How Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Consolidated Power

Time​ Magazine

4 days ago

An old newsroom quip has it that every story about the Middle East for the past 50 years could open with, 'The region is, as ever, at a critical moment.' Few journalists have witnessed more of those moments than Karen Elliott House, whom I worked with for many years at The Wall Street Journal, where she was a correspondent, editor and publisher. House has covered the Middle East since the 1970s, earning a reputation as one of the best-connected and most incisive observers of Saudi Arabia, which in the current 'critical moment' has emerged as the region's indispensable player. With Iran and its proxies diminished and Gulf states anxious to diversify their economies, any prospect for broader peace and normalization runs through Riyadh.
That makes The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia, House's new book about Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, essential reading. Chronicling both his ruthless consolidation of power and his vision of economic transformation, it's a sequel of sorts to House's 2012 On Saudi Arabia, which explored the internal dysfunction, oil dependency and sclerotic bureaucracy that MBS has now inherited. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
TIME: Let's start in the headlines. Our former WSJ colleague Bret Stephens recently wrote a column that says recent decisive moves on the battlefield have created 'diplomatic openings that have been out of reach for decades.' Do you agree?
House: There are opportunities now that haven't existed for a long time because of Israel having almost eliminated Iran's proxies. But I remain a pessimist about the Middle East. There's no end to the ability of people in the region to blow opportunity. I became diplomatic correspondent for The Wall Street Journal right after [Anwar] Sadat had been to Jerusalem. That was in everyone's mind a history opportunity. And we did get Israeli-Egyptian peace, which is significant, but far from Middle East peace.
The possibility is to get to a Saudi-Israeli peace. But the difficulty is that the Crown Prince does need something on the Palestinian issue, and I don't see Israel being willing to give it. The war in Gaza has raised [the level of] what he needs to be able to recognize Israel, and it has vastly raised Israel's determination to avoid any kind of Palestinian state unless the Palestinians are willing to have Israel in charge of security.
TIME: What would it take to make a compromise happen?
House: Trump now has more leverage over both MBS and Israel, and the Palestinians have been through so much that they might be willing to have some kind of coexistence where they have no military. It's not that the Palestinian people themselves in my view are so eager to do away with Israel. It's that the militants in the Arab world and Iran as the greatest militant in the region take the view that Israel must be destroyed.
The Crown Prince with his Saudi-first doctrine is not willing forever to put off relations that allow for a security and a commercial relationship that protects Saudi Arabia and advances [his aspiration for] a new Silicon Valley in the northwest with Israeli technology and Saudi money. There's so much he can gain from that.
TIME: Transitioning to your reporting for the book, what was it like going from interviewing elderly, opaque, distant Saudi royals as you have done so often over the years to the Crown Prince in his Yeezys?
House: [In the past], it was like interviewing somebody from on high. You couldn't even make much eye contact because there were all these people around pouring coffee, bringing papers, doing other things. They had no interest really in conveying information. It was a kind of almost meet-and-greet, a formality, not an interview. MBS from the first time I met him in January of 2016 – well, I had met him before that actually with his father in 2010 – but when I met him as Deputy Crown Prince, you sit down, and the translator and the press minder are far away. As I say in the book, he doesn't need the airs of power because he's got the real stuff. He doesn't try to act like a potentate.
TIME: Is he cultivating the image of informality, or is it real?
House: He is a modern informal person. He still plays video games every morning. He goes to the Formula One race and poses for selfies with people. He rode his dirt bike up the hills at Al Ula, this place they're turning into a tourist site. And when the people on the other side saw that it was Mohammed bin Salman, they were totally shocked because again royal rulers don't ride dirt bikes.
TIME: You write about his growing-up, that he was not his father's favorite, that he had fewer privileges than many of his cousins.
House: There is a chip-on-the-shoulder quality. He is the first of his mother's sons. She's the third wife. His mother told him don't be an also-ran to the first wife's sons. You have to get out there and make something of yourself.
TIME: Take us from that observation to his role in the most visible family contest, the Ritz lockup and purge that followed.
