Ambitious Saudi prince plays China card for global entree

It is a truly remarkable turnaround: A Mideast leader vilified just five years ago for the murder and dismemberment of a prominent democracy advocate is now being eagerly courted by Washington and its major Western allies.

And that’s not because Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has done anything to mend fences with his international critics since his security officers allegedly lured Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 and killed him.

Quite the opposite. Shrugging off human rights concerns, he has deployed his country’s vast oil riches in pursuit of his “Vision 2030,” with the aim of building a less oil-dependent economy; making Saudi Arabia a leading player in golf, soccer, and other world sports; and imposing the kingdom not just as a regional force but a major power on the world stage.

MBS, as the crown prince is known, has been playing diplomatic hardball with Washington, which for decades has been Saudi Arabia’s key overseas ally. Last October, for example, in a reflection of the understanding Riyadh has reached with Moscow, the Saudi leader dealt a humiliating rebuff to U.S. President Joe Biden’s plea for increased oil production to stem price rises.

More strategically – and this is one major reason why the United States and other Western countries have been muting their human rights criticisms – he has been forging increasingly close ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

All of this has now left the Biden administration at a defining moment in America’s relationships and role in the Middle East – a region, ironically, that successive administrations have been de-emphasizing in order to focus on Washington’s main rival, China.

An immediate issue is a complex new Mideast diplomatic initiative, which has seen senior U.S. officials meeting with the Saudis throughout the summer.

The idea is that the Americans would mediate a historic peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is not just the preeminent Arab power but also home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites for the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims.

Delicate questions have yet to be worked out between Saudi Arabia and Israel – chiefly the Saudis’ reported insistence that Israel’s far-right government recommit to the idea of an eventual two-state agreement with the Palestinians.

Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that the main key to any deal will be a geopolitical trade-off between the U.S. and the Saudis.

For Washington, it’s primarily about China.

A U.S.-brokered peace would reassert America’s traditional role as the key diplomatic power in the Middle East. That would hold particular significance in the wake of Crown Prince Mohammed’s embrace of Chinese mediation six months ago to finalize a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement.

But MBS is making it clear he wants a quid pro quo. In fact, three of them. The least difficult is his demand for more advanced U.S. weaponry. But he is also pressing for a formal NATO-style security treaty with Washington, and for U.S. approval to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear facilities – both of which Washington has been reluctant to consider in the past.

His wish list underscores the extent to which Saudi Arabia still relies on the U.S. for its security.

But almost week by week, there have been signs that an ever more self-confident MBS could yet walk away from the negotiations if he doesn’t get what he wants.

He is certainly not ruffled by U.S. human rights concerns. Though overseeing genuine social reforms – reining in the once-powerful religious police, starting to expand rights for women, and opening the country to Western culture, even to the blockbuster “Barbie” – he has kept a draconian lid on dissent.

Hundreds have been detained for criticizing government policies, and some have been given decadeslong sentences in jails where Human Rights Watch recently said that “torture and mistreatment remain pervasive.”

This week, a new report from Human Rights Watch documented “widespread and systematic” killing by Saudi troops of Ethiopian migrants trying to cross the country’s southern border with Yemen.

Yet on the diplomatic stage, MBS was recently welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron. A visit to Britain is reportedly set for this fall.

This month, he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a conference attended by delegates from dozens of countries, including the U.S. and China.

A few days later, it was reported that Riyadh is seeking to join Britain, Italy, and Japan in a consortium to build next-generation fighter jets.

And on Thursday, the BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – which Beijing has been trying to expand so as to create a more effective counterweight to U.S. influence – announced that Saudi Arabia would be one of six new members.

None of this necessarily means the crown prince will succeed in making his Vision 2030 a reality. But at age 37, with no visible challenge at home, he clearly expects to be a political force for decades to come.

And one thing seems clear for now.

A leader whom Mr. Biden, as a presidential candidate, once termed an international “pariah” in the wake of the Khashoggi killing, is a pariah no more.