Mohammed bin Salman has been Crown Prince (heir to the throne) of Saudi Arabia since 2017. As de facto leader of the country, he has enacted a series of liberalising social reforms that have had positive effects for Saudi women and young people. However, he has also centralised massive political power around himself, leading to many unpleasant moments, including the murder of Royal court figure turned journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. MBS is undoubtedly a ruthless leader, but one big question remains- can the West afford to stand up to him?
My guest for this conversation was Justin Scheck (@ScheckWSJ on Twitter), reporter for the Wall Street Journal and co-author, along with Bradley Hope, of Blood and Oil, which was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award in 2020.
Mohammed bin Salman has been Crown Prince (heir to the throne) of Saudi Arabia since 2017. As de facto leader of the country, he has enacted a series of liberalising social reforms that have had positive effects for Saudi women and young people. However, he has also centralised massive political power around himself, leading to many unpleasant moments, including the murder of Royal court figure turned journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. MBS is undoubtedly a ruthless leader, but one big question remains- can the West afford to stand up to him?
My guest for this conversation was Justin Scheck (@ScheckWSJ on Twitter), reporter for the Wall Street Journal and co-author, along with Bradley Hope, of Blood and Oil, which was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award in 2020.
Hello and welcome back to the hated in the dead with Tom Leeman. The subject of today's episode was ranked by Forbes magazine as the eighth most powerful person in the world in 2018. Ahead of the likes of Narendra Modi and google co founder Larry Page, Mohammed bin Salman has been the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia since 2017. Meaning that he is next in line to become king after the death of his father, the current King Salman. In spite of this, Mohammed bin Salman or MBs, as he is often known, is the effective leader of Saudi Arabia already and has centralised massive political power around himself. This has led to many unpleasant moments, such as the murder of royal court figure turn journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. NBS is undoubtedly a ruthless leader and a dangerous person to get on the wrong side of. He is also proven to be an unstable partner for his extensible allies, the US and the UK, and has personally overseen a hideous military intervention in Yemen. However, he has also presided over a series of social reforms that have lifted some of the most stifling religious restrictions on ordinary Saudis. Women are now allowed to drive for instance, and cinemas and concert halls have reopened after decades of austere conservative decree. Whilst MBSS reforms are certainly motivated by self interest. They serve as an example that political expediency often can have good outcomes for ordinary people. What is often referred to as mere window dressing in the West, has had genuinely positive effects on the lives of women in Saudi Arabia, and regardless of his motives, and Bs his role in that must be recognised. In any case, having politicians acting selfishly can have its advantages, because at least selfish behaviour is usually rational. My guest for this conversation is just in check. reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and co author, along with Bradley hope of Blood and Oil, which was long listed for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. In 2020. We discussed the rise of NBS to the position of Crown Prince, the success of his economic and social reforms, known as vision 2030. And the complicated position Saudi Arabia occupies in international politics. There is some sound interference for about the first 10 minutes of this episode, but do persevere as it clears up. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to introduce Mohammed bin Salman. Hi, Justin, how's it going? Hi, there. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Justin, we're talking about Mohammed bin Salman. Today he's the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, known as MBs, to his to his friends and most of his enemies. NBS is he's by far the youngest person I've studied on this podcast so far. He's only 36. He was born in 1986. Saudi Arabia is of course in an absolute monarchy. It's ruled in autocratic fashion by the Saudi family of which MBS is a member. To the uninitiated, how does the House have sailed? How does this family work as a political unit, what sort of life was NBS born into? In 1986. So it helps to give a little bit of history so his family that also would family has ruled the central part of Saudi Arabia on and off for a couple of 100 years. And after a time out of power, they retook power about a century ago and from there expanded and conquered the rest of what is now Saudi Arabia and unified it as one kingdom. And the person who did that was Muhammad