Global News Podcast - The Global Story: Mohammed bin Salman from pariah to peacemaker

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was publicly identified as the man who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. As a result, he was referred to as a pariah. So, how did MBS go from pariah to peacemaker?

Hello, this is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Oliver Conway with your weekly bonus from the Global Story, which brings you a single story with depth and insight from the BBC's best journalists. There's a new episode every weekday. Just search for the Global Story wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. Here's my colleague, Johnny Diamond. Twice now in the last few weeks, the Saudi capital of Riyadh has played host to the biggest movers and shakers of the war in Ukraine. Russia, America and of course the Ukrainians themselves. Why Riyadh? Because of one man's influence, Saudi Arabia's effective ruler Mohammed bin Salman, known near universally by his initials MBS.

Just a few years ago he was publicly identified as the man who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, tortured, killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. As a result, MBS was called a pariah by no less than Joe Biden. But he's also the man who's driven the modernisation and diversification of the desert kingdom. Now he has made Riyadh a place where the world comes to try and do deals. So how did Mohammed bin Salman go from pariah to peacemaker? With me today is Jonathan Rugman, journalist, author and the producer of the BBC TV series The Kingdom about the life of the Saudi Crown Prince. It's a pleasure, Johnny. Can we

start with the man? I mean how much do we know of what Muhammad bin Salman is like as a person? It's a very good question. He's 39 years old. He's over six foot tall. He's bearded. He's charismatic in the way of a kind of old-fashioned tribal Saudi prince. He's a workaholic. He likes to stay up for much of the night. He will summon visitors at one o'clock in the morning if that suits him. He is a man on a mission to change his country as quickly as he can and I think he feels that he's in a race against time to do that. And that may be one of the things which made him appeal to his own father, King Salman, in terms of who was going to be his heir. King Salman had plenty of other sons to choose from.

his heir. King Salman had plenty of other sons to choose from. MBS is the chosen one. He's the heir to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which makes him in charge of the world's biggest exporter of oil and one of the world's biggest importers of weapons. I just want to clear up this question of his role. He is the Crown Prince and yet he is constantly described as the de facto ruler, the effective ruler. This is because what, his father is now essentially so old that he is no longer running the show and that Mohammed bin Salman has taken on the mantle of ruler. Mohammed bin Salman has taken on the mantle of ruler. Yes, the king is now 89 years old and the illa his father has become, and this isn't something that is talked about openly in Saudi Arabia but is sort of widely acknowledged by those in the know, the more power MBS has accrued. So he's been crown prince since 2017, and then in 2022, he was made Prime Minister.

Nobody's in any doubt in Saudi Arabia who rules the roost. And he's not just in charge of an absolute monarchy where there are no political parties and no demonstrations about anything, but he also has an unprecedented degree of power even within that system because he has sidelined potential rivals, curbed the power of Islamic clerics, and put the frighteners up the business community who have all had to step into line. MBS, as he's known, Mohammed bin Salman, has compared himself with Alexander the Great. I mean, clearly that impulsiveness is evident from a series of events from 2015 when his father became king. And the question is, has he changed?

Let's talk about some of the things that took place. First of all, that conflict with Yemen how he ended up putting together a coalition to go to war in Yemen against what were then known as the Houthi rebels. This is 2015 first of all the process by which he got Saudi Arabia into that conflict was fairly curious wasn't it? Well there were various things that were different about the way MBS went to war in Yemen. First of all he Arabia into that conflict was fairly curious, wasn't it? Well, there were various things that were different about the way MBS went to war in Yemen. First of all, he dispatched with the usual slow, rather conservative way of making decisions in Saudi Arabia,

where people sit around and talk about it for a long time. He didn't do that. He didn't consult the Americans to any significant extent. The Americans say that they weren't given much notice. I mean, one senior American commander told me they'd been given 12 hours notice, which is much of a hurdle. I mean, as far as the Americans coordinated virtually everything. Mohammed bin Salman is saying we are no longer under American tutelage. It's where we have to tell them, you tell them well in advance what we're doing.

