 Hello, and welcome to Need to Know, a new video interview series featured here on the Lowy Institute's digital magazine, The Interpreter. My name is Lydia Khalil. I'm a research fellow at the West Asia Program at the Lowy Institute, and today I'm talking with Ben Hubbard, the New York Times Beirut bureau chief and the author of the recently published book, MBS, The Rise to Power of Muhammad bin Salman. First of all, Ben, thank you for joining us. Thanks for making the time for a call all the way out from the Middle East. Hi, Lydia. Thanks for having me. Well, let me first start by asking how are you coping with the pandemic? What does the pandemic look like from your vantage point in the Middle East? Well, for living in a region that is often the center of dramatic news events, we've done quite well here. Cases in Lebanon have been fairly low, and we haven't had a lot of the scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and things like that. So I've been playing it quite careful in my own going out and mixing with people. And the country is opening up. I'm a bit worried that we'll get hit on the second wave. But so far, so far, so good. Well, it's good to know that you're doing well. You know, we'll have to keep cautions up for, you know, all over the world really for what's going to happen after reopening. But let's get straight into what we're here to discuss, which is your recent book on Muhammad bin Salman, who is currently the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Now, you've been writing and visiting the kingdom for quite a long time now. And as you point out in your book and your writing, Saudi Arabia is a country that's not really known for being the type of place where change in events move in a fast pace. In fact, one would say Saudi Arabia moves at a incremental, sometimes even glacial pace. And it's also a relatively opaque society. It's not an easy place to get to know. You know, the popular imagination just has it associated with basically oil and Islam. And then along comes a figure like MBS, who has seemingly come out of nowhere and comes and starts to really shake things up in Saudi society. And not just domestically, but in terms of Saudi Arabia's place in the world. Now, for the most part, he was not a known figure to us in the West. He wasn't directly in line for the throne, as you point out in your book. And then in 2015, when his father becomes king, he becomes appointed crown prince, minister of defense, head of a Ramco, leads Saudi's economic transformation, and starts enacting all of these sweeping changes to Saudi Arabia. So how did this even happen? Did he, in fact, come out of nowhere? How was he able to sidestep this kind of slow moving royal hierarchy in Saudi Arabia to get where he is and to do what he's doing? Well, there are a few elements. I think the first way, it basically starts because of luck. I mean, the fact that his father was the one to become king, if his father had not become king, then he never would have had his shot. I think after that, his relationship with his father comes into play. He's somebody who had had a very, very close relationship with his father. He has a number of older half brothers who are in many ways much more accomplished than he is. I mean, in terms of plastic resume sense, some people have actually done things that would seem to put them in a good position to be the next leader of Saudi Arabia. His father skips over all of them and chooses Muhammad bin Sunman, who is his sixth son. And since he's a king and an absolute monarchy, he can pretty much choose whoever he wants. So when he designates Muhammad bin Sunman, then he becomes the guy. Then I think Muhammad bin Sunman's own characteristics very much take over his own attributes. And there's kind of an element of shock and awe in how fast this guy works and how many of the conventions that he breaks. I mean, Saudi Arabia was a very, and especially royal family politics were governed by a lot of unwritten rules about who got to do what and the deference to elders and how you sort of behave in relationship to other royals. And MBS just sort of shatters a bunch of these conventions. And besides, I'm going to do things the way that I want to do them. I'm not interested in sort of co-towing to these older princes that I don't like. Some of them I'm going to lock up. Some of them I'm going to put under house arrest. Some of them I'm going to shove out of the way so that I can become the crown prince. And this is exactly what he does. And it's a combination of him having the backing of the king and in an absolute monarchy, people still do defer to the king. And so a lot of people who weren't happy with what he was doing were going to go against him because they knew that his father was backing what he was doing. And I think there was also just an element of surprise. He was acting so fast in doing things that were so out of the ordinary that people were just taken by surprise and didn't really know what to do about it. And then we look back a few years later and realize, well, he's kind of taken the place over and now he's in charge. And so tell us about some of these fast-moving things. What were these sweeping and bold changes that he wanted to make in Saudi Arabia? What were they and what were his motivations for doing them? Well, you can put them in a number of groups. I mean, I think there's sort of the whole category of social change. I mean, he came in, said, we realize that Saudi Arabia is a very boring place to live, especially for the many, many Saudi young people. So he starts bringing in entertainment. He opens movie theaters, brings in concerts, pro wrestling, monster truck shows, things like that. And these are things that Saudi Arabia didn't have primarily for religious reasons. They felt that these were cultural imports from the West and these were going to get in the way of the proper practice of Islam as Saudi Arabia saw it. So the social changes have been vast. I think they've been a huge change for especially Saudi young people and especially young