bin someone's grandfather. So even though it was about a century ago, I the grandfather had many wives and many dozens of sons. And one of those younger sons is the current King King Salman and that's Mohammed bin Salman spotter and the way the monarchy has worked since Abdulaziz United Kingdom is that the Crown has passed from one son to the next son of the founder of modern kingdom so there's only been one generational passing down of the crown that was from the founding came to one of his sons and then it's got from Brother to brother so now Mohammed bin Sivan is in line to be Next Generation for the second time, it'll go down to a new generation when it goes to him. When his father dies, he's now the Crown Prince. And the family is a pretty interesting kind of political body. Power has historically gone from the current King when he dies to the next oldest brother, who is who the rest of the brothers deemed competent to see if there was a brother who had mental health issues or was a profligate spender or what have you, you know, tended toward political, you know, conflict with the brothers, he would be excluded from the line of succession. The barring that no older brothers would decide that yes, this necklace was brighter if you get the crown, you'd be the next king. Eventually, that had to end because there's not an everlasting string of brothers. And that's where conflict occurred. In the to the eighth amendment to that intense when the prior King King Abdullah was dying, the crown was supposed to go to his brother can come on. And there was a move among loyalists of one of the Bellas scientists to try to get $1 to rule that the crowd of good acts in the next generation one of his sons, it's that created what a relatively rare opportunity for rare conflict within the family where Muhammad gets along and his father Simone had to manoeuvre to make sure that they continue to be the line of succession that somebody could utilise. And once they saw that issue, then Mohammed bin Salman had to move so a couple of cousins and uncles out of the way in order to make sure that he was the next conflicts. So it's, it's there hasn't really been a blue quote, in this family, for someone like him, just because the Crown has not gone down to the next generation. But for the first time. I suppose the starting point is you've said for looking at NBS, as a politician has to examine his own father killing someone. You mentioned that Salmaan and Mohammed bin Salman have had to sort of manoeuvre. That was the word you used. In order to kind of ensure that the line of succession remains there's what is some, like temperamentally? I think I'm right in saying that he suffers from some sort of dementia. Is this something that has plagued him since he became king, what sort of leader is he? He definitely has health problems. He's old, very, very old. He's had serious health problems for many years. It's not clear to me that dementia is one of them. What we've written about him is he's a fascinating character. And he's this guy, who, for 48 years, was the governor of Riyadh Province, which, you know, in an absolute monarchy, no one's really powerful other than the king. But in that context, being the governor of Riyadh province might be the most powerful non King position in Saudi Arabia. And that's because that province is historically the also homeland, it's the base for the family. And it's also the centre of religious power. And really, until Mohammed bin Salman, the claim on the throne, the OSUIT family had was largely due to their support from this conservative religious establishment. So someone was someone who was very important in that relationship. And he was also sort of the family disciplinarian. So he was someone who if a prince, you know, got caught drinking and crashing a car got arrested in another country, he was the guy who would, who would impose discipline on them. So he knew where all the skeletons were buried, He knew all kind of the Dark Secrets of everyone. And he had a reputation for sort of austerity, and not living this really indulgent life that a lot of his brothers LED. And what to me was really interesting about him as if he were a lot of his brothers for years were cutting deals with like foreign military contractors or oil contractors to enrich themselves. And Samad didn't really focus on that he focused on building political power and not really and building wealth. And in doing that, he developed a reputation I think, at home and abroad, you know, with his people he dealt with in the US as being someone who was not corrupt the way maybe other members of the family were. And obviously, the corruption is a weird context. When in a monarchy, the dividing line between the royal family and the state isn't clear. And so is it really corruption if you by definition, own everything, you know, so that's, that's a tangent, so he had a reputation as not being particularly indulgent or corrupt. And being a pretty harsh Schuller, you know, he was he would he was on for slapping young princes with with his big ring if they were in trouble and