CNN: Saudi Crown Prince accused of assassination plot against senior exiled official

 MBS, according to previously unreported WhatsApp text messages referenced in the complaint, demanded that Aljabri immediately return to Saudi Arabia. As he repeatedly refused, Aljabri alleges the Crown Prince escalated his threats, saying they would use "all available means" and threatened to "take measures that would be harmful to you." The Crown Prince also barred Aljabri's children from leaving the country. [...]

The US national security community has been tracking the Crown Prince's vendetta against Aljabri "at the highest levels" according to a former senior US official. "Everybody knows it," the former official said, "They know bin Salman wanted to lure Aljabri back to Saudi Arabia and failing that, that bin Salman would seek to find him outside with the intent to do him grave harm." [...]

"MBS is eager to neutralize the threat posed by Aljabri, whose intimate knowledge of the ruling family's skeletons, and everyone else's, and broad network, equipped him to enable any aspiring challenger to the crown," London says. "I don't rule out the possibility that MBS wanted to kill Aljabri, but it's just as likely, if not more so, that were there a team deployed to Canada, MBS wanted to put Aljabri under observation, information from which might provide insight on his contacts and activities."

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Politico: What the hell just happened in Saudi Arabia?

It is unlikely that the detentions are linked to any struggle for power within the royal family, as Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to prominence was sealed by his appointment as crown prince in place of his older and more experienced cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, in June. One of Mohammed bin Salman’s first acts as the heir apparent was to transfer all the internal security functions away from the Ministry of Interior into a newly formed Presidency of State Security that answered directly to him and his father, King Salman. This removed from the security landscape one of the two entities that together with the Ministry of Defense (which Mohammed bin Salman has headed since January 2015) wielded coercive force in Saudi Arabia; the other was the National Guard, controlled since 1962 by Prince (later King) Abdullah and since 2011 by his son, Miteb, and regarded as an elite force that would quell any internal unrest in the kingdom. Mohammed bin Salman has an opportunity to unify, for the first time, the hitherto-disparate military and security structures in Saudi Arabia, and strengthen further his grip on power.

It’s a typically bold move for a crown prince who has made such sweeping strokes the hallmark of his swift rise. And yet, the concentration of such authority in one individual may unravel the careful mixture of consensus and balancing among competing interests within both the royal family and Saudi society at large. Since the creation of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 and especially after the rise of Crown Prince (later King) Faisal in the 1960s, the royal family has sought a pragmatic and gradualist approach to social and political change. This helped to cushion the impact of economic modernization and guide the kingdom through periods of great internal strain, such as the 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque and the post-2003 terrorist campaign by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They also represented a pragmatic acknowledgment of the multiple centers of gravity within the royal family, which acted as a check on the unconstrained exercise of power by any one individual. [...]

For President Donald Trump and his inner circle, who have cultivated close relations with Mohammed bin Salman since taking office in January, efforts are likely to redouble to persuade the Saudis to float the 5 percent of Aramco on the New York Stock Exchange. However, a more immediate outcome may be that Mohammed bin Salman uses his consolidated authority to escalate further the war in Yemen and — in his response to a missile launched by Houthi rebels that was intercepted over Riyadh — move dangerously close to outright military confrontation with Iran.

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The Atlantic: Is Saudi Arabia Really Changing?

Perhaps anticipating yesterday’s news, last week a Saudi cleric said that the ban on women driving should remain in place. He argued that women had only half the brainpower of men; when they went shopping, it was reduced to a quarter, he said. The uproar was instantaneous. The cleric was banned from preaching, though he probably still remains on the government payroll.

Saudi society traditionally venerates age and at least publicly respects Islamic preachers. But all this might be changing. The decision to remove the ban was nominally King Salman’s, but it is clear the driving force was his son, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The 32-year-old wunderkind is trying to transform the kingdom’s economy. His Vision 2030, a grand plan announced last year to bring the Saudi economy and society into the 21st century, envisages an economy with a broader industrial base less tied to oil. He also has a much less conservative view of social mores. Authorities allowed women to attend a celebration of Saudi Arabia’s Independence Day in a sports stadium this week. Part of his economic plan involves the development of tourist resorts along the Red Sea coast, a paradise for divers. The facilities will be built to “international standards,” a term widely interpreted as allowing not only gender-mixed bathing, but also bikinis and probably alcohol. [...]

In reality, the driving ban has never been enforced 100 percent. Out in rural Saudi Arabia, tribal women have been driving for decades to look after animals and perform other farm chores. In the cities, expatriate compounds where many foreigners live have allowed women to drive, safe in the knowledge that the Saudi police, or worse still the religious police, are not allowed inside the gates. Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, has allowed women drivers inside its “little America”-style townships since the days when it was owned by American oil companies. [...]

The credit for the breakthrough may go to the crown prince, or MbS as he is known, but the ground has been well-prepared. Brave Saudi women have been tempting arrest in organized groups protests since at least the 1990s. In 2005, it was once again a live issue when Barbara Walters interviewed King Abdullah. “In time, I believe it will be possible. And I believe patience is a virtue,” he said. The brake at that time was identified as the now-dead Prince Nayef, then Abdullah’s interior minister and rival, who notoriously alleged that Jews had perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. Abdullah’s daughter, Princess Adela, was known to support women driving.

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