Saudi Arabia’s Transformation

As the Middle East comes to grips with understanding and rationalizing the bombing of nuclear sites in Iran. In the WSJ, Kimberley Strassel introduces readers to Karen Elliott House. Ms. House has a “remarkable” book coming out on 8 July: The Man Who Would Be King.

Ms. Strassel begins by asking Ms. House to explain what Israeli strikes and US deterrence mean to regional players, such as Saudi Arabia, a country that is currently attempting to reform and revitalize itself domestically while asserting its influence globally.

Having covered the region for decades (45 years), Karen House has unmatched knowledge of that region. She explains why Saudi Arabia is a silent winner:

The Israelis, in essence, in the attack, put their survival on the line. The US put its reputation on the line, and the Saudis were passive.

Karen notes that the Saudis put nothing on the line. Saudia was a winner because a weakened Iran is certainly in Saudi’s interest. Despite their diplomatic relations, the Saudis don’t trust Iran and would be thrilled and are thrilled, notes House, if the nuclear capability is truly destroyed.

But Saudi doesn’t want … their fingerprints on it and thus be subject to any retaliation by Iran.

New Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known by his initials in America as MBS, is changing things. Overshadowing and surrounding him is the infamous lockup of scores of royal princes in the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. Another awkward complication is his involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Kimberley Strassel wanting to know about the depth of the internal transformation, asks Ms. House about her visits Saudi Arabia (about 45 years). What, Strassel wonders, would a visitor see in Saudi Arabia today versus just 10 years ago?

• Karen Elliot House: It is truly night and day. 10 years ago, the religious police were out on the street. These were guys in long … Well, actually short robes. They showed their ankles, and they had big beards and scarves over their head without the black ring around it, so you could tell who they were. And they basically went around with their sticks and if any man or woman was doing anything that they regarded as improper … For instance, simply being together. They shook their stick at you and arrested you.

I received one of those once for being in a Dunkin Donuts in a big mall with my translator when I was writing my first book on Saudi Arabia. And they came up to me and I wear it along Abaya, but I don’t cover my head. I keep the scarf around my neck and the guy said to me in perfect English, cover your head, you are in Saudi Arabia. And then they took my passport, they took his (the translator’s) identity card, they took him to the religious police headquarters. They gave me my passport and told me to go to my hotel and I did.

It was not a pleasant life for people. A single young man could not enter a mall because he might prey on women. There were rules and rules and rules. And I think now if you go there are women walking all over in groups. There are women dining in restaurants in groups, and there are no longer segregated male and female sections in restaurants. You can sit anywhere you want. Women are working. They crowd into elevators alongside men. And men used to be afraid to get in an elevator with a woman, lest she makes some accusation against him to the religious police. So there’s just this mixing everywhere.

You see young Saudi boys and girls, teenagers sitting in Starbucks with their computers like American kids here. It’s phenomenal. I went to a restaurant and when I was there in March, and they now have a wine menu, even though alcohol is still not sold in Riyadh except at a place where only embassy foreigners can enter to buy it. And that’s in bulk and not by the drink, but the restaurant had a wine menu. It was non-alcoholic wine from Spain. But you could order a glass of non-alcoholic wine. I was taken by a man in Saudi Arabia to a … They don’t have bars, but they have coffee houses. And this particular coffee house was a gathering spot for gays, which of course not supposed to exist and if they do are not supposed to let anyone know they exist. So all around things have loosened up.

…  it’s a vastly different place than when I went. I went the first time probably before you were born in 1978. …  at that time it was before the religious crackdown. So I went to a dinner party at the oil minister’s house. It was full of men and women. Women dressed unbelievably. Alcohol served, but all of that went away. All the mixing of men and women, alcohol … People had alcohol. How they imported it into the country, I don’t know. But many people served real wine and scotch and all of that stuff throughout the religious domination, but it was only in the privacy of your home. And I think the fact that there was no entertainment, no movies, no nothing, because the religious authorities viewed any entertainment as distracting from focus on Allah.

The Young Crown Prince (MGB) grew up under a religious heavy hand., Karen House tells Ms. Strassel.

It wasn’t just policy, it was personal to MGB. To lift the heavy hand of religion. was essential to him if he was going to reform the country. His country needed foreign investment, foreign expertise. Who would want to go there and live if (his) wife couldn’t drive, work, or go out without being harassed by the religious police? So MGB took them off the streets.

He simply forbade them to be there, and that was wildly popular with people.

MGB inherited the religious question, explains House, but he also inherited this massive structural challenge in Saudi Arabia, “including a country that due to a long period of moribund leadership, … lacked division. It was essentially a giant welfare state financed by oil revenues. He’s trying to change all that and make it more market oriented.”

KS asks Ms. House to walk readers through a little bit of that change:

The Threat of Green Energy? 