We're going to go and do it and then we'll sort it out afterwards and you can live with it. A former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia told me that the Americans were given 24, 48 hours notice that the war was going to take place, which was his way, I think MBS's way of saying that he was independent from Washington. And 350,000 dead perhaps, a large number of people killed either in the conflict itself or in the subsequent starvation of the people. So an incredibly controversial war which MBS has struggled to get himself out of. It's not just beyond Saudi's borders that he acted out of kilter with all the normal traditions of Saudi rule.

There's been an unprecedented anti-corruption purge with sweeping arrests of senior politicians and business leaders and members of the Royal Family. There was this astonishing event in 2017 with some of the richest of Saudi Arabia's business people and leaders, all what, invited to the Ritz and then held there? Can you take me through it? Yes, sure. So the Ritz Carlton Hotel in downtown Riyadh became a prison really. I mean, these businessmen, as you say, tycoons, including some of the richest people in the world, people like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who had flew around the world on his own jumbo jet. So all these businessmen were rounded up in what is colloquially known as the shakedown and fleeced of their money. They were essentially told that unless they handed large sums to the state coffers, they couldn't leave. And MBS

himself estimated that about $100 billion had been recouped for the Saudi treasury. MBS said, you know, this was his drive against corruption, against businessmen who'd been milking the state and there's probably a great deal of truth in that. But it served a wider purpose, I think, which was about the consolidation of MBS's own power and just removing all the possible avenues that there could be in Saudi Arabia to move against him. When it comes to silencing people, the one thing that so many people remember, that many listeners will remember as well, will be the silencing of one man, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in 2018 in what was very clearly stated by a number of different intelligence sources as being on the orders of Muhammad bin Salman.

What happened there and why? Well, this journalist, Ramal Khashoggi, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get a piece of paper that proved that he was divorced because he wanted to marry a Turkish woman and show the Turkish woman's father that, you know, that he wasn't married to anyone else. I opened my phone and checked the consulate, the working time, and it was saying that the consulate already closed. And he never came out again alive. And then I called the consulate. He said there is no one in sight. And then I got really scared. Where is Jamal? What happened to Jamal? The Turks were bugging the Saudi consulate and they successfully recorded conversations

in the lead up to the killing and indeed the killing itself which they released to the international press, astonishing move against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And to cut a long story short, Donald Trump, the president at the time, gave MBS a free pass in the sense that if you look at one of Bob Woodward's books on the first Trump presidency, he quotes Trump as saying, I saved his behind, tell him he owes us one. In other words, Trump very much sort of took ownership of the fact that MBS survived that scandal although his successor Joe Biden published the intelligence into the killing. A US intelligence report has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally approved the murder of the exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

The operation to either capture or kill the journalist was most likely approved by the Saudi Crown Prince, simply down to his absolute control of the Saudi security services. And several of the men in the HIT Squad were bodyguards of the Crown Prince, and they were flying on diplomatic passports on a plane owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. Did you order the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? Absolutely not. This was a hein domestically, but internationally he's in trouble because of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Yes, that's right. If you look at the family photos of G20 leaders when they get together

for their summit, you can see one photo where MBS is on the very edge of the frame and a leader that nobody really wants to talk to. But then about a year later, he's back in the centre of the frame, standing next to President Trump. So his visible rehabilitation was pretty quick for all sorts of obvious reasons because Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest exporter of oil and MBS controls the spigot. He's a man you have to do business with. To borrow a phrase, he's too big to fail and he's not going anywhere. Even Joe Biden, who had called the Saudis a pariah

and said, you know, he would treat them like the pariahs that they were. That's what Biden said when he was on the campaign trail. Even he beat a path to Saudi Arabia to meet MBS because he wanted the world oil price to be lower. But there was this horrible decision wasn't there for Joe Biden? What do I do when I meet him? Do I shake his hand even though I've called him a pariah just a couple of years beforehand? We ended up with what? We ended up with a fist bump somehow, which looked so strange. It did look strange and there was a sort of COVID explanation for it.

You know, this was after COVID and everyone was being a bit careful. But, you know, he wasn't the only world leader to make their way to Saudi Arabia, because what happened after Russia's full scale of invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is that the price of oil shot up and we all were all plunged into a cost of living crisis and an energy crisis. And the Saudis refused to pump more oil, which would have lowered the price. And so at that very moment, MBS proved how powerful he was and that he could not be avoided. And you know, that the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and the other things he was accused of doing could not be held against him indefinitely.

