Consolidation of power in Riyadh

 

(This is Muhammad bin Salman the crown prince of SA)

"Prince Miteb, the preferred son of the late King Abdullah, was once thought to be a leading contender for the throne before the unexpected rise of Prince Mohammed two years ago.

He had inherited control of the National Guard, an elite internal security force built out of traditional tribal units, from his father, who ran it for five decades.

Prince Miteb was the last remaining member of Abdullah’s branch of the family to hold a position in the upper echelons of the Saudi power structure.

The move consolidates Crown Prince Mohammed’s control of the kingdom’s security institutions, which had long been headed by separate powerful branches of the ruling family.

Prince Mohammed, the king’s 32-year-old son, already serves as defense minister and was named heir to the throne in a June reshuffle that sidelined his older cousin, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef who had also served as interior minister."  Reuters

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 IMO what we are seeing here is the consolidation of power within the Salman branch of the Sudairi side of the Saudi royal family.

These people are descendants of abd al-aziz al-saud, the creator of Saudi Arabia as a family owned "executive monarchy."  They are all rivals (or potential political allies) in a giant family cousinage of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. of the Wahhabi ruler of Najd who emerged from the desert to seize control of most parts of the Arabian Peninsula.  There are thousands of people in the Family.

There are other important figures in the nomenklatura of Saudi Arabia but at root if you are not "family," you are not.

The present king, Salman has appointed his 32 year old son to be his successor as king.  This man, Muhammad bin Salman (pictured above) has a vision of of Saudi Arabia as being the hegemon of the ME with influence that reaches beyond its money and political skullduggery.  He sees SA as ally and mentor of both Israel and the US and Iran as principal obstacle to achievement of his dream.  Saad Hariri's flight into the crown prince's embrace is well timed to help weld together the anti-Shia coalition.  Velayati's visit to Beirut was a great excuse for his move.

IMO this purge is intended to achieve the intimidation or removal of those who are the crown princes' rivals on the secular side of Saudi society.   Mit'ab bin Abdullah was the head of SANG, a non MODA armed force for decades.  Bin Talal is a major financial power in the world. 

If there is not a successful coup against the crown prince in the next days, his follow up move will probably be to purge the Shia clergy of the Eastern Province.  pl  

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-cabinet/saudi-king-sacks-top-ministers-gives-more-power-to-crown-prince-idUSKBN1D40U2

Comments

[turcopolier]

All

Rumor (?) has it that Prince abd-al-aziz bin fahd (son of the late king) was either killed resisting arrest or died in custody? Is this true? pl

[Poul]

For what it's worth.

https://twitter.com/Ali_H_Soufan/status/927309277198512128

[eakens]

The report was apparently issued by the Saudi royal court but didn’t say how. Seems like quite a crazy time for Saudis to be invoking article 51

[Will2.71828]

Another theory relating to the mass recent arrests and helicopter "crashes" in Wahhabi Barbaria
"Prince Abdul Aziz was deeply involved in Saudi Oger Ltd, a company which until it ceased operations in the summer of this year, was owned by the Hariri family. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was putitively in charge of the company until it ceased operations.

Prince Abdul Aziz’s strange and sudden death which is said to have occurred during an attempted arrest, sheds light on the theory that the clearly forced resignation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had more to do with internal Saudi affairs than the Saudi attempt to bring instability to Lebanon."
http://theduran.com/saudi-prince-abdul-aziz-dies-arrest/

[JamesT]

I was reading the Wikipedia page on the "Volcano H-2" missile that was reportedly intercepted over Riyadh, and it states:
"Volcano H-2 was first revealed to the international community when it was launched at Saudi Arabia on July 22, 2017, which successfully hit the region of Yanbu and caused a major fire at Aramco oil refineries. Although this is disputed by Saudi Arabia which has said the fire was caused by a malfunctioning generator and the humidity of the air."

Wow. So the Houthis are building short range ballistic missiles and managed to set fire to an Aramco refinery with one. I can't believe I did not know about this.

[FB Ali]

Perhaps more significant than the purge of the Saudi royal family is the purge taking place of the Saudi clergy (see http://tinyurl.com/ya9de889).

The Saudi royals being sidelined or killed are just wealthy playboys. The Wahhabi clergy, while mercenary hangers-on of the al Saud, command a following both in the country and among Wahhabis internationally.

It is a measure of the rot in the Saudi kingdom that one headstrong young princeling has been able to so easily take it over. How long he lasts will probably be a function of external machinations.

[Philippe T.]

On August 17, 2017, the motorcade tof the Prince was attacked near Paris by an armed commando, who stole some pocket money (250 000 euros), medicines and some documents. Here is the report by Le Monde : http://abonnes.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2014/08/19/abdel-aziz-ben-fahd-prince-saoudien-peu-discret-braque-aux-portes-de-paris_4473283_3224.html
and by the Figaro :
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2014/08/19/01016-20140819ARTFIG00327-abdul-aziz-ben-fahd-prince-braque-a-paris.php

[Russell]

Hello FB Ali
The link does not seem to work....