for, you know, imposing really harsh discipline, and he never thought he would be king, no, nobody thought he became only because he had a number of older brothers who were very politically powerful, who were ahead of him line for the throne. And just the math didn't look good for him, it looked like by the time he'd get a chance and be in his 80s and two subsequent crown prince into a hidden line die of illnesses. And he ended up next to mine from the throne. And sort of on his way there, his son, Muhammad, his youngest, you know, he had older sons who were very accomplished. But Muhammad was the one who he saw as the next leader realised that his father had some weaknesses. One of them was he didn't have money. I mean, he me compared to me, and I assume to you, he had like, gobs of money. But other princes who had built their own business empires had independent wealth, where someone was basically dependent on whatever he got every year from whichever one of his brothers was King, which is fine. It was a huge amount of money. But what if the next kid was brother didn't get along with it made him he wasn't back to dependents. So Muhammad, starting with us, quite young, built up a fortune for his father, but a business unfortunate for his father, which helps with political power and helps to have money to spread money around. The other thing that we get out in the book, is that someone, like a lot of other princes has had a lot of health problems. And it's, you know, a lot of it is lifestyle related, eating rich food for many years smoking, sitting around a lot, which I mean, it's hard to not sit around a lot when it's, you know, incredibly hot all day, every day. So at some point, you know, before he was killing someone, like a lot of his brothers had a number of surgical procedures and ended up with a prescription drug addiction. And Muhammad personally, wound him off the painkillers that he developed with the passage of time, which helped him get back to, you know, being the sort of the sharp, and, you know, sort of disciplinarian he had been. So you've got a guy who is a very kind of powerful figure, but has had weaknesses, both in terms of policy in terms of strategy that has set us up for incompetence. Something that's quite striking about NBS is that he's very young, to be the Crown Prince. As I said at the beginning, this suggests that his position is quite unusual within Saudi history. Is this sort of kind of violent jostling for power? Something that happens kind of every time a king comes to the end of his reign, or is this something novel in the sense that Ben Ellman, since he became Crown Prince has tried to sort of consolidate or fundamentally reengineer power structures around himself? It's the first time it's happened in a long time. It's not the first time there's been something like this. So the first son of Abdulaziz to become king consoled was removed from the throne by his brothers. There was another kid who was shot by a relative and killed so that loads of good transitions in the past that have been odd. Rocky, but since then, for the last several decades, it's gone from Brother to Brother Brother pretty smoothly. This this was different. Because in a way, it's the same in a way this was the first time there is sort of a millon aquatic, passing down with a friend with the product, key $1 and $1 signs and loyalists trying to get the crowd to go down into his life and so on wanting to maintain his out of succession. It created a situation where whoever was the best political manoeuvring could win. And there hadn't been anything resembling a sort of meritocracy within that family for for many, many years. So it was new, a lot sense. And it's new, as you said that this has been what, you know, American diplomats called gerontocracy for decades. It's a country ruled by old men. And you're not going from like an old man to a slightly younger man. You're going from a very, very old man to quite a young man. And I think it's unquestionable that Muhammad is the best person in his family, at navigating his family politics and consolidating power within his family. It's not clear that he's particularly getting anything else he might be it might turn out to be government and then at some point either, but you know, it's one of the disconnects of the monarchy is the qualities that allow you to gain power have nothing to do with the qualities that make you get up and running. Let's talk about what bin Salman has done. Since he became Crown Prince in 2017, then I suppose an important question to ask at this point, is that it? It's often said that he is in complete political control of Saudi Arabia now? Or is it kind of de facto leader? Do you think that's true? Do you think that he is kind of fully in control? Are there any other competitors for the Crown at this point, it seems like he's in control. Um, you know, when, if there is a competitor, it will come in the form of like, something catastrophic, you know, like an assassination attempt or something, it's hard to imagine anyone successfully changing a line of succession, or creating some