Credit: Gary Raynaldo  /  Discussion of PBS  FRONTLINE’s “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia” at the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan, NY  Oct. 30, 2019.

By Gary Raynaldo    /  DIPLOMATIC TIMES

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman,  also known as MBS, is the de facto ruler of the world’s leading oil exporter.  The 34-year-old prince has been hailed as a visionary in the Arab world with his sweeping reforms. The Crown Prince is also known as a brutal leader cracking down on social dissent, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with the war in Yemen, and most importantly, his alleged involvement in the sadistic murder of  journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  The Council on Foreign Relations in New York  City last week hosted a  Discussion of PBS FRONTLINE’s “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia”.    Speakers discussed  the FRONTLINE documentary “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia” as well as U.S.-Saudi Arabia relations. Thie film captures the rise to power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his policies over the past two years, including his handling of dissent, vision for Saudi Arabia’s future, and ties to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  However, the most pressing questions from the audience centered on the murder of Khashoggi.

Martin Smith,   Producer and Correspondent, FRONTLINE, PBS,  and veteran filmmaker and journalist recently produced a the documentary on the murder of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi, was a panel member speaking at the CFR forum. Smith addressed the U.N. Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard’s report linking MBS to the murder of Khashoggi.  Saudi Arabia officials have steadfastly denied involvement, maintaining Khashoggi was killed in a rogue rendition gone wrong.

“The problem I have with the idea that this is a rendition gone wrong is exactly what she ( UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard) heard on the tape that’s at the end of the film where she hears them rehearsing—you know, if we cut him into pieces, will his trunk fit in the bag? I mean, so that—it’s hard to square this is just a rendition gone wrong with the fact that they brought along a forensic surgeon and were rehearsing, in the hour before the murder, what they were going to do, how they were going to cut up and dispose of the body. So, you know, if anything, the film would call for more investigation.”

Martin Smith,   Producer and Correspondent, FRONTLINE, PBS.

Credit: Gary Raynaldo  /  Martin Smith,   Producer and Correspondent, FRONTLINE, PBS, speaks at Council on Foreign Relations Discussion of “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia” Manhattan, NY  Oct. 30, 2019. 

MBS Is an Economic Reformer Popular With The Saudi Youth

“Mohammed bin Salman may be a reformer, but he’s not a political reformer. He’s an economic reformer, he’s a social reformer, but whatever change comes has to come from him. …his constituency, people in their thirties and forties; those are the people that I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to—he remains very, very popular. People like the fact that you can be in a mall in Jeddah and a New Orleans jazz band will come marching past you. They are living a life that—Saudi Arabia is not a closed society. It’s not like North Korea where they don’t know what’s going on in the world. They’ve been educated at Harvard and Berkeley. They know how they want to live, and they want those things. And Mohammed bin Salman is their vehicle to get it. He has done some quite obviously terrible things, but I think Saudis who support him don’t quite yet realize or understand why people in the West have been so horrified by what has gone on in Saudi Arabia.”

– Steven A. Cook  –   Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies and Director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars, Council on Foreign Relation. 

Credit:  Gary Raynaldo  /  Steven A. Cook (Left)  – Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies and Director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars, Council on Foreign Relations, with  Martin Smith PBS Frontline Producer at CFR panel Oct. 30, 2019. 

President Trump Popular with Saudi Elite

“Look, anything was better than Obama as they saw it, and so Trump comes in, and Trump is willing to have their back vis-à-vis Iran. He is going to continue their support for the war in Yemen. He is someone who is willing to—I mean, we’re talking about the Saudi elite, and I want to address the point you were making because the Saudi elite does feel that either they played him well, or he’s one of them. And they are comfortable with him, his values, his projections. So he’s a good deal all around for the Saudi elite.”

-Martin Smith PBS Frontline Producer

Old Guard Saudi Elite Wary of  Crown Prince Rapid Reforms 

“Now just on this question of the popularity of Mohammed bin Salman, of course we really can’t know, and I’m talking about two weeks of traveling around the country in November of 2017, before the real kind of serious crackdown happened. And of course the elites are going to be very, very wary of Mohammed bin Salman because what he’s trying to do, of course, is change the way in which business essentially is done in the kingdom. And so that, in and of itself, is destabilizing, it’s breaking vested interests, and the way he has tried to do this is to accumulate as much power as possible. He’s not trying to rule like his uncles have ruled; he’s trying to rule like his grandfather by accumulating as much power to break all of these vested interests, and essentially, as a one-man, top-down reformer, remake Saudi society.”

-Steven A. Cook.

MBS Is Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia – Not  Mahatma Gandhi:    Steven Cook: 

“But in terms of actual political reform, people making their voices heard, expressing grievances, making claims on the state, pointing out where the royal family has done the wrong thing, where the person of the crown prince—it’s impossible. Look, Jamal Khashoggi was doing it from six thousand miles away in Northern Virginia, and they killed him for it. It’s absurd. He posed no threat whatsoever to the royal family or the crown prince. So the idea that there is political reform is—like Martin said, we’re confusing social reform with actual political reform. He is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He is not Mahatma Gandhi.”

Cook added that the reforms that MBS   has pursued “really remain within the realm of social reforms and really remain within the realm of the kind of broadly popular reforms like being able to go to the movies, and concerts, and women driving. I don’t think we should give the Saudis credit for being the last country on earth to allow women to drive.”

QUESTION:    What Does Khashoggi’s Murder mean for press freedom?  And do you think the lack of consequences for his death will embolden other leaders to stifle reporters?

“I mean, I think we’re seeing that around the world; I mean, in Turkey, for instance, of all places. But certainly it’s—I mean, when you are doing a film like this, and you’re a—you’ve worked your whole life as a journalist for an investigative series, and it’s about the murder of somebody who spoke out and was killed for it from—you know, who lived six thousand miles away, you get up a little earlier every day. It means a lot. I mean, the symbolism here—I mean, it’s real; it’s not symbolism—but I mean the fact that they killed a journalist for simply speaking out, posing no threat whatsoever to the regime, just some PR tarnish, is outrageous.”

-Martin Smith PBS Frontline Producer  –  “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia”