Little Saddam
Reformer? No, an unstable despot whose bloodlust threatens the entire Middle East. No wonder they call him
being concentrated in the hands of Bin Salman, then the defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince. It also predicted he would attempt to succeed his father as king, and that he would use that platform to become a Saddam-style leader of the Arab world.
As a result, the Saudis, who have often been seen as a valuable proWestern ally, would abandon past caution in favour of a destabilising regional role. Worse, the BND feared he was a gambler who would use military might to get his way.
This was an odd statement for an intelligence service to release, particularly given the strong commercial relationship between the two countries (Germany, like Britain, sells arms to Saudi Arabia). Unless, that is, the agency had access to clear and worrying evidence.
I have been told by a member of another Gulf ruling house that the BND got its hands on Bin Salman’s medical history after he was treated for epilepsy in Germany as a teenager – including psychiatric records that have led to such con- cern about his state of mind.
The BND was right about Bin Salman’s ambitions. With his 82year-old father King Salman, suff ering f rom Alzheimer’s, Bin Salman took over as Crown Prince last year.
Now, i t seems, the Germans are being proved right about his stability. Under Bin Salman, the Saudis’ ongoing war in Yemen has been conducted without any regard for the 10,000 civilian casualties or the risk of 11 million people starving to death.
I n November l a s t y e a r, h e detained the Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, who is a Saudi dual national, in Riyadh to force him to resign in revenge for not containing the rising influence of Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
The same month, Bin Salman organised the notorious ‘ sheikhdown’ in Riyadh’s Ritz- Carlton Hotel. Some 150 members of Saudi Arabia’s political and business elite were invited to a major international investors conference at the palatial hotel, then held there by armed guards until they agreed to pay $100 billion dollars Bin Salman says the country was owed. Sundry Saudi billionaires were abused and in some cases tortured. At least one army general died of a broken neck, while several reformers (former economics or finance ministers) have completely disappeared.
Every rival to Bin Salman has been purged, notably the previous
Every rival to the Crown Prince has been purged
Crown Prince, his cousin Mohammed Bin Nayef, who had strong Western security links.
Bin Salman has been hoping to prompt Donald Trump to wage a potentially catastrophic war against Iran, something the Israelis and Saudis want to bring about.
And he has come close to invading Qatar because of its global pretensions, settling instead for an economic blockade.
The Saudis are planning to separate Qatar physically from Saudi Arabia by spending $700 million on a huge canal, leaving just enough room for a toxic nuclear waste dump on the border.
The regional Gulf Co-operation Council alliance lies in ruins, with Bahrain, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia on one side, and Kuwait, Oman and Qatar on the other.
All of this brings us back to Mr Khashoggi, who opposed the isolation of Qatar and challenged the entire notion of the new Crown Prince as a reformer, notably by questioning the economic basis of his reform programme.
Critics of the Saudi regime say he was vindicated after the partprivatisation of the vast state oil concern Saudi Aramco, championed by Bin Salman, was abandoned this summer.
All eyes are on Washington, where President Trump finally seems to accept that Mr Khashoggi has been murdered. (His own security services will hold intercepts of numerous calls from the killers in Ankara to Riyadh, likely to be damning.)
America does not have to worry about the Saudis ramping up oil prices since, thanks to the fracking boom, the US is the world’s biggest oil producer. So we can expect to see the murder team put on Specially Designated Nationals lists – blocking their assets and banning them from the US – while informal pressure will be applied on King Salman to clip his son’s wings.
The Crown Prince, meanwhile, will try to blame rogue subordinates. Five officials have reportedly been fired, and 18 people arrested. A major general called Assiri is being lined up as the chief fall-guy, though his sinister head of personal security Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb was also photographed in Istanbul at the time of the killing.
Normally there is no problem that Saudi Arabia can’t buy itself out of. This is different. A consulate has been used to commit murder. At a minimum the West, including Britain, should expel all Saudi military attaches and spies.
King Salman should know that his son, Mohammed the Murderer, is now tainted in the eyes of the world and reconsider the succession to the throne.
As for Britain, although our weapons sales to Saudi Arabia are hugely profitable, they make up only one per cent of our export total.
We should not be fawning to the House of Saud.
Our MPs should not be on their payroll, rubbing their hands like a set of Mayfair car dealers.
We must not allow customers for our armaments to get British foreign policy thrown in for free.