kind of, you know, change of opinion. We, I guess, it was his father that to pass a parent that someone else and you know, the only real kind of, there's not really meaningful opposition within Saudi Arabia, you know, there's this kind of loose, like coalition of dissident types, that includes the son of an imprisoned cleric, and a former intelligence chief who fled to Canada and this sort of, kind of mishmash of people who are out there criticising him, but they don't wield power within Saudi Arabia. And, you know, Muhammad has been, like, completely uncompromising when it comes to dealing with them. And, you know, they, they, you know, the former intelligence chief is trying to get to his adult children extricated from Saudi Arabia, and Mohammed will have them leave. And, you know, he won't budge an inch on that he won't let them leave. And there's only so much that you can get by criticising a monarch in the foreign media, you know, it's not he's not particularly sensitive to, like, you know, his representation in foreign media. In a way, I guess that other threats to his leadership are more abstract things, foreign wars, economic problems in Saudi Arabia, things like that. If you look at something like Saudi vision 2030, this attempt to kind of reduce Saudi dependence on oil exports for its revenues alongside various social reforms. How successful do you think that's been so far? And if it does turn out to be a failure, and Saudi Arabia remains deeply dependent on oil and oil exports into the 20s and 30s? How serious a threat to his leadership prospects could that be? Well, that's the big question. No, I think they're, they're, you know, social reforms, or economic reforms, and the social reforms are the low hanging fruit. And I think they've been tremendously successful, in the sense that, for most people who are under you know, 50 years old, especially people living in cities, like Saudi Arabia was like, a super restrictive, not very fun place to live compared to other large cities and other countries with similar wealth. You couldn't go to the cinema, you couldn't see live music, you couldn't get coffee with a female you weren't married or otherwise related to if you're a man, if you're a woman, you you couldn't keep your face uncovered as they were, you can keep your body uncovered. There were, you know, huge religious restrictions imposed that deeply affected every aspect of life. And those were, he got rid of those Yeah, for the most part, you can go to a concert, you can go to the cinema, you can you can go to a cafe with a with a member of the opposite sex, and all of these basic, basic things. He, I he made better for people, and it's hard to say there's any downside to that. And, you know, what he realised? And I think you know, what I always say this is to digress a little bit, but I think it's important. You know, he, he, I think has two big priorities. The first one is to figure out how the first one is to make sure that his family remains in power. And the second one is to make sure that he's an ex member of that family to be king. And so each and every one of these reforms he's done are with those goals in mind. So, you know, he realised was it Previously, the religious establishment was responsible for his family's power base that's been given legitimacy in the eyes of the Saudi people. And we got to a point where with this younger generation, that they were the religious establishment as a liability, they were they, you Saudi Arabia has the highest smartphone penetration, and highest social media usage of any country in the world. So you had millions and millions of, you know, over 50%, of the country's under 30 had millions and millions of young people sitting there looking at Instagram all day watching their their counterparts and other countries, go on vacation and the like, in their own countries and have coffee together and stuff. And they were, you know, sitting there couldn't do anything. So he realised that, that that was a liability, I think he was able to persuade the religious leaders that, you know, this needs to be done, if you disagree, that needs to be done, I will make sure that things are very unpleasant for you, you know, he realised that he his family no longer needed the religious establishment. And he, he opposes these changes that I think have been tremendously successful. And the economic side, it's hard to see much success at all for me. You know, it's easy to lift restrictions, and it's easy to spend money, he spent a lot of money, it's really hard to create new sources of revenue, and it's really hard to get people who aren't under your jurisdiction to do stuff for you. Yeah, he's very good at getting people in Saudi Arabia to do what he wants, because they have to. But, you know, the big goal of vision 2030 is to move away from the dependence on oil, largely by bringing in foreign companies that will turn Saudi Arabia into like a regular economy, like the UK and the US rather than a Petro state. And he hasn't really been able to do that. I think for a few reasons. I think, for a lot of it for a long time. He