The behaviour of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful prince invites a peculiar fascination. Mohammed Bin Salman, 39, effectively runs the oil-rich state as his 89-year-old father Salman ails; yet MBS, as the prince is known, seems to spend much of his time aboard his 400 ft superyacht, Serene, where on one cabin wall, it is said, hangs Leonardo da Vinci’s stunning painting Salvator Mundi, bought at a New York auction for $450m. The crown prince’s timekeeping is disorganised, even chaotic. He sleeps irregularly, day and night, and when he nods off in meetings, courtiers must attend patiently until he wakes. In October 2023, MBS kept the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, waiting for several hours. He only showed up the following day.
What to make of this behaviour? Malise Ruthven, in his critical account of the contemporary Saudi regime, Unholy Kingdom, considers it evidence of sheer narcissism. MBS was not the chosen heir to the throne, but out-manoeuvred his cousins in a “Corleone-style progression” to the top. The regime is at once “ruthless and reckless”.
It thought nothing of assassinating a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. (Khashoggi was sedated, suffocated, and his body sawn into pieces, never to be found.) For a while, the murder discouraged foreign investors from heading to Saudi Arabia, but now, as Ruthven puts it, a “Scramble for Arabia” is in full swing, with consulting firms, footballers and architects among many pursuing their fortunes in the desert.
This telling account relies heavily on the work of other scholars to paint a brutish picture of the regime. MBS, who will be the first grandson of the kingdom’s founder Ibn Saud to accede to the throne, is recasting the tribal monarchy as a modern-day “personality cult”. To wean his state off oil revenues, MBS wants to cut public spending and to diversify into tourism and new industries, like electric vehicles, pharmaceuticals, and nuclear power. Massive infrastructure projects include Neom, a futuristic city in the desert, and Trojena, an unlikely mountain ski resort. The regime is loosening restrictions on young people, allowing some gender mixing, cinemas and music concerts, as well as permitting women to drive. Young Saudis are supportive, Ruthven suggests, because they hope to escape high rates of unemployment, relative poverty and anomie.