Saudi women who were not allowed to drive, who were sort of barred from pursuing a number of different careers. And a lot of that has changed. So that was kind of one basket. The next basket would be economic reform. I mean, he came in and talked about the kingdom as addicted to oil and we need to break our addiction to oil. We need to diversify the economy. We need to, you know, invigorate the private sector so that it can create jobs for all of these young Saudis so they don't have to come on the government. So that's kind of another end. And then you have the privatization of a Ramco, which people probably read about was another piece of that. Politically, he was never a reformer in terms of, you know, sort of political form in terms of changing how the place was governed or the role that citizens could play in determining who governs them and how. But there was very much along with all the rest of this an authoritarian consolidation that he very much pulled all of the power in Saudi Arabia into his own hands and used that sometimes in quite almost brutal ways to get rid of people that he considered a threat to himself. Yeah, so that's what I wanted to ask you about next. You know, Saudi Arabia was never really considered a democracy by any means, but it kind of had its own way of consultation, at least within the Saudi Royal Court. And then he seemed to kind of get rid of all of that when he came to power. And then some of his behavior not only did that, but it became much more thuggish and authoritarian. And even though he had this kind of promising reputation among the Western business and tech sector, particularly, it was kind of believed to be the one to bring liberalization and promise to Saudi Arabia. There's been this disconnect with maybe some of the more progressive social and economic changes that MBS was pushing for and, you know, which honestly were much needed in Saudi Arabia, but then his decidedly illiberal way of getting these changes enacted. Tell us a little bit more about that. And particularly I'm interested in, you know, how quickly the Western business and tech sector embraced him in the beginning and why that was so. Well, I think the easiest way to explain it is that Saudi Arabia has a tremendous amount of money. And so when, you know, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia comes calling, people are interested in talking to him because you never know what's gonna come out of it. What kind of deal you might get. I mean, he took these two trips in early 2018, one to the UK and then one to the United States, and they were absolutely remarkable, the number of people that he met with. In the US alone, I think he visited five states, the District of Columbia, he met three former presidents, he met Trump in the White House, he met Bill Gates, he met Jeff Bezos, he met Mark Zuckerberg, he went to Hollywood, he went, I mean, kind of traveled all over the place and all these people threw up in their doors for meetings with him. So part of it was just that, you know, when Saudi comes calling, there's a lot of money that could potentially be involved and so people are interested in listening to that. And then there was also this idea that, there was also this interest in the social changes. There was also this idea that, wow, if this guy is gonna change these things in Saudi Arabia, that everybody's been complaining about the ban on women driving, restrictions on women, these kind of very, very strict austere interpretation of Islam that's caused problems around the world, well then this is something that we wanna get behind. So I think that was also a motivation for the interest in Mohammed bin Salman earlier on. But then give it to us in a little bit more context. I mean, Saudi Arabia has always had a lot of money, has always thrown that money around, has a big sovereign wealth fund, has done a lot of investment. It still seemed a bit different, the reception that he got versus previous Saudi leaders or ambassadors or other high profile figures within the Saudi court. Do you think that's true? Or was his just style just different and much more appealing? Well, I think it was A, that people wanted to be involved in this sort of dream of a changing Saudi Arabia, that that was attractive. And he was also interested in sectors that Saudi leadership had never really been interested in before, I mean, they never pursued the tech sector before. And so the fact that he wanted to go to Silicon Valley and visit the Google campus and hang out with Mark Zuckerberg and try on a virtual reality headset, these are things that other senior royals had never done before. And the same with Hollywood, I mean, you know, the kingdom had always sort of looked at Hollywood as this kind of bastion of infidelity that was going to corrupt their morals. And next thing you know, MBS wants to go and have dinner with Rupert Murdoch and, you know, Dwayne the Rock Johnson and people and talk about how he can bring more entertainment to Saudi Arabia. So it was just that there was also an interest from someone at his level. We've never seen that before in these kinds of sectors from Saudi Arabia. Right, but then all of that took a major hit, right? With some of the more troubling and gruesome behavior that he was behind, you know, especially the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, you know, hugely impacted his international reputation. But it seems like, and actually not just that, but also, you know, we've heard stories about like mass detentions of Saudi Royals, the jailing of other individuals who've criticized or challenged him, even individuals who pushed for the same changes that he actually enacted. I mean, we heard stories about him jailing some of the female activists who pushed for the lessening of the driving ban, for example. Talk us through some of the more problematic aspects that kind of started to hit MBS's reputation in the West. Well, I think for people who were paying attention, they started quite early on. I think that the first thing would have been the Saudi military