MBS meeting Jared Kushner, with George Nader standing behind (in profile in suit), Riyadh May 2017 [photo credit: @siasatpk]
King Salman MBS referred to only once en passant when The Atlantic asked him if he would consider pardoning those who’d spoken out in favour of women driving
and normalization with Qatar: “That’s not my power. That’s His
Majesty’s power,” MbS said. But, he added, “no king has ever used” the
pardon power, and his father does not intend to be the first.
This is false: many kings have granted pardons although The Atlantic
did not pick him up on this. Nor was this the only thing missed. When
MbS said as a result of his “anti-corruption” campaign $100 billion had
been recovered directly and much more indirectly, The Atlantic should
have asked him where that money is now, since no one else seems to know.
Answering The Atlantic’s questions - economic, political, cultural,
religious - MbS made no reference to any other Saudi body or
institution, giving the impression that it is he alone who knows and
decides everything.
But as any savvy politician knows, deflecting sensitive questions
towards subordinates or other authorities such as ministries or
religious officials is often a canny way to avoid pitfalls.
It’s a trick the arrogant MbS missed and as a result he made so many
gaffes the version of the interview which was subsequently published in
Arabic in Saudi media was significantly different to that in The
Atlantic and Wood himself was roundly attacked by Saudi-controlled media
and Saud Al Qahtani’s electronic flies’ army as a pimp, a dog and a
Qatari agent.
“Two Saudi insiders have told me that my access to Saudi Arabia is
finished after the story’s publication, and that the crown prince will
'never' see me again” wrote Wood in a follow-up article published on 7 March .
As Wood observes, the edits in the Saudi version are revealing as
they show what the crown prince’s media team wishes to suppress. They
include the editing of a sinister comment by MbS about the Khashoggi
murder. It went from:
“If you’re going to go for another operation like that, for
another person, it’s got to be professional and it’s got to be one of
the top 1,000.”
To:
“If we assume for argument’s sake that we’re going to go for an
operation like that, it would have been professional and someone on the
top of the list.” The Arabic version adds “God forbid!” (la samah
Allah).
In the English version, MbS tells The Atlantic that Saudis who
supported Qatar during the boycott were like Americans who supported
Nazis during the Second World War.
“What do you think [would have happened] if someone was praising and trying to push for Hitler in World War II?” MBS asked. The Saudi version erases the comparison of the Qatari Emir to Adolf Hitler.
Also scrubbed was MbS’s ill-considered answer about not prosecuting some sharia sanctioned punishments. The original article states:
“Even if there is a divine punishment for fornication, the way
that we should prosecute it is as the Prophet did. We should not try to
seek out people and prove charges against them. You have to do it the
way that the Prophet taught us how to do it.”
The Saudi version erases this as it calls into question the point of
criminalising some acts according to the Quran, which would be
incendiary to Islamists.
Another sensitive issue erased in the Arabic version concerned the
legalisation of alcohol, which we discussed in one of last December's newsletters.
Wood asked MBS whether alcohol would ever be sold legally in Saudi
Arabia, and received no reply. His question was also stricken from the
Saudi version presumably because MbS’s refusal to answer suggests such a
change is possible.
When The Atlantic article was published in its English and Arabic
versions, it was immediately met with a hail of criticism from both the
Saudis and, separately, from supporters of Jamal Khashoggi in the West.
Marc Lynch, a George Washington University professor, wrote that The Atlantic profile “couldn’t be more sympathetic if [MbS’s] own press team had written it.”
“Just unbelievable. And such an insult to an actual journalist who was tortured and dismembered for his work” tweeted Elizabeth Spiers, a journalism professor at New York University.
Wood describes some of the measures the Saudis took against him in his follow-up article. They include the Saudi Post tweeting a fabricated account of the interview purporting to be in Wood’s voice:
“When [The Atlantic’s] team went to meet the Crown Prince in his
palace in Riyadh, we had heard bad things about him abroad, especially
from the son of [the exiled Interior ministry official] Saad al-Jabri,
who fed us false information about him. When we met him face to face, we
were amazed: We saw only a humble, outspoken, strong, and very smart
leader.”
During the interview MbS also makes several thinly veiled threats
against the US, warning that if it does not cooperate with him he will
open the door for terrorists and turn his attention towards China and
Russia. Wood wrote:
“Then I realized that MBS was not saying that the failure of his
plan to remake the kingdom might lead to catastrophe. He was saying that
he’d guarantee it would. Many secular Arab leaders before him have made
the same dark implication: Support everything I do, or I will let slip
the dogs of jihad. This was not an argument. It was a threat.”
And:
MBS has lines open to the Chinese. “Where is the potential in the
world today?” he said. “It’s in Saudi Arabia. And if you want to miss
it, I believe other people in the East are going to be super happy.”
And:
We asked whether Biden misunderstands something about him.
“Simply, I do not care,” he replied. Alienating the Saudi monarchy, he
suggested, would harm Biden’s position. “It’s up to him to think about
the interests of America.” He gave a shrug. “Go for it.”
Such bravado is only posturing, if only because MbS has a deep
attraction to the US and a fascination with American culture as
evidenced by his constant references to programmes such as Game of Thrones.
More importantly, Saudi Arabia remains dependent on the US
politically, militarily and technologically. All the reforms MbS is
currently undertaking - Vision 2030, the opening up to entertainment and
sport, women driving, the de-Islamisation of the country - are being
done with a US audience in mind, as was the interview in The Atlantic.
These threatening comments should be read as being aimed at President
Biden and the Democrats, not the US as a country. Further to the recent visit
by Jared Kushner, MbS is calculating that by sticking to the OPEC+
agreement with Russia and refusing Biden’s calls to increase production,
even as global energy prices skyrocket, he can use his influence over
the price at the pump to undermine the Democrats chances in the upcoming
mid-term elections, damage Biden and so bring Donald Trump back to
power.
The problem with this is that betting on Donald Trump has never been a
wise move and, if it fails, there is no Plan B. And threatening the US
and refusing to cooperate over energy policy in order to influence its
internal politics, even as US vital interests come under threat, will
leave Biden fuming and US-Saudi relations ever more damaged.