This report, based on three prolonged trips to the Kingdom over the past year, the most recent in January 2019, will take a deep look at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who dominates every aspect of foreign and domestic policy, to try to answer what lies behind his Mona Lisa smile. It will also examine the Kingdom’s social progress, its economic stagnation and its growing political repression. Readers will have to evaluate for themselves whether the social progress he has offered Saudis in general—and women in particular—offset his autocratic tactics at home and abroad.

The domestic challenges of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia are even more daunting than those that he faces at the international level, writes Karen Elliott House. Yet for all that, his enthusiasm hardly seems to have dimmed. Why?

Belfer Center Senior Fellow Karen Elliott House muses about the diplomatic steps that the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince might be willing to take with one another.

The looming question in U.S.-Saudi relations: Can the crown prince retain unchecked authority in the Kingdom? And if he does, can the U.S.-Saudi relationship—including close cooperation on Gulf security and global oil policy and large infusions of Saudi money into U.S. Treasury bills—remain undamaged? In short, can King Salman retain his son as crown prince and the U.S. as a close ally?

The case of the vanished and apparently murdered Saudi activist and writer Jamal Khashoggi is a tale with a victim and villains, but no heroes.

Oil prices are on their way up. Iranian sales have declined under pressure of a U.S. embargo. Venezuelan production is disintegrating apace with the country. Saudi production is nearing its limit, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries shows no sign of increasing production. Brent crude futures topped $80 a barrel Tuesday and may reach $100 before the end of the year.

Good news for oil-rich Saudi Arabia? In the very short run the answer is yes. But an increase in oil revenue only compounds the kingdom’s larger problems of economic and social malaise.

As Mohammed bin Salman begins his second year as crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, it becomes clearer that his role model is his paternal grandfather, Abdul Aziz al Saud. The uncanny similarity between these two young rulers, a century apart, offers clear clues to the country's direction today.