So we've heard about the rapid rise and more tempered fall of Mohammed bin Salman. Next, how has he repositioned himself as host to some of the most important meetings of our times? You're listening to the Global Story from the BBC World Service. There's a fresh episode available as a podcast each weekday. Just search for the Global Story wherever you get your podcasts. With me is Jonathan Rugman. We've mentioned Donald Trump a little bit as we've talked, but perhaps what we haven't made clear is how early on Mohammed bin Salman and Donald Trump built a face-to-face relationship because it was, to re-add, rather bizarrely in many people's eyes, that Donald Trump went first.

It was his first international trip, wasn't it, in his first term, and he built a relationship that has been very strong ever since. Yes, that's right. I have always heard about the splendor of your country and the kindness of your citizens. But words do not do justice to the grandeur of this remarkable place.

I think it goes way back, actually, because when Trump announced that he was running for president in 2016, he made a speech in Trump Tower. In that speech, he said, "'I love the Saudis, they buy apartments from me.'" Very early on, he had this sense that these people had unimaginable amounts of money, and that impressed him.

And I think he saw his own presidency and sees his own presidency in sort of dynastic terms. Trump is impressed by dynastic families. He also wanted to sell the Saudis lots of weapons. We've become very good friends over a fairly short period of time. I was in Saudi Arabia in May. And the Saudis promised to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons. Some of the things that have been approved and are currently under construction and will be delivered to Saudi Arabia very soon, and that's for their protection.

And the Saudis were relieved that he wasn't Barack Obama, that he wasn't lecturing them on human rights, and they felt that this was a president that they could do business with. Three billion dollars, five hundred and thirty three million dollars, five hundred and twenty five million dollars, that's peanuts for you. Rather than doing Washington's bidding, which was certainly I think how MBS saw that his predecessors had done things. How important in the relationship between Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman is Donald

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner? He seems to have been behind the scenes linking the two men and he seems to be particularly close as well to Mohammed bin Salman. Yes, well Trump put Jared Kushner in charge of attempts to broker a Middle East peace process in the Trump first term. The economic impact could be felt throughout the entire region by the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Lebanese. And Jared Kushner was the prince-slaying of one dynastic family going to meet the prince of another. And they would stay up late at night playing video games.

They would WhatsApp each other. And I think the strength of that relationship actually emboldened MBS to do some of the rather outlandish things that he's done. So for example, when he had hundreds of princes locked up in the Ritz Carlton hotel, Trump tweeted in favour of this. The stronger the relationship with Kushner became, I think the more MBS felt emboldened to do the things that he did. I think there was a degree of permissiveness there and impulsivity in the young Saudi crown prince.

What happens at the end of the first Trump presidency? Well, Jared Kushner goes into business in Florida. He sets up an investment fund and the biggest investors are, surprise, surprise, the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund that gives Jared Kushner two billion dollars. You know, that relationship endures and in fact in only in February last month, Donald Trump was down in Florida talking to the Saudis. The head of the sovereign wealth fund was over there. A man called Yasser al-Rumeyan, he's played golf with Mr. Trump. Donald Trump's golf courses make money from the Saudi golf championship that is the rival

to the PGA. So the relationship exists on many different levels. You mention the golf championship that is the rival to the PGA. So the relationship exists on many different levels. You mention the golf championship. It may seem to some like a diversion, this new golf competition that the Saudis have set up, but it's not a diversion, is it? It's part of the other bit of Mohammed bin Salman or one of the other bits, which is this soft power, which is part of some would say the modernisation, some would say the sports washing, whatever you want to call it, but it's part of the change that he has brought about. It's an important part of

what he's trying to do. And the golf is just one part of it, isn't it? Yeah, I think there's a sort of keeping up with the Joneses going on in the Gulf where Saudi Arabia, a massive country, the most powerful and richest country in the Gulf, looks at little Qatar next door, looks at the United Arab Emirates, who've been projecting soft power for years, buying football clubs or building, owning well-known buildings in Western capitals. building owning well-known buildings in in Western capitals and MBS has begun to put the sovereign wealth fund of which he's in charge and which has $925 billion under management. whether it's buying Newcastle United, having stakes in companies like Uber in the United States. I don't think it's sports washing. I think that's the wrong phrase to use because that's quite a Western centric way of looking at things. They're sort of assuming that MBS wants the approval of the West, et cetera. It's much more like I'm here, I'm not going