intervention in Yemen, which started a few months after MBS came onto the scene after his father became king. And the Saudis didn't start the war in Yemen, but they intervened militarily very quickly to try to sort of push this rebel group that had taken over the capital back to where they thought they should be but it very quickly becomes a disaster. I mean, it's clear that their fighter pilots don't really know what they're doing. They bomb weddings, they bomb funerals, they kill really uncounted numbers of civilians. So that was an earlier thing. Once you get into 2017, you've got sort of the tension and forced resignation of Prime Minister Saad Haridi of Lebanon, which is, I don't know, people remember this sort of bizarre incident where they summon the Prime Minister in another country, force him to resign, hoping that it's gonna sort of change the political dynamics of that country. That fails, but it looks very bad for Saudi Arabia. There's the lockup at the Ritz-Carlton, which people might remember, when MBS sort of tasks officials at the Royal Court and the secret police were rounding up a few hundred of the kingdoms of richest and most powerful men and locking them in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton to accusing them of corruption and taking away significant portions of their assets. So there was that. And then there were the arrest campaigns and these kind of took different forms and really hit all kinds of parts of society. They've had waves of arrests that just targeted clerics, conservatives, intellectuals, people like that, right before the women's driving ban, which was listed, which really should have been like a one-time only PR coup for Saudi Arabia and for Muhammad bin Salman. They go out and they arrest some of the best-known women activists and also male activists who'd been involved and put them in jail. And so, you know, people are sort of saying, congratulations for finally giving women the right to drive in 2018, but it would have been nice if you hadn't also arrested those women. And some of them are still, at least one of them is still detained. I think some of the men are as well. And their court cases are still going on with sort of bizarre charges that nobody outside of Saudi Arabia really thinks are anything but a political way to undermine them. Right. And so, you know, all of that promise has obviously taken a hit by all of those actions and even the detention still continue. You know, there have been reports that there have been further detention as the members of the royal family. But, you know, it seems like if it's not forgotten, at least some of this bad behavior has been generally swept under the rug. And I want to finish off with this last related question to that. It seems like, you know, this environment that we're in with the pandemic seems have provided an opportunity globally for MBS to also reemerge and rehabilitate his reputation and standing internationally. And here I'm thinking of, you know, recent reports where Saudi Arabia is on the hunt for investment bargains, you know, in coronavirus affected industries like, you know, media and entertainment. And there's reports that he wants to invest in a English football company. So it seems like, you know, this bad behavior, especially now with the current global economic environment has been very much swept under the rug. And there's now more opportunities for him to, yeah, to rehabilitate Saudi Arabia and to get back into the international scene. Can you tell us a little bit about that? It's possible. It's hard to see where it's gonna go. I think there, I think things are moving so dramatically because of the coronavirus. It's a little hard to predict where they're going. I mean, it is true that the Saudi, you know, public investment fund has been going shopping for sort of bargain basement assets that they hope we're gonna recover. They invested in Carnival Cruise Lines, Live Nation, you know, they're trying to get in all different sectors where they haven't been before. I mean, who knows, maybe Carnival Cruise Lines will never recover and it'll turn out to be a bunk investment or maybe, you know, 10 years from now it'll turn out to be something really smart that Arabia did. You don't really know. I think that the reputational stain is still there. I think that people, when they hear the name Muhammad bin Salman, they still think directly about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018. So I think there's still gonna be a resistance. At the same time, Saudi Arabia still has a lot of money. It's still an incredibly influential country in the Muslim world and in the Middle East. And so, you know, he's gonna remain a player but I do think that there's gonna continue to be an impact on his reputation from a lot of these things that have been involved in. One of the things to really watch what happens in the US election this year. Donald Trump has had an incredibly close relationship with Muhammad bin Salman. His son-in-law, Derek Kushner, has had a very close personal relationship with Muhammad bin Salman. And so the Trump administration has very much served as a firewall around MBS for a lot of the riskier things that he's wanted to do. Should Joe Biden win in November, it may change for the US relationship with Saudi Arabia. I don't wanna get too much into sort of reading the tea leaves and predicting but not a lot of reason to believe that a Biden administration would treat Muhammad bin Salman in the same way as the Trump administration. Yeah, it was certainly injected an additional layer of unpredictability with Saudi Arabia and regional and global relations. But we're glad that we have your book to help us sort out some of the thinking around that and perhaps give us a bit of perspective to look at into the future about what happens with MBS, Saudi Arabia, Middle East and global relations. So Ben, I wanna thank you so much for speaking to us. Best of luck in the Middle East and thank you for joining us at the Lowy Institute. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.