken up to the threat of extremism pitting the public against the ruling elite and tarnishing its global image. The Islamic Republic’s religious and political authorities have not been willing to adjust their reading of Islam with life in the 21st century.
This is particularly troubling because, in Iran, daily life is closely tied to religion and how it is construed. As Iranian leaders stringently proselytize the idea that Islam and politics cannot be separated, an “Islamic” prefix or suffix accompanies the name of most public bodies, the school curriculum has religious undertones and 80% of state TV programs have religious motifs.
What Iran Can Learn
Iran needs reform. To survive and thrive in a globalized world, attract foreign investment, put an end to decades of hostility with the US and the West, draw international visitors to nourish its tourism sector, decrease its debilitating reliance on oil revenues and diversify its economy, Iran must take bold steps and opt for change. Opening up to the world and reducing restrictions on social and political freedoms of its citizens are essentials that will help the country come out from the cold and have warm relations with the international community.
Saudi Arabia’s reform bonanza on social life is perhaps the benchmark that Iran can build on to implement reforms of its own. Saudi Arabia is a member of the G20. This shows its economic prosperity and global standing. Iran is not short of resources for it to be in a similar situation. What it lacks is the courage to accept that it needs change. When Iran makes that admission, there will be better days for its citizens.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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