talked about it every now and then sometimes, you know, making Saudi Arabia Centre for like automobile manufacturing. But, you know, he's sort of, like Saudi Arabia is a country with I mean, it's got, there's about as many Saudis as there are residents of Mexico City. So like, did companies go and invest billions of dollars to supply cars to Mexico City? It's like, no, no, you know, it's it's not big enough. All right. It's, it's a very wealthy country. But it's not a big enough country to become a manufacturing centre, the way he's envisioned. I think a lot of foreign companies are wary of the legal system there. It's the courts or religious courts. They're wary of the regulatory system, which is unpredictable and changes a lot. They're wary of the bureaucracy. And so he's said he can change that. But even if he changes it, you're a pure head of a company, you're moving to a country where like, one guy is in charge, and maybe he's business friendly. But what if he dies, and this guy's not business friendly. It's just a very, it's a structure without institutions, the way Western Europe and the US. And a lot of Asian countries have institutions where the institutions transcend the individual. And so, you know, his whole plan, which is to decree that there will be foreign companies, there will be innovation, there will be, you know, entrepreneurship, like, there's not really a blueprint for that working, you know, like Silicon Valley didn't become Silicon Valley, because someone decreed, you shall innovate, it became Silicon Valley, because you had these, this combination of academic institutions and the military, and, you know, in the 1950s, a low cost of living, and everyone kind of came together, and it came from the bottom up. And he tried to do it from the top down, and then and it's, it's hard for anyone to do, but I think it's especially hard to say you're going to do it by just spending a lot of money. We should probably turn to the event that sent MBS on to front pages across the world, which was the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Can you explain what happened? On the second of October? 2018? Yeah, yeah. So Rebecca know, for sure. He isn't a journalist the way like, we think of journalists, I don't think he's he's suddenly much more interesting. He was this like, royal court creature who will, you know, came from a family that had long been tied to the outside family for a couple of generations. And you know, he had worked for the Saudi head of intelligence. He'd worked for the government on and off in different capacities. You know, writing things that were favourable to the government, he wrote, what people who paid him to do, right, yeah, he famously went to Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden, when he was fighting the Mujahideen there, he was this kind of like creature of the royal court. He ended up in the US and kind of fell out with Muhammad, but somehow and and started writing columns, opinion columns for The Washington Post who were very critical of the Saudi government, and very critical of Muhammad. And I think Prince Mohammed didn't see him as like, Who's this journalist criticising me, he saw me as like, my own subject who I know personally, has turned on me, he's a traitor. And that was infuriated. So this is not this is not a mitigating circumstance isn't to say that it makes anything okay? Or it's an excuse, but it's just different than saying he killed you know, some normal journalist who is writing critical stuff. So Jamal Khashoggi had been had been writing, you know, very critical columns for the Washington Post, he went to Turkey to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get a marriage licence, he was getting married. And he never emerged from the consulate, he was, you know, killed and dismembered while he was in there. And all this is undisputed. And, and it's also undisputed that he was he was killed and dismembered by men who worked directly for Mohammed bin Salman, that is also, you know, undisputed. You know, US intelligence reports have said, Muhammad probably ordered it, he said, he didn't order it. And, you know, these men did this on their own. You know, and it's, I don't know that we're ever gonna get an answer on that. But it almost in a way, you know, whether he said, Kill this guy, or these deal with this guy they interpreted, interpreted it as kill him isn't the most important question. You know, I mean, it's pretty clear that that these guys were working for him. And they thought what he wanted was for this guy to be, you know, killed and dismembered. And so after that happened, you know, there was this, you know, the world was horrified, and businesses, you know, briefly pulled out of Saudi Arabia, and there was sort of a, the cooling off of the enthusiasm for this new young ruler in the business and political communities in the West. But he's so wealthy is an important ally strategically for the US and a lot of European countries. And, you know, to be fair, like, I don't totally understand why you'd want to impose huge sanctions on someone for