Mohammed bin Salman, the youngest of bin Abdulaziz’s four sons, is leading the generational turnover in the succession to the Saudi throne. Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the second in line to the throne, has been making international headlines with greater frequency since the second half of 2015. In early December, Western media reported on the curious case of a confidential report by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the German foreign intelligence agency) that, incredibly, became public domain after it was released to journalists.
In the memo, Berlin’s spies call Saudi politics “destabilising” for the region as a result of “an impulsive intervention policy” carried out by Prince Mohammed. His scope of power is deemed “a latent risk”, and he’s named as the architect of the disastrous military campaign in Yemen. According to the United Nations, in the course of a year of fighting with the Houthi Shia sect that had ousted Saudi-allied President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen has caused over 2,300 civilian casualties.
The document also mentions Syria where early last year the prince supported Jaish al-Fatah’s Islamist militia, which is primarily composed of combatants affiliated with al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. The file concludes that the prince, with his usual decisiveness, intends to go over a number of heads and succeed his father to the throne. The international media has picked up on the (often inflated) rumours of a rift within the royal family and the intriguing young Saudi ‘disrupter’. This January, The Independent ran an article with a picture of Prince Mohammed under the disturbing headline that asks, “The most dangerous man in the world?”
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Mohammed bin Salman, the youngest of bin Abdulaziz’s four sons, is leading the generational turnover in the succession to the Saudi throne. Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the second in line to the throne, has been making international headlines with greater frequency since the second half of 2015. In early December, Western media reported on the curious case of a confidential report by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the German foreign intelligence agency) that, incredibly, became public domain after it was released to journalists.
In the memo, Berlin’s spies call Saudi politics “destabilising” for the region as a result of “an impulsive intervention policy” carried out by Prince Mohammed. His scope of power is deemed “a latent risk”, and he’s named as the architect of the disastrous military campaign in Yemen. According to the United Nations, in the course of a year of fighting with the Houthi Shia sect that had ousted Saudi-allied President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen has caused over 2,300 civilian casualties.
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