Mohammed bin Salman hard-charging heir reshaping Saudi Arabia

• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is known for his super-sized ambitions. The brash 36-year-old is said to have a fondness for fast food and the “Call of Duty” video games.
• He has overseen the biggest transformation in the modern history of Saudi Arabia. Under his rule, the Islamic religious police have been de-fanged and cinemas have reopened.
• He has also jailed critics and, in a sweeping purge of the nation’s elite, detained and threatened some 200 princes and businessmen.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has shook up his conservative kingdom with mind-boggling reforms while stifling any challenge to his de facto rulership, which he assumed five years ago.

The hard-charging heir has won praise for allowing women to drive and envisioning a less reliant economy on oil, but he has also elicited widespread condemnation for the heinous murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and other state abuses.

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A towering man with a full-face beard, a deep growling voice, and seemingly boundless energy, Prince Mohammed is known for his super-sized ambitions, from building the futuristic megacity known as NEOM to waging the seven-year-old war in neighboring Yemen.

The brash 36-year-old said to have a fondness for fast food and the “Call of Duty” video games, is also fabulously rich, owning a $500 million yacht, a French chateau, and, according to officially denied reports, a $450 million Leonardo da Vinci painting.

Unlike other Saudi princes with British accents, sharp suits, and Oxford degrees, he has embraced the country’s Bedouin roots, usually donning a traditional robe and sandals, and treating friends and relatives to lavish roast lamb meals in luxury desert camps.

Having plotted his path to power from relative obscurity, he has overseen the biggest transformation in the modern history of Saudi Arabia, the world’s top crude oil exporter and host of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina.

Under his rule, the Islamic religious police have been de-fanged, cinemas have reopened, foreign tourists have been welcomed, and Saudi Arabia has staged a film festival, operas, a Formula One Grand Prix, professional wrestling, and a huge rave festival.

Yet he has also jailed critics and, in a sweeping purge of the nation’s elite, detained and threatened some 200 princes and businessmen in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in a 2017 anti-corruption crackdown that tightened his grip on power.

His image was most severely tarnished by the brutal murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018, which prompted an international outcry despite Riyadh’s insistence that rogue agents carried out the killing.

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“MBS is a hugely divisive character, praised by supporters as a long-awaited game-changer in a region aching for it and dismissed by foes as a brutal dictator in the making,” wrote Ben Hubbard in “MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman”.

“He is determined to give Saudis a shining, prosperous future and exercises an unflinching willingness to crush his foes. Combined in different doses, those attributes will likely guide his actions far into the future.”