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The Saudi Royal Family Shakeup

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"The House of Saud, one of the world’s largest and richest royal families, experienced a quiet coup within its ranks shortly before dawn on Wednesday.... The shakeup, which concentrates power in a conservative wing of the vast royal family, could shape policy in the world’s largest oil exporter for decades," writes Robin Wright.

The House of Saud, one of the world’s largest and richest royal families, experienced a quiet coup within its ranks shortly before dawn on Wednesday. King Salman canned his Crown Prince and appointed a tough security official as the new heir. He named as second-in-line to the throne a young son with limited experience. And he removed the world’s longest serving foreign minister, who was responsible for building the alliance between Riyadh and Washington under seven American Presidents since 1975.

A longer list of abrupt royal decrees was announced in an early-morning television bulletin. Senior princes were then assembled at a Riyadh palace to pledge loyalty to the new order of succession. The shakeup, which concentrates power in a conservative wing of the vast royal family, could shape policy in the world’s largest oil exporter for decades.

The apparent goal was to signal renewed vigor amid deepening turmoil in and around the country. Last month, Saudi Arabia mobilized a ten-nation coalition to intervene in neighboring Yemen’s war, to the south. That has not gone well. To the north, the Kingdom is also part of the U.S.-led coalition running daily air strikes against the Islamic State, which has defiantly held on to huge chunks of Iraq and Syria. And this week the government announced the arrests of ninety-three militants who were allegedly plotting against security targets, foreign residential compounds, and the U.S. Embassy. Most are Saudis.

The decrees were all the more startling because the Kingdom just went through a big transition in January, when King Abdullah died, after two decades in power. Usually, the Saudis move slowly and with consensus. Usually, age takes precedence, no matter the ailments of the senescent first generation of princes sired by the Kingdom’s founder, the warrior Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Sequence was honored even when lining up at royal events.

King Salman instead removed his youngest half-brother and turned the Kingdom decisively over to the next generation of princes, the founder’s grandsons. He also skipped over hundreds who had seniority among them. (The royal family has somewhere around seven thousand princes and princesses.) Salman turns eighty this year. The question is whether the new precedent of forsaking promises and leap-frogging royals might, in turn, be used against Salman’s appointees after he dies—and whether it might end up generating more uncertainty than stability.

The new Crown Prince is Mohammed bin Nayef, the King’s nephew. He was educated in Oregon and has coördinated closely with U.S. intelligence on counterterrorism for years. As Interior Minister, he gained renown by crushing Al Qaeda’s campaign to overthrow the monarchy a decade ago. He’s also in charge of the rehabilitation program for captured Al Qaeda members, including former prisoners released from Guantánamo Bay.

Nayef is said to have been the target of at least four assassination attempts. He had a particularly close call in 2009, when he agreed to receive a militant on Saudi Arabia’s most-wanted list who was based in Yemen and offered to turn himself in. The Prince dispatched his personal plane to pick him up at the border. After arriving at Nayef’s palace, in Jeddah, the man detonated a bomb, hidden in a body cavity. The Prince was injured. From his hospital bed, he said of the meeting, “It was a mistake.”

Nayef is often referred to as “America’s favorite Saudi.” In December, he visited President Obama—unusually high access for an interior minister—to discuss terrorism and security threats in the Middle East.

More surprising than Nayef’s selection, perhaps, was the King’s appointment of his thirty-something son Mohammad bin Salman as Deputy Crown Prince. He was a virtual unknown until his father took the throne in January and he was elevated to Minister of Defense, a position often held by men twice his age. He is reputed to be ruthlessly ambitious. In recent weeks, he has become the face of the Saudi intervention in Yemen.

The two men now dominate political, economic, and security policy, especially since King Salman is widely reported to be frail from a previous stroke and to have mental-acuity issues. The rise of these grandsons also consolidates the hold of the royal clique known as the Sudairi Seven (for the sons of the founding king’s favorite wife), at the political expense of other wings of the family. The current monarch has effectively carved out a dominant line—some royals seemingly more royal than the others—in the family.

King Salman eased out other top officials as well, including the powerful Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal. Prince Saud had been ailing for years, but his clout, contacts, and credibility continued to make him one of the world’s most powerful voices on international affairs. During my first trip to Saudi Arabia, in 1981, the British Foreign Minister, Lord Carrington, told me that only two things had changed his mind regarding British policy. One was the sight of Vietnamese boats off the coast of Hong Kong. The other was Prince Saud’s impassioned plea on behalf of the Palestinians. Carrington subsequently led a campaign that changed Europe’s Palestinian policy as well. After the announcement this week, Secretary of State John Kerry issued an unusual statement on the retirement of a colleague: “Prince Saud has not just been the planet’s longest-serving Foreign Minister but also among the wisest. He worked with twelve of my predecessors and was universally admired.”

The Saudi Ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, was named as Prince Saud’s replacement. Jubeir, who once had a reputation as a playboy with a passion for motorcycles and cigars, is the first non-royal to become the interlocutor between the Kingdom and the outside world. It’s a meteoric rise. His first job in Washington, in the nineteen-nineties, was press attaché at the Embassy.

All these surprises come at a time of tension between Washington and Riyadh, particularly over the U.S.-led initiative with Iran on a nuclear deal. Until its 1979 revolution, Iran was one of the two pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East; the other was Israel. Afterward, Saudi Arabia assumed that role in the Persian Gulf. The Kingdom now fears that a nuclear deal will ultimately marginalize Saudi influence.

U.S.-Saudi ties have also suffered over regional policy. The Kingdom blames Washington for the disintegration of Syria and Iraq, either through inaction or actions that backfired. The rise of princes with security portfolios may indicate that Saudi Arabia intends to pursue a more muscular approach, as it sees fit, in the region. Its intervention in Yemen took Washington largely by surprise.

But royal-watching in a kingdom that mixes some of the bleakest deserts in the world with oases of high-rises and glitzy malls has always been an opaque process, even among Saudis. The shakeup is not likely to make it any clearer.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. 

This article was originally published in The New Yorker

About the Author

Robin Wright image

Robin Wright

USIP-Wilson Center Distinguished Fellow;
Author and columnist for The New Yorker
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Middle East Program

The Wilson Center’s Middle East Program serves as a crucial resource for the policymaking community and beyond, providing analyses and research that helps inform US foreign policymaking, stimulates public debate, and expands knowledge about issues in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  Read more