Saudi Arabia strengthens the position of the crown prince by appointing him prime minister

Saudi Arabia's King Salman Bin Abulaziz al Saud shocked the world on Tuesday by appointing Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as the country's prime minister, a position traditionally held by the monarch, as part of a shakeup partial government announced by decree.

The unusual move has been widely interpreted as a gesture to legally reflect a role that bin Salman has been carrying out for years without formally holding office.

King Salmán, who on paper had held the post until now, remains at 86 years old as head of state.

But the decree places his son Bin Salmán, who since 2017 is the first in the line of succession, officially heads the Executive, while leaving him in an even stronger position to assume the throne when he dies. his father.

"It is a really significant development: his de facto power within the administrative sphere [of the kingdom], which derives from his royal rank as crown prince, has now been formalized in de jure power as head of government," says Umer Karim, an expert in Saudi politics from the University of Birmingham.

"This also further regularizes his authority as the face of the Saudi state," he adds.

Cinzia Bianco, a Gulf researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, agrees that the appointment makes it possible to normalize an administrative anomaly.

“The appointment marks a departure from orthodoxy in Saudi politics, since the king usually holds that post.

[It is] a formalization of a role that Bin Salmán had already been playing, [and] now turns him de jure into what he already was de facto”, she points out.

Bin Salmán, who turned 37 in August, was appointed Defense Minister in 2015, a position of enormous weight in the kingdom and from which he has supervised the military operation that his country led in Yemen at the head of an international coalition responsible for serious war crimes.

Since he took power two years later, already as crown prince and after a purge of the state elite, Bin Salmán has promoted an agenda of moderate economic and social reforms in the country, very conservative and dependent on government income. oil, but has governed with an iron fist and without tolerating any opposition.

Bin Salman was also held responsible by the United States for the murder of critical Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.

In fact, the moment to elevate Bin Salmán to prime minister has raised suspicions among activists and human rights groups because the United States Department of State is scheduled to issue its opinion next week on whether the crown prince, who has there some open proceedings against him, including a trial for the murder of Khashoggi, he enjoys sovereign immunity.

Washington has traditionally limited immunity to heads of state, government and foreign ministers, according to a recently published report by international law expert William S. Dodge, so now the Saudi would certainly be covered.

"The appointment also has a practical reason," says Bianco.

“As head of government, there should now be no ambiguity for the US State Department to declare that, indeed, Bin Salmán enjoys sovereign immunity and cannot be tried.

This appointment could be the prelude to an expected trip [his] to the United States”, he anticipates.

Several Saudi analysts have ruled out that the decision is related to the state of health of King Salman, who has had to be hospitalized twice this year.

And in this sense, the appointment represents an unusual move not seen since the 1950s, when then-Crown Prince Faisal Al Saud served as Prime Minister during the reign of his brother King Saud, whom he most later it happened.

On a political level, it is not expected that the reconfiguration of the Government will lead to any changes in the kingdom, but the formalization of Bin Salmán as prime minister will allow some protocol problems to be solved that had previously been encountered.

“This allows you to be on equal administrative terms with other heads of government on your visits abroad and on international platforms.

Previously, he was just the Defense Minister, which sometimes created problems, ”Karim notes.

On the other hand, the reorganization of the Government has not affected most of the most important ministries in the country, such as those of Foreign Affairs, Interior, Finance and Energy, the latter occupied by Abdulaziz Bin Salmán, brother of the crown prince.

However, the reconfiguration has placed another of his brothers, Prince Khalid Bin Salmán, who was ambassador to Washington when Khashoggi was assassinated, at the head of the powerful Ministry of Defense, where he until now held the position of deputy minister.

The new Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Khalid Bin Salmán, this Tuesday in a meeting at the headquarters of the ministry that he now leads. SAUDI PRESS AGENCY (VIA REUTERS)

"Khalid Bin Salman's appointment is definitely very important," notes Karim.

“[In the past], three defense ministers have gone on to be crown princes and deputy prime ministers of the kingdom, so the fact that he becomes defense minister is a very significant sign, as he is probably the member of the most important royalty in the current cabinet after the crown prince”, he considers.

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