President Donald Trump counts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, or MBS, among his closest foreign friends. Trump calls MBS a “good friend,” and referred to him as the “Highly Respected future King of Saudi Arabia” who is “doing tremendous things.” The Saudi Public Investment Fund financed son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners to the tune of $2 billion.
Traditionally, American presidents make their first foreign trip to Mexico, Canada, or Europe. During his first term, Trump broke with tradition to meet MBS in Saudi Arabia. Trump outraged American and European progressives when he made Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination against the backdrop of their effort to turn the de facto Saudi leader into a pariah for his alleged role in ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi intelligence operative-turned-Muslim Brotherhood activist and Washington Post columnist.
Realists did not care. They understood what many democracy and human rights activists did not. MBS could be a reformer, but a reformed absolute monarchy does not equal democracy. MBS did not see openness to foreigners and women’s rights on one hand, and imprisoning and torturing rivals in the Ritz Carlton on the other as mutually exclusive. As MBS dragged Saudi Arabia into the 21st century, many in Washington celebrated Saudi Arabia’s turn from an engine for radicalization into a force for tolerance. Trump actively cajoles MBS into joining the Abraham Accords and seems frustrated that MBS has so far resisted open relations with Israel.
There was logic to MBS’s slow pace. He wanted first to change the mindset of a generation and also ensure no opponent would leverage his dementia-ridden father’s last neuron to play the anti-Israel card and knock him out of the heir apparent slot. MBS expected Western support for his reform. He saw first President Barack Obama and then Joe Biden’s public, personal criticism and pro-Iran tilt as a betrayal, especially after the personal risk MBS took to rid the corridors of power of more extreme Wahabi ideologues. In MBS’s view, Saudi Arabia had had America’s back for 75 years and deserved better. He conveniently forgot the involvement of Saudi financing, perpetrating, and diplomatically protecting the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers.
As Washington betrayed Riyadh, MBS responded in kind. He received a hero’s welcome in Moscow, exchanged visits with Xi Jinping, and signed a multibillion-dollar deal with the Chinese leader. He made accommodation not only with the Islamic Republic of Iran but also with the Houthis. Fair enough: The United States can live with a Saudi Arabia that is not an ally, so long as it is non-aligned. The United Arab Emirates, after all, makes clear it is an open market for all and will put its own interests first. Abu Dhabi will not bend over backward for Washington, especially after Biden’s silence when Iranian-backed militias attacked Abu Dhabi’s airport and tried to bring down the Burj Khalifa.
MBS, however, now pivots further from ally to adversary. Saudi Arabia did not stop supporting Islamist extremism because of 9/11; rather, it cracked down only after suffering blowback at home with Al Qaeda bombings around Riyadh. Alas, MBS is now as forgetful as his father. Even as Trump cracks down on Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, MBS supports them, especially in Yemen, whose local affiliate both works fist-in-glove with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and smuggles weaponry to the Houthis. MBS’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood culminated last week in the bombing of southern Yemen, whose counterterrorism forces had stopped Muslim Brotherhood smuggling routes.
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MBS, like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim, may believe he can buy Trump off, but MBS makes a fundamental mistake: Every time a Middle Eastern ruler has cultivated extremism for export only, they suffer blowback. Wildfires change direction with the wind. By cultivating extremism, Iran, and China, MBS is setting Saudi Arabia up for a fall.
Rather than remain a Major Non-NATO Ally, it is time to consider that MBS has shifted once again and now allows anti-American spite to direct his policies.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.