killing this one journalist, but kind of like, look away from the fact that he's, you know, spent the past seven years bombing civilians in Yemen, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like, there's a little bit of, you know, it's a headline grabber for good reason. But I think it put policymakers in the US in this awkward position of saying, like, you know, like, it wasn't clear that I mean, it would have been a little bit hypocritical to kind of sanction them over over Khashoggi as well. So it's a complicated situation. And I think, I think Muhammad really regrets it. Like whether he's directly responsible or not for the death. He's told a number of people who Bradley, my co author, and I talk to you that, you know, it's the worst thing that's happened because it's made it so much harder for him to get what he wants internationally. And it's made him look like this cartoon villain. When he's trying to say like, No, I'm not I'm, I'm, you know, a person who's trying to make Saudi Arabia more of an international country and it's allowed his his opponents to paint him as a, as, you know, sort of a caricature. If we turn to him in, in on the international stage, Saudi Arabia is obviously a very important ally of the United States and of my country, the UK as well. Saudi Arabia is also the home of Wahhabi ism, a very puritanical, intolerant brand of Islam. I think 15 of the 9911 hijackers, who were Wahhabi, came from Saudi Arabia. It's clear that from what you've said that over time, the Saudi monarchy and the government at Leeds have sort of Lent into Wahhabi ism, and is and Islamism in the way that it rules. Saudi Arabia if you look at their social policy, their traditional attitudes towards women towards gay people, but to take a kind of realist view on all this. Is it possible that the monarchy is actually preventing the emergence of an even more unpleasant leadership in Saudi Arabia? They're actually a damn if you like holding back a great deal of extremism. I don't want to sound like I'm sort of defending him or The government there. But could the house of salad actually be better than some of the potential alternative Saudi government's a sort of al Qaeda, ISIS style government? It's been questioned. And I think, you know, Mohammed bin Salman would say, Absolutely, it's better. And what he would point to and has pointed to a lot is the Iranian Revolution. And I think one of the sort of under to get the answer that question, you have to, you know, go back to 1978 79, where you have this religious revolution in Iran, and you also have these religious extremists in Saudi Arabia, who stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca. And now, Iran, the revolution was successful. That became a pseudo theocracy, I guess. Whereas in Saudi, they, you know, with the help of French Special Forces, and a sort of horrible, you know, exposure to violence in Islam, totally a site, they put down this, these would be, you know, revolutionaries, who, you know, were very, very extreme, very conservative religious guys. But they, the royal family, in the aftermath, came to the conclusion that the biggest threat to the rule were religious extremists. And the way to placate them would be to allow the Saudi religious establishment to have a deeper, deeper control over people's lives. And Saudi Arabia became a more conservative country after 1979. That's when it closed cinemas and put a lot of social restrictions in place. So I would bet somebody's lifting. So, you know, it's a good question to ask, but I think realistically, you know, this is not Syria, where it where you've got, is just a very different dynamic, like, it's hard to see something like ISIS, coming into Saudi Arabia, I mean, the country is so wealthy, I think people are accustomed now to a standard of living that's like something other than what you would get in a, in a state ruled by terrorists, but it's also a place that has only ever existed as a country under the monarchy. And there's never been an alternative government in the country we know, is Saudi Arabia. prior to it being Saudi Arabia, it was basically, you know, a bunch of colonies controlled by the Ottoman Empire and others and are, you know, individual sort of pseudo states composed, you know, controlled by local rulers and, and so it's sort of hard to imagine this country that was created, unified and created by the current royal family existing with some other kind of political structure. So I don't know, I don't know that they're keeping something worse at bay. I do think that, you know, quite clearly, socially speaking, the country, you know, Mohammed bin Salman has been, you know, a huge force for making the place more pleasant for most people. But in terms of political freedom, you know, it's it's less free than its, than it's ever been possibly, or it's, it's certainly no more free politically than than it ever was under the current ruling family. Even so, though, you when you were talking about how Mohammed bin Salman probably feels Freer from the conservative religious establishment than other previous kings or