[turcopolier]

FB Ali

The tinyurl worked for me. Is the same thing happening to the Shia clergy in the Eastern Province? p

[turcopolier]

James T

The idiot press keeps saying it is the Houthis who fired the missile. In fact it was the Yemeni Army guided missile battalion. They had SCUD when I was there as Defatt 30 years ago. pl

[turcopolier]

All

Jack Keane was on Fox today referring to the SANG as the "palace guard." The SANG is a second Saudi army not under MODA and numbering 250,00- fulltime Beduin troops with a sizable armored force and vast part time reserves. its function is to ensure population and territorial security throughout the country but especially in the Eastern Province to insure control of the Shia. Removing Mit'ab from command was a key move to block a counter-coup. pl

[jld]

It's the spurious ').' at the end which fools some browsers, better put a blank after each URL.
http://tinyurl.com/ya9de889

[FB Ali]

Try this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-wahhabism-salafism-mohammed-bin-salman.html

[Thomas]

Copy the link, put into search engine and erase the final parentheses and period which will let the article appear.

[Thomas]

"It is a measure of the rot in the Saudi kingdom that one headstrong young princeling has been able to so easily take it over."

But it is only the third day of the counter coup event which has change the paradigm. And with his highhandedness to the other family princes, returning fighters from Syria and Iraq, and, from several different media sources of a consensus the that Crown Prince is not well liked I wonder if he will see this next Saturday let alone December. Or could the Kingdom have its own breakdown to civil war like it has provoked in others?

[Account Deleted]

That makes more sense to me re Hariri. Trying to start a war with a resignation & obviously fake assassination plot is hardly Helen of Troy level, as casus belli go. His going the way of his father 'at the hands of Hizbullah' would have been more like it.

[blue peacock]

Now this is very interesting - the connection between the killed Prince and Hariri and his resignation from Riyadh.

Where there is smoke there is a fire.

[Russell]

Thanks for this.
In my humble opinion, this is very significant. But MbS has so many balls in the air now, I cannot imagine how it will all turn out.

[Clonal Antibody]

Also, there is this hypothesis from Adam Garrie at the Duran - BREAKING: Saudi regime orders arrest of so-called “Syrian opposition leaders”

This is a further sign that the purges of Muhammad bin Salman are aimed at radically re-orientating the priorities of the Saudi regime. Additionally, Saudi has now all but admitted that its attempts to meddle in Syria’s sovereign political affairs have failed.

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.

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While the MBS purges are self-serving first and foremost, they are also part of his desired pivot away from over-dependency on the US. By publicly attacking its former political proxies for Syria, Riyadh is clearly showing that its internal matters now take precedent over directly meddling in the wider Arab world.

[Richardstevenhack]

The US will try to "finesse it" with air and naval forces - but it won't work. There is no way the US Navy can prevent Iran from shutting down the Straits of Hormuz. Iran can dump mines and the like all day long using small boats.

The only way the US can keep the Straits open for shipping is to occupy the shores all along the Iran coast. It would take scores of thousands of Marines and US Army - if we have them. And they would then be the targets of a guerrilla war by a million or so Iranian militia alongside Iranian regulars and IRGC. This would produce thousands of casualties per year, not the hundreds a year the Iraq war produced.

There is no chance the US can win a war with Iran. It's four times bigger than Iraq in size and population, and Iranians will never surrender. The war will cost four times what the Iraq-Afghanistan wars combined cost. Iraq would probably throw out any US forces remaining and join in on Iran's side.

While Iran has little ability to project military power abroad, it can conduct missile attacks on significant Saudi oil assets, on US bases in the region, and other kinds of "asymmetric" attacks throughout the region on US assets.

A Pentagon war game conducted early in this century pitted a US Marine general as the head of Iran's forces against US forces. He managed to sink 16 US naval vessels. They had to suspend the war game and "re-float" the vessels to continue the game. While the US thinks it has defenses against small boat "swarm attacks", we won't know how effective they are until the war actually starts.

Iran won't be a failed state because its ethnic divisions aren't as significant as Iraq's were. If anything, it's likely to become stronger in the region despite a significant destruction of its infrastructure by the US air campaign.

[turcopolier]

richardstevenhack

We did keep the straits open once before against Iranian efforts to the contrary. Operations Earnest Will and Nimble Archer. I was very involved in those events. BTW your attitude toward Wikipedia is that of a pedant. pl

[Cee]

FB Ali,

✔ http://theduran.com/breaking-saudi-regime-orders-arrest-called-syrian-opposition-leaders/

[Keith Harbaugh]

A question for those more knowledgeable about Islam than I:
Does all the strife in the Islamic world, twixt Shia, Sunni, Kurds for example,
totally disprove the idea that "Islam is a religion of peace",
and the notion that Dar al-Islam is a "territory of peace"?
I would be interested to hear what those more knowledgeable about Islam think about this.

[turcopolier]

keith harbaugh

Islam enjoins peace among Muslims, not toward infidels (kuffar) or true heathen (wathenieen). This sounds simple but it is not. As I have treid many tiemes to explain Islam is a religio-cultural construct in which because there is no central authority, groups of various size decide what Islam and Sharia are on the basis of consensus (ijma')the resulting consensus groups are more or less hostile toward all other consensus groups. In the case of Sunni jihadi consensus groups they are violent in the rejection of all other groups. that is why HTS and IS fight each other. Ethnic difference further complicate matters. Does that make your head hurt? pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

I have tried many times on this forum, and I will try again: Islam is not a religion of Peace - it is a religion of both War and Peace. While peace is preferrable, at times, war becomes a necessity.