Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has had a tumultuous 2018. He has gone from being hailed a revolutionary who would bring a Saudi Arab Spring to being censured unanimously by the US Senate for the premeditated murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The 33-year-old crown prince is now increasingly regarded as a dangerous and reckless despot implicated in war crimes and mass starvation. The Congress and media are likely to be more hostile in 2019. It has been a stunning fall from grace.
The crown prince began the year with highly touted visits to the United Kingdom and the United States. Empowered by an expensive lobbying campaign and public relations machine, the visits attracted enormous attention. In England he was received by Queen Elizabeth II and the prime minister. The UK provides about one-third of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s inventory of aircraft and there was talk of a big new arms deal.
The tour of the United States was almost three weeks long in March and April. At the White House the president welcomed the prince with big photos of America’s latest arms deals and urged him to buy more American weapons. His trip took him to Cambridge, Wall Street, Seattle, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Houston. Oprah Winfrey, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Clinton and a host of other celebrities had their picture taken with the prince. In Texas he met with the two Bush presidents. Extravagant deals were promised to invest in Saudi Vision 2030, the prince’s plan to reduce Saudi dependence on oil and reform the economy and society. Only a handful of critics urged caution in embracing the impulsive prince.
The crown prince’s appeal was in part his much-needed program of socio-economic change highlighted by giving women driver's licenses. But a big piece was the promise that he was going to be softer on Israel than the traditional Saudi posture. In particular the Saudi prince was said to favor Jared Kushner’s much-discussed "deal of the century" to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The evidence for this was always slim.
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