Crown Prince is? You can, it sounds like there might be a situation where a fairly secular useful group of people on the one hand is kind of going up against a conservative older establishment. On the other hand, that doesn't sound like a particularly stable society, right? Yes, it's a good point. On the other hand, I think, just, if you look at the math, there's so many more of the younger people than there are the older people because the population is growing a lot. And the royal family has such a stranglehold on the economy and on the military, that, you know, even during the Arab Spring, there was very little happening in Saudi Arabia, they're very quick to put down any any inkling of unrest and, you know, it doesn't get rid of that much. But in Eastern Province, there were there's, you know, a significant Shia population, there's ongoing, you know, on and off violence, you know, people will demonstrate and it's put down right away. So, there hasn't been the type of like, big social upheaval that you can see in a country that can really threaten a ruler. And I think part of that is just the wealth like, there's so much oil money that like there's not a lot of really desperate poverty, to motivate people to you know, the people I don't think that other people feel the desperation that it's driven a lot of other you know, social movements in other countries, but um, ya know, I mean, if you look at it structurally, doesn't They seem terribly stable. You have a you have someone who rules because his father and grandfather, you know, we're in some king rules because his father rule before him. And people have zero say in their own governance like that, like, historically that's not like a super, like, stable way to run a country. Well, no, look at mine. Yeah, no, but I mean, like your country. UK, you can use the model right for how to transition from an absolute monarchy without, without a revolution or without having been a couple revolutions. But you know, it takes like three engineers and you do it really slowly, you end up with like, these weird structures, like, royal family that's incredibly wealthy. Nobody can figure out and I mean, I've always really, I lived in London for a time. And I always really admire the UK for how for how was able to make the transition. And I'd also like the weird, awkward structures that you have in place, and the House of Lords always fascinated me and wrote a bunch about the House of Lords. Yeah, these guys who inherited you know, but, but, but like to do that without like, significant bloodshed internally, it's, it's pretty great. You know, it's it's a real a true, like, generational, they multigenerational accomplishment? How likely in reality, do you think the US and the UK will be able to extricate themselves from this alliance with Saudi Arabia? Assuming, of course that actually they want to? Yeah, I don't think they'll want you. Because it's always good to have more allies. But the question is, like, and on paper, that there's not necessarily there aren't necessarily reasons to not be allies. But, you know, part of, you know, one of the big problems, there has been the shifting political sands in the US where you've got, you know, the bush, Republicans going back to the first George Bush and Reagan have this, like long standing pseudo familial allegiance to the Saudi royal family. That was reciprocal, they it was personal, I think the Saudis and we tend to see our counterparts, we tend to assume that they're like us and the Saudis, I think thought of the bushes as a political dynasty. And we're the outsole. They're the bushes were close. And, you know, it was kind of a rude awakening when you end up with Obama as president and Obama. You know, Obama saw the region as a place where our allies needed to be kind of kept in check. And our enemies could maybe be brought a little bit closer, and everyone there can be stability based on like, mutual interests of not, you know, having violence. And so you get the Iran nuclear deal, you get pressure on Saudi Arabia to make social reforms which, you know, Mohammed bin Salman loads, you hated being lectured by Hillary Clinton and freedom for women. And so he really detested Obama, he really did not like Obama, he felt like Obama betrayed this generations long alliance between Saudi Arabia and the US. And for him was personal ethic for the US. You know, you ended up as Trump came in, you ended up with a six shifting worldview, where the Obama people wanted to kind of, you know, keep, you know, keep a balance, where we bring around a little bit closer, we maybe keep Saudi Arabia a little bit more of a distance, we try to get everyone to be in their best behaviour. And the Trump administration's view was, there are good guys and bad guys. The good guys are Israel, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And the bad guys are Qatar, and Iran, and maybe Turkey. And we're ultimately going to end up with a conflict between the good guys and bad guys. So let's embrace the good guys and go after the bad guys. And then you have this this shift when Biden wins, it's a