House: I think it had two purposes—at least, maybe more—but one was to consolidate his power by removing from potential competition the sons of King Abdullah. Prince Mitteb was the head of the National Guard, and he was one of the first people called to the Ritz Carlton. Then his brother Turki.
When I wrote my first book, people in the royal family and in the government said at least 30% of the government budget every year was simply siphoned off to this royal and that one, and this businessman and that one. Corruption was simply an accepted way of life. [MBS] wanted to modernize the economy and get people off of dependence on government handouts. They had to wring some of the corruption out to make young people think the playing field was level—if you weren't a royal or you weren't the child of one of the dozen biggest businessmen in Saudi Arabia.
And he succeeded. Prince Turki is still in prison. Prince Miteb, in essence, is under house arrest. He can't fly. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the famous businessman who owns part of various banks in New York and the Four Seasons Hotel, etc.—he was one of those arrested. And he says, 'It's all in the family. We have forgiven everything. I mean, I'm content with this.' And he's back in his business empire.
TIME: How do you reconcile the ruthlessness and the charm, the lock-up and purge against the selfie-posing, video game playing, informality?
House: That's a very interesting question. As I write in the book, Peter the Great was a similar kind of person to MBS. He was prepared to be ruthless. He killed his own son, whom he thought had betrayed him. But as a young man, he was determined to be a modernizer. He went to Europe, learned how to build ships. He thought he knew how to be a doctor—he would operate on people. He clearly had an engaging charm. He was a big beer drinker with his workers, but he had this brutality of, 'I'm in charge, and I know what needs to be done.'
Napoleon also could be a very engaging man and also a very ruthless man. I cite [Singapore's] Lee Kuan Yew as a latter-day kind of example. I knew Lee well, and he was the smartest man I've ever met. He didn't have a frivolous, video game-playing side—he was all serious—but he had that perspective that MBS [has], which is ' I can step on anyone's human rights or individual rights, but I'm busy trying to do what's good for the country.'
TIME: You call out the Khashoggi murder as the grotesque crime it was but also call it a disaster for MBS and his global ambitions. I gather you believe that MBS is too strategic to have intended it to play out the way it did.
House: My view is that it was a rendition gone wrong—that they intended to pick him up and bring him back to Saudi Arabia. Because once somebody is in the kingdom, things can happen to them, and the Western press doesn't really know.
They had a prince who was lured onto a plane by the same man—[Saud al-] Qahtani, who was the leader of the Khashoggi operation. He had been the press officer at the royal court and had kind of made himself the crown prince's—or MBS's—number-one enforcer of no-opposition, suppressing or dealing with anybody that opposed him.
TIME: You write about several friends of yours who've literally disappeared under MBS's rule. How did that shape your reporting?
House: I didn't realize at first that two men I knew were among those detained. One was Mohammed al-Qahtani, who had been arrested under King Abdullah for criticizing the lack of judicial independence. That was considered treasonous, and he was sentenced to 10 years. But in 2023, he wasn't released, which obviously caused consternation with his family.
I pursued what happened, and I was told on my last visit, in March 2025, that he's now out of prison—he's in an apartment in Riyadh with his family but saying nothing. And I believe that to be the case. I don't think they've killed him.
Abdullah al-Shammari, my translator, wasn't a democracy activist in any way. I never heard him say anything critical about the Crown Prince. I used to see him every time I went back, but he stopped responding on WhatsApp in 2021, and when I've asked about him, I've gotten vague answers. The Saudi Press Agency carried a story a year ago that listed him as arrested and executed along with others for 'criminal acts that entail betrayal' of the country. I haven't been able to confirm any of it, but it's obviously deeply troubling.
So I don't know. It's a huge mystery. Khashoggi was, of course, a known figure in Saudi Arabia. He had worked in the media, for King Abdullah, and was often put forward to speak with foreign journalists. He had visibility. I saw him about nine months before he left for Washington. We had lunch, and he was antsy, frustrated—he said he'd essentially been banned from writing by MBS.
He said to me at the time, 'I would prefer democracy, but at least we have KPIs [key performance indicators] for all the ministers.' His point was: there is some accountability. He would've preferred democracy, but KPIs were something. His prominence made him more vulnerable.