• Karen House says the Crown Prince is looking for Saudi to transform itself off dependence on oil (particularly with the push for green energy, that there will be a time when oil revenues won’t be sufficient to provide people the lifestyle to which they become accustomed.)

…  they’re going to have to stop depending on the government and start depending on themselves. So the industries he’s trying to build, one of them is tourism. That one obviously pushes change in the country because again, tourists won’t come. There are lots of great things in my view to see in Saudi Arabia, but tourists won’t come if again, they’re going to be tormented the whole time they’re there. So he is trying to say we are a nation state and build nationalism as the glue that holds people together. You are a proud Saudi and young Saudis, I think genuinely do admire him because he was basically 30 when he got this big responsibility. He’s 39 now. And they see him as one of them. And after, as you said, four decades of half-dead elderly kings, he who didn’t have a vision and if they, they didn’t have time to execute it.

So it was like, as I’m fond of saying, a silent movie. You just saw one old man after another, his lips move, but nothing happened. And so people ready for change and they do see him as the leader. There are clearly exceptions to that. I lived with a very religious lady when I was writing my first book to see what real religion was like, and I visited her afterwards while I was working on this book, and I had been to a (archeological site) called Hegra, which is like Nabataean ruins like Petra in Jordan. And she said, “Oh, I couldn’t do that. That is cursed by God, so I could not visit there.” So there are people that are not fond of the changes, but he has largely intimidated people into approval or silence, as you said. Arresting his royal relatives and putting them in the Ritz-Carlton and jailing some prominent clerics. Others have confessed that they had the wrong view of Islam.

So (MGB) is making these changes, which are … highly significant. If he truly can get this country off the religious fanaticism, …  it will have an impact on religious fanaticism around the world. And the more so given what Israel has done in Iran. … In the short run they’re going to be more fanatical, more determined to try to organize groups of terrorists to kill Americans, etc. But that over time it will produce a more normal definition of what is a good Muslim than a good Muslim is somebody that kills a Christian or Jew and goes to heaven and gets virgins.

KH talks about one of MGB’s big goals: cozying up again with President Trump. MGB looks to induce foreign investment into the kingdom.

His vision 2030 plan called for a hundred billion dollars by 2030, and they’re getting nowhere near that. Indeed, the foreign investment is actually down from the years before all of these reforms began. So … he does have considerable problems. He’s going to have to be more assertive in his trying to reach his big goal of let’s shift the Middle East to prosperity instead of it being paralyzed by Palestinian Israeli disputes.

Domestic policy, notes KS, is obviously intertwined with foreign policy.

The Saudis remain unhappy with what they have viewed as both American slaps at time, like Joe Biden calling it a pariah state, and also what they view as occasional American inconstancy of failing to be there when Saudis feel like they need to be there.

… this is a prince who’s somewhat roiling global politics. He’s made it clear he’s going to pursue a Saudi Arabia first approach to power and that he will work with whomever advances Saudi interests, be that Russia or China or the United States. So how concerning should that be to us policymakers and what should they be doing with this relationship at this moment?

Karen House tells KS that the US should be doing what President Trump is doing – focusing on how to enmesh Saudi to help preserve the global system of international rule of law.

… Trump himself seems to be at times trying to blow off the world order and create his own. … (a number of) countries, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, … are middle powers with big ambitions. MGB’s ambitions exceed most everyone else in that group, (except) maybe India.

(Trump) wants to make an impact. And the impact he wants to make is recognizing Israel and creating this corridor from Asia through Saudi Arabia, Israel to the Mediterranean and Europe and his northwest corner of Arabia up near Israel and Egypt and Jordan at the top of the Red Sea would be a new Silicon Valley, create jobs for young Saudis by meshing Saudi money and Israeli technology luring western tech companies. Because energy is cheap in Saudi Arabia they would be a place in their minds where AI, which consumes a lot of energy, would be used widely.

(Trump has) very great visions and he needs to be more active, I think, in trying to pull them off, not just plan them. He has been active. I don’t mean to say he’s doing nothing. But I think in this war, for instance, they always share intelligence with Israel. He has condemned Israel for striking Iran. He has tried to keep his fingerprints off anything in Iran. He wisely probably tries to play all countries for Saudi first as he says he will do, but I think he and we need to be a bit more aware that we can do things together that benefit each of us that he can’t do with China, for instance. China buys his oil and thus his biggest trading partner because they’re desperate for oil, but it’s not a country that is interested in defending Saudi Arabia, and presumably he noticed how they did not defend Iran, their strategic partner, whatever that means. They have a strategic relationship, but it doesn’t include in helping each other apparently.

There’s much more to read in Kimberley Strassel’s interview with Karen Elliott House, who does an “amazing“ job of keeping track of the extended family tree.  I look forward to receiving House’s The Man Who Would Be King when it comes out on 8 July.