lot of the same people who was dealing with in the in the Obama administration. So and so I think it's been hard for the US alliances to have any consistency when you have people with completely different approaches foreign policy, who are in there. And so I think that's if you're, if you're Muhammad, I think it like makes it legitimately difficult to maintain things. But also, he doesn't respect the current administration. He doesn't agree with their, their approach. And, you know, he's shown recently with, you know, his unwillingness to pump more oil that he's willing to kind of, like, you know, make things difficult for America, which isn't like really acting like an ally and the US is still selling him weapons and do other stuff. So it's kind of a weird Alliance, where you've got this guy, you know, undermining the US and not helping out with stuff. And it is seemingly, you know, still talking to Putin and everything. So it's a weird thing and I think his calculus, Muhammad's is that the US needs the relationship, the alliance will stay and so he can kind of like, you know, be a, you know, kind of do what he wants and kind of stick it to the Biden administration, which is, you know, a little bit awkward. I think the UK is a little, probably less heated right now. And maybe there's a little bit less, less tension. There's, there's been less reason for tension recently. Just to bring this to a close, then just in and I wanted to ask about the experience of writing this book, after the death of Jamal Khashoggi, you're a journalist, you've written a book that is not exactly complimentary. It's not exactly a Hague geographic account of, of Mohammed bin Salman. When you look at what happened to Khashoggi, how does it make you feel? It must, it must sort of it must have hit home a bit. I mean, you never want anyone to get dismembered. But I, you know, I don't I mean, I, you know, I haven't it's I, I don't see it in any way is, as related to what Bradley hope my co author and I do, you know, I think the show, he was of the royal court, he was seen as a trader, and he was he was a subject who had gone wrong. He was, you know, I think mama told me, This is my guy, how could you be doing this? Whereas we are, you know, we're Americans, and we are kind of doing our best to tell the truth. And I don't we didn't have any objections to the book. And I think, I think what's important understand about Muhammad is I don't I don't, I book is certainly not hagiography. And I don't, I think to most readers in the West, you know, what sticks with them are a lot of the things that we might see is brutality or, you know, the kind of the kind of behaviour we don't expect from our our, our governor, governance, structures. But the thing that's important remember to him in his eyes, he's, he's not a bad guy. He's a good guy. He's the hero of his own story. And he doesn't deny any any what happened to the book, he, he owns what he's done for the most part. And he feels like he was right. And what we tried very hard to do in our book, is to explain why he was doing the things that he did. Not to make excuses not to say there are right, but just you know, that's what telling a story is, is showing what happens and what why a person is motivated to do those things. And I think that he and his people in the world court understood that we were going to great lengths to show why he was doing what he did. And I, I think, I don't know if they fully appreciate it, but I think they understand that. And Kim, you know, the book that we wrote is something that they are okay with, because he feels like, as long as you explain why he did stuff, he thinks he was right to do it. You know, so, so, so I had never felt threatened or, you know, like, you know, like, it didn't never feel like a dangerous assignment to me, other than like, you know, being in Riyadh and driving, you know, the roads or, you know, it's a very unsafe place to drive. There's a high rate of fatalities, but that's for everyone, not just me, you know, they I never felt it was a particularly high high risk assignment. Justin, thank you very much. That was great. Thank you. Where can we? Where can people find the book? Oh, it should be in bookstores in the UK and paperback came out. Not long ago in paperback, but I, you know, go to your local Waterstones, your independent bookseller. Where are you based? Well, I'm in London. I actually used to work for Waterstones and sell a couple of your a couple of copies of Blood and Oil. And it's funny. We're in London. Are you? I live in Brixton. Oh, cool. And this app. Oh, that's great. And are you from? Are you from London originally? No, I'm from Salisbury, which is near Southampton. I spent time in Salisbury. It's beautiful. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the hated in the dead. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow it on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And for good measure. Leave us a review. You can also follow the hated in the dead on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. So you never missed new content.