TIME: Let's move to the economy and Vision 2030. Your 2012 book, On Saudi Arabia, was really about the deep internal challenges—oil dependency, gerontocracy—that you argued were more threatening in the long-run to the country than external ones. Did you see the path that emerged with MBS as a likely outcome of that predicament? Or was it a shock?
House: No, it was a surprise. I described, I think very accurately, the country he is trying to now remake. Young Saudis and poor Saudis were frustrated. There was so much corruption, so much hypocrisy. The government forced people to follow the religious rules, but the royal family didn't live by them.
At the end of that book, I warned that the risk was Saudi Arabia becoming like the old Soviet Union–one old man after another ruling until a Gorbachev came along, but too late. I used the analogy of a 747: the cockpit full of geriatrics, First Class full of princes who would be king, and Economy full of ordinary Saudis and terrorists. I said there were some young men who could do a good job, and I named a few, but [MBS] wasn't one of them. When the book came out, he was 27—off the radar. I had met him but didn't pick him out as the next leader.
So yes, when he appeared, it was a shock—not just to me but to many Saudis. People said, 'Where did he come from?' Nobody expected the sixth son of Salman to rise. But the generational change was the good part. Instead of continuing on with 77- and 80-year-olds with no ideas and no runway to act, they got someone with a vision and time to execute it.
TIME: Still, even after 10 years of his rule, the country is highly dependent on oil.
House: Yes. But at least they're taking steps—tourism, minerals. They're on a path that, if pursued intelligently and consistently, could leave the country in a much better place. Otherwise, they were on a glide path to becoming a poor Arab country. Not as poor as Egypt, maybe, but declining, because they were using more and more oil domestically, leaving less to sell.
TIME: Vision 2030 requires a modern, tech-oriented economy. Is that the core of the strategy, and how would you grade where they are?
House: He gets an A for understanding the need for that transition. But probably a C for execution so far. It's still a long road.
To build the tech corridor he envisions, he believes he needs a relationship with Israel. His hope is that with Saudi Arabia's low energy costs, it becomes attractive for AI data centers, which are energy-intensive. But it's a big task, and he's competing with Dubai and others who offer a more Western lifestyle to foreign talent.
TIME: He needs foreigners to want to live and work there.
House: Yes. One reason he's liberalizing society is not just to give young Saudis entertainment in exchange for work, but to make Saudi Arabia livable for foreigners who bring money and know-how. That's always been the model since King Faisal: importing foreigners to do what was necessary.
In the past, Saudis checked into a kind of four-star hotel at birth—government job, room service, little accountability. Egyptians and others did the work. Now, he needs Saudis to think and act for themselves. But even today, more foreigners are in the workforce than Saudis.
TIME: Let's circle back to where we started. What's the broader role MBS is seeking in the global order? Regional hegemon? A player in a broader multipolar world?
House: He sees Saudi Arabia as the most influential of the so-called 'middle powers,' a player not just in the Middle East, but in the global economy. He wants Saudi Arabia to be among the countries putting people on the moon or Mars. His ambitions are very big.
He doesn't want to be a U.S. puppet. He partners with Russia to control oil output and prices. China is his biggest oil customer—and he wants China to influence Iran toward stability. He's using money and economic clout to push a Saudi-first agenda: What's good for Saudi Arabia? What can we get?
I think he's doing a decent job at that. But my doubt is: can you play all sides against the middle forever? He wanted a U.S. security treaty tied to recognition of Israel, but he probably can't get enough votes in the U.S. Senate. And he's going to have to be more overt, more public about what he's offering and what he wants.
The Israelis don't fear Saudi Arabia. But they need help solving their security problems. He doesn't want to push Iran too hard. He's made peace with the Houthis. He doesn't like Hamas, but he's not going to shout it from the rooftops either.
TIME: So he's still being too subtle?
House: Yes. If he wants to be a leader, he needs to advocate more publicly—not just say what he wants, but sell it. I think he could. My first impression of him was: he's a born marketer. He believes so strongly in what he says, he wants you to see it too. He'll repeat it if needed. He could take a more public role—but so far, I don't think he's doing it.