Mohammed bin Salman has dug a gaping hole the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will have an incredibly treacherous time digging itself out of.
The amount of damage the crown prince has done to his family and to his country is too grand to measure. The al-Saud family is highly attuned to public perception; they care a lot about what other countries, especially the United States, think about them. Riyadh isn’t used to intense bipartisan criticism in the halls of Congress. Bruce Riedel, a former career intelligence official and Saudi expert at the Brookings Institution, observed that “The Saudi alliance is now under more harsh scrutiny in the United States than at any time since the 1973 oil embargo.”
How does the kingdom crawl out of the very deep, dark place it created for itself? How does the crown prince regain an ounce of his dignity, let alone rebuild his reputation? Can he?
By his actions, the crown prince still appears to believe the whole thing will blow over. His younger brother, Prince Khalid bin Salman, has returned to Washington in his capacity as Saudi ambassador after hastily flying out of the U.S. upon news of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s state-sanctioned slaying. The fact that Khalid, who was intimately connected to the cover-up of Khashoggi’s death, is still the kingdom’s choice to represent Saudi interests in Washington is all you need to know about the lack of self-awareness in the crown prince’s inner circle.
Over the last week, the crown prince has attempted to re-ingratiate himself into the international community. While he was snubbed by many of the colleagues during the G-20 summit in Argentina, the crown prince’s warm and friendly embrace with Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a vivid public reminder that the kingdom’s de facto leader is not completely isolated. King Salman’s favorite son jetted across the Middle East, meeting leaders from the United Arab Emirates to Morocco in a trip designed more to convince Saudis back home of his leadership grip than on engaging in any official state business.
That a few of these Arab countries pulled out the red carpet for the Saudi prince was not surprising; in the age of Crown Prince Mohammed, the possibility of Riyadh responding to a diplomatic slight by lashing out and pulling the plug on aid is always there. Just ask Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government was on the receiving end of a comically unjustified level of scorn from the Saudis after one of his ministers made a human rights complaint on Twitter.
As a young man with a chip on his shoulder and a lot to prove, the crown prince is eager for the world to lift the stench that has wafted over his country for the past two months. He is desperately praying for a return to business as usual, when Saudi security forces could detain, flog, and sentence dissidents to death without Washington blinking an eye. He wants to stop the capital flight and persuade corporations that Saudi Arabia is an attractive market to invest in (his Vision 2030 economic transformation plan is doomed without foreign capital).
In the immediate term, he wants people to forget Jamal Khashoggi’s name.
It’s hard, if not impossible, to see any of this happening without a heartfelt mea culpa and public apology from Crown Prince Mohammed himself. Taking into account the cockiness, brashness, and entitlement of the crown prince, don’t expect him to offer that type of contrition.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
