This report is based on four extended trips to the Kingdom since the author’s April 2019 paper, Profile of a Prince: Promise and Peril in Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030. While this report will focus primarily on changes in foreign and defense policy in the Kingdom, it also will update readers on the breathtaking changes in economic and cultural life of the Saudi people. 

Belfer Center experts on the U.S.-China relationship and Middle East issues shared thoughts on the significance of the unexpected Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement brokered by China. 

To keep oil flowing and diminish the U.S., Beijing brokers a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting and reflection, begins this weekend. Going without food or water from dawn to dusk humbles and refocuses believers on harmony with Allah and mankind. This might be a propitious moment for President Biden to visit the kingdom and seek forgiveness for a growing list of Saudi grievances that have badly damaged relations between Washington and Riyadh. Notably, the kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is refusing to pump more oil to help Mr. Biden in his quest to lower energy prices. 

Karen Elliott House, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor for The Wall Street Journal who covered the Middle East and foreign affairs for more than three decades before retiring as the paper’s publisher in 2006, spoke with the Harvard Gazette about a just-released 2018 intelligence report that concluded the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabian agents in Turkey was done “on behalf” of and “approved” by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

Gazette reporter Christina Pazzanese interviewed Elliott House.

President Trump is playing a tense poker game with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The stakes are America’s oil industry and the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

The 34-year-old prince and the president have been fast friends since Mr. Trump chose Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip and received a lavish welcome. The president stood by the prince when he severed relations with Qatar, and again when he was accused of approving the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But now the prince is threatening America’s oil industry, U.S. national security and Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects.

For Saudis these days, life is a roller coaster. Even as Iranian missiles threaten their national security and livelihood, previously unimaginable social freedoms accelerate. All this leaves some Saudis squealing with delight; others are frozen with fright.