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Informed observers have long noted that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) likes to surround himself with trusted allies from among the younger generation of the Al-Saud, who have a similar educational background and interests as himself. According to a veteran observer of the Al-Saud, “MBS likes young people around him, he finds it awkward to deal with the older generation”. A source who worked in and around MBS’s Vision 2030 programme commented that the crown prince “doesn’t trust some of the older princes and has preferred to socialise with the younger ones”.

Culture minister Prince Badr Bin Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Nasir Bin Saud Bin Ibrahim Bin Abdallah Bin Farhan Bin Saud (to give him his full name) has been close to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) for at least a decade. Badr is a great-grandson of Nasir Bin Saud (died 1939), who accompanied Ibn Saud on the 1902 raid on Riyadh. In December 2015, Badr was appointed chairman of media conglomerate Saudi Research and Marketing Group, which is closely tied to the Al-Salman. However, he was in MBS’s orbit some years before that.

The powerful Public Investment Fund (PIF) in mid-December said its total employee count had surpassed 1,000, with 300 staff joining in 2020 as Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s pet entity beefed up its team. A few days later the fund announced the appointment of several more senior management members.  The fund remains very busy, with major new investments in the defence and security sectors.

Saudi officials are trying to put the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi behind them, with a new initiative to kick-start inward investment and a range of soft power initiatives. But while the stellar turn-out of sporting stars, entertainers and business leaders arriving in the kingdom suggests that – rather predictably – many supports for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS)’s Vision 2030 agenda see it is business as usual, Riyadh continues to struggle to address criticism of its record on human rights and financial abuses.

Prime Minister and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS)’s Vision 2030 policies have increasingly sought to make the kingdom a hub for global sporting events, its soft power projection extending through the ownership of football and other sporting assets and, in the process, providing unprecedented entertainment for the Saudi population.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is anxious to press on with the Neom mega-project and is apparently unhappy with the progress made to date, despite continuing scepticism at the viability of the strategic master plan for a city intended to house 9m people, who would be vertically organised to live along a linear glass wall. 

Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has been pushing his economic reform agenda in the days since being named prime minister. On 29 September, he unveiled a new strategy for Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of the state-owned Public Investment Fund (PIF), with the aim of turning the kingdom into a hub for gaming and esports by 2030.

Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction projects are being heavily promoted by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and funded by his Public Investment Fund despite pressures to cut state spending elsewhere. All of this is in line with his efforts to change the economy and the image of Saudi Arabia – while taking a share of the profits too – but as a Special Report in this issue shows, it is the old guard that are winning orders for the ‘mega-projects’, with contracts flowing to some of the kingdom’s most well-established contractors.

GSN has made no change to Saudi Arabia’s B2 grade with downward momentum for both political and financial/economic risks in its latest Risk Management Report. Long referred to as the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) is more fully in charge, while his father, King Salman Bin Abdelaziz, the ruling family’s long-standing disciplinarian who until recently had remained a real force, now seems cloistered in Neom. Identification with the crown prince is the key for ambitious Saudis. He has put more focus on projecting Saudi soft power abroad and wooing key stakeholders at home. The outcome of reforms, which are often designed by international consultants, is impossible to gauge, but their success or failure will define the MBS years.

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) has been looking to buy into established local operators in a move to counter criticism – if not to chairman Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS)’s face – of the slow pace of its investment in the kingdom, compared to high-profile international deals such as motor company Lucid in the US and Newcastle United football club in the UK.

Much coverage of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) has implied the young prince, still only 31, emerged from nowhere when his father became king in January 2015. But MBS had been on the scanners on more assiduous Saudi-watchers for some time. Below is a Royals watch note from issue 898 of GSN, published on 8 April 2011, which recorded the young prince’s “more visible presence”.Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdelaziz opened a ceremony for the National Association of Retired Persons in Riyadh on 21 March [2011].

A 45-year prison term given to a Saudi woman accused of damaging the country via her activity on Twitter has highlighted what appears to be another wave of repression.

Foreign affairs minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani spent five days in Washington during the second half of July for a series of meetings with senior officials. This was swiftly followed by a visit to Tehran, in a sign that Qatar may be acting as an intermediary between the United States and Iran at a time when talks to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal have stalled.

Qatar and Mauritania are to re-establish diplomatic relations, which had been severed during the recently-ended boycott of Doha by the Gulf trio of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Disputes continue to fester between Doha and Manama, despite the early January Gulf Co-operation Council reconciliation deal. Bahrain has reopened its airspace to Qatari aircraft and invited Doha to send an official delegation to iron out bilateral issues, but it has also complained bitterly about its fishing boats being detained after allegedly straying into Qatari waters. The arrest of Bahraini bodybuilder Sami Al-Haddad earlier this month while on a fishing trip was a particular bone of contention.