The purge of the princes, unprecedented in recent Saudi politics, is clearly aimed as clearing the way for Prince Mohammed bin Salman to ascend the throne
Saturday, November 4, was an extraordinary day: it witnessed three developments which, taken together, suggest a major escalation in the armed conflict in West Asia is in the offing, even as the region is already groaning under the violence of bloody wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, in which half a million people have been killed and several million have been displaced.
Saudi Arabia is at the heart of all these developments. First, in a dramatic coup within the royal family, engineered by Prince Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 11 princes have been detained, along with four sitting ministers and several former ministers and officials.
Three developments
Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the commander of the National Guard, the country’s powerful domestic security force, has been summarily dismissed, so that force has now also come under the control of the crown prince. The instrument used to effect these changes is the anti-corruption committee set up by the king on Saturday, with the crown prince as its chairman.
The second development was the sudden announcement in Riyadh by the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, that he was resigning. Hariri had taken charge only in December 2016 after entering into a power-sharing agreement with President Michel Aoun. In his public remarks, Hariri said that Iran had planted “disorder and destruction” in his country and had made Hezbollah a “state within a state” in Lebanon.....READ MORE
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