S- Hey Rob, Saudi Arabia has basically neutered the religious police
R- Oh, I’m sure that’ll last.
S- Hey Rob, Saudi Arabia changed the female guardianship laws
R- Yeah, like that’s going to make it’s way into the actual culture
S- Hey Rob, Woman can drive in Saudi Arabia now.
R-Yippee, way to throw us a bone Saudi Arabia.
I’m not impressed
S- Hey Rob, The next in line to the throne just announced that Saudi Arabia is turning
towards moderate Islam.
R- Whaaaaat?!?!?
Ok I’ll admit it.
Saudi Arabia surprised me.
Last Tuesday (10/24) the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, used the announcement
of a new megacity economic zone to make some striking statements on Islam in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Salman, more commonly known as MBS followed this up with an interview with the Guardian
that was pretty mind-blowing as well.
Talk is cheap, but for a second there, the Saudi Crown Prince was beginning to sound
like one of my videos.
Two passages from the Guardian article are worth reading in full.
“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.
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries,
one of them is Saudi Arabia.
We didn’t know how to deal with it.
And the problem spread all over the world.
Now is the time to get rid of it.”
“ 70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our
life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and immediately.”
Now I don’t think all of this is true.
The Extremism of the past 30 years has very much been about Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia’s
extremist history goes back waaay more than 30 years.
But that truth makes these comments even braver.
MBS has conceded that something is wrong with Saudi Arabia which is something that leaders
very rarely do.
It’s like Kim Jong Un Backing off communism or Donald Trump backing off tweets, Or Kim
Jong Un backing off Communism.
Shocking stuff.
It’s pretty extraordinary, and it should be recognized.
But it doesn’t change my estimates of Saudi Arabia’s chances.
They seem to be retreating farther and farther into Dream Land.
Consider the plans announced for NEOM, the new economic zone.
It’s supposed to cost 500 billion dollars.
That’s a larger amount than all of the foreign reserves Saudi Arabia has left.
It’s telling that at the new economic zone’s announcement, MBS sat himself next to Christiane
Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.
Saudi Arabia expects the rest of the world to pay for their transformation.
This supposed turn against Saudi radicalism is part of a massive and successful public
relations push.
It’s certainly gotten Saudi Arabia’s story out there.
I highly doubt it will drive real investment.
MBS has gone much further with the rhetoric, much sooner than I expected.
That could be a sign that Saudi Arabia is in even more trouble than I thought.
I think it’s worth diving in on Crown Prince MBS a little bit more.
He’s being constantly pitched as the New, Different, Face of Saudi Arabia.
He gets a new launch every time he moves up in the hierarchy.
This happened most recently in June 2017 when he officially became next in line for the
throne.
But he’s really not all that new anymore.
He’s had vast and growing powers since his father reached the throne in January of 2015.
Many of Saudi Arabia’s recent mis-steps were all MBS.
As Minister of Defense, he launched the horror show in Yemen.
The Qatar Crisis, an attempt to isolate Iran that has backfired completely is thought to
be another MBS brain wave.
The Crown Prince’s almost three year romance with the Western Press has hidden fundamentals
that look worse and worse for Saudi Arabia.
The foreign reserves are down to 480 billion from 737 Billion just three years ago.
The Aramco IPO that is supposed to fund big projects like the new economic zone is getting
delayed, and people are beginning to question whether it is even going to happen.
Even with the current small rise in oil prices, Saudi Arabia is still very much running out
of money.
The moves toward moderation I mentioned at the beginning of the videos are all great,
but they seem more like desperation to me than progress.
And it’s not at all clear what the Crown Prince’s people think of all of this.
The chances of a backlash are high, and passed over princes like Muhammad bin Nayef are waiting
in the wings for the crown prince to fail.
For now though, I do have to say that I think more highly of MBS than I did last week.
He has surprised me, and he has almost certainly earned himself a spot in history.
But it may not be the spot he thinks it is.
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