anywhere. You need to recognise my power. One of the things that happens when I talk with friends about Saudi Arabia and about Mohammed bin Salman is they say, oh, you're always going on about the negatives. You never talk, you media people, about what he has done inside Saudi Arabia, about the modernisation, about the liberation of women, about the blossoming of culture. It's true, isn't it, that Saudi Arabia is a very different place from what it was 10 years ago. I mean, certainly 20 years ago. It's radically different, isn't it? Yeah, it really is radically different. And I think that the latest thing that's really

taking off is foreign tourism. Untouched, uncharted, unfathomable. I think in terms of the reforms, it's quite hard to think of many recently. They're becoming a bit historic, which suggests that things are slowing down a bit in terms of change in Saudi Arabia. But there's no doubt about it. Men and women mixing much more freely in cafes, cinemas reopening, religious police taking off the streets, pop concerts, football stars playing in the kingdom. It's become a place in which you can have a lot more fun than you ever could, although alcohol is still banned. You can't have fun without a drink, Jonathan.

No, I know that. It's just interesting that there are still limits in terms of where he thinks he can take his kingdom and on what time scale. The reason we're talking today, Jonathan, is because all of a sudden, Riyadh is this enormous diplomatic stage. First the meeting between the Russians and the Americans, the first meeting in however many years, then

the meeting between the Americans and the Ukrainians. And it's no coincidence that it's happened in Riyadh. There's a reason for it. What does it say, do you think, about the position that Saudi holds in the world and that Mohammed bin Salman has managed to create? I think hosting peace talks with Ukraine, with Russia, with the United States is about projecting MBS's power as a truly global leader. Ironically, there is some rivalry about who it is is going to resolve this particular crisis. So the Turks have been trying very hard to resolve it too. MBS has helped broker the release of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners. He helped engineer the swap of Russian and American prisoners. He's also sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

And I think he instinctively admires Vladimir Putin in the same way that Donald Trump does. I think there was a sort of mutual appreciation society amongst nationalist strong men, Trump, Putin, but then Zelensky, after he met MBS, talked of his wise perspective, which is a very different MBS to the one, the impulsive and rather dangerous young man we saw when he first became current prince.

Given what you understand about MBS, both his personality, his vision, let's be honest, also his ego. Do you think the positioning of him and his country at a sort of diplomatic centre or the attempt to is about ego and position and Saudi Arabia sort of coming of age globally, or is it about what he can then leverage from that, whether it's business or personal or consolidation of his own power? I don't think it's about MBS leveraging things from others. I think it's much more about MBS projecting his nation's power. And what we're witnessing is a coming of age of a rather

slumbering kingdom that we always knew was important, but we didn't know much about it. It was the custodian of the two holy mosques. It had lots of oil. It had a strict Wahhabist Islamic faith, and that's about as much as anybody really knew. I think MBS sees himself rather in his grandfather's shoes as a man who's putting his kingdom on the map and doing so for generations to come. So he's only 39 now. He could be in charge of Saudi Arabia for the next 50 years if he's not assassinated. And he has enormous power to wield, enormous wealth. It's so easy to get the

oil out and to market. You know, why didn't this happen before, I think is how a lot of people might look at this when you look at how powerful and rich Saudi Arabia is. And it's taken a young man with vision and ambition and ruthlessness to do what his predecessors hadn't managed. Do you admire him? I think he's a thug, but he's not the only thug on the world stage. I admire what he's trying to do to his kingdom, that he's trying to drag it into the 21st century. I admire the fact that he stood up to religious extremism. I admire the fact that radical Islam is not being exported from Saudi Arabia to places like Pakistan in the way that it was. I admire the fact that men and women can now mix freely and feel that they're living in a far less restrictive world.

But I think there's a price to pay when you have an absolute ruler like MBS, which isn't a really ruthless grip on power. Some people would say, well, that's what you've got to do in order to stay alive. You've got to be one step ahead of your enemies. Jonathan, a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time. It's a pleasure, Johnny. And thanks so much to you for listening. We're back at the same time each weekday on the BBC World Service. You can also listen as a podcast. Just search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC pods. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com. Wherever you're listening in the world,

we'll catch you next time.