Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on the right, welcomes Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani of Qatar to Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, on January 5.
Photographer: Agência Anadolu / Getty Images
Photographer: Agência Anadolu / Getty Images
On a day when Saudi Arabia shook the oil market with a cut in production that he called “a gesture of goodwill”, the de facto ruler of the kingdom took center stage in a mirrored concert hall, ready to settle a different crisis.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chaired the dispute with Qatar for more than three years. But now it was only two weeks before a new US leader took office, and President-elect Joe Biden had promised to treat Saudi Arabia as an “outcast”. Combined with threats from Iran and a weakened economy, the prince’s calculation was changing: reconciliation seemed better than conflict.
Arab Gulf states agree to restore ties with Qatar in a US-backed agreement
Then, on Tuesday, as television cameras rolled in the Saudi city of Al Ula, in the northwest of the country, Prince Mohammed embraced the Qatar ruler and ended the division, presenting himself as a peacemaker. Hours later, Saudi Arabia announced that it would cut oil production by a million barrels a day to sustain prices for other producers – a directive that the Energy Minister said came directly from the Crown Prince and that triggered the companies’ shares. of US energy.
With these actions, Prince Mohammed highlighted his public presence with a conciliatory tone – at least for now. Since the 35-year-old prince came to power in 2015, the world’s largest oil exporter has embarked on a series of unusual high-risk ventures: a war in Yemen, partly severing ties with Canada, waging a price war in Canada. bitter oil with Russia, and flirting with a trade war with Turkey.
New approach
A Gulf-based diplomat, who asked not to be named discussing Saudi domestic policy, described Prince Mohammed as an attempt to pull two levers of influence at the same time. With one, he is making all the gains he can get from Donald Trump’s Saudi-friendly government. This was done based on the desire of special advisor Jared Kushner, who attended the summit, to project himself as a peacemaker as well. With another lever, he is positioning himself as a leader that Biden cannot afford to alienate or ignore, especially because he seems constructive.
“This is an effort to take a leadership role, to try to gain some diplomatic advantage from the next Biden government, and perhaps the understanding that the past four years have allowed for a lot of foreign policy adventurism,” said Karen Young, an academic resident in the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC
Trump was close to Saudi Arabia, making his first trip abroad as president there, directing a hard line against his archenemy, Iran, and protecting Prince Mohammed from the repercussions for the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul.
Expensive conflicts
However, it is not just Biden driving the new tone – the terrain that Prince Mohammed steps on has also changed. His plan to diversify the economy and get rid of oil faces major setbacks, and the kingdom’s reputation plummeted after a series of scandals. The coronavirus pandemic has increased the urgency of challenges at home.
‘Back to square one:’ Saudi Arabia’s double crisis comes home
For much of last year, Prince Mohammed stepped back from the public sphere and crouched on the Red Sea coast at Neom, one of his signature futuristic megaprojects. It was the finance minister, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, and King Salman – the father of Prince Mohammed – who went to the country, alerting citizens to difficult times.
At Tuesday’s summit, King Salman was absent and Prince Mohammed was the star. The setting reflected the prince’s ambitions, highlighting his plan to transform Al Ula into a world tourist destination. After the meetings, he took Qatar emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad on an excursion. They traveled in a white Lexus with Prince Mohammed at the wheel.
The image would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when the prince’s closest advisers regularly disparaged Qatar. Saudi Arabia and its allies have accused the wealthy Gulf State of interfering in its internal affairs, supporting extremism and using its influential media channels as propaganda weapons against its neighbors, accusations that Doha denies.
Donald Trump, left, with Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud backstage on the second day of the G20 Summit at the INTEX Osaka Exhibition Center in Osaka, Japan, in 2019.
Source: Agência Anadolu / Getty Images
Global influence
Regional dynamics were instrumental in restoring ties, including Saudi Arabia’s desire to focus on Iran, said Hesham Alghannam, political scientist and senior researcher at the Gulf Research Center. Biden said he would try to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump abandoned, a campaign viewed with apprehension by Saudi Arabia that also provided additional incentive to repair ties with Arab neighbors.
“Saudi wants to be the arbiter of the differences between the Gulf states, rather than being part of those conflicts,” said Alghannam.
From the archives: a summary of the origins of the conflict between Saudi and Qatar
The cut in production was another demonstration of the kingdom’s regional and global influence. Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Crown Prince’s older half-brother, said he showed Saudi ArabiaLeadership the oil world and helping others who suffer from falling oil prices, including Iraq.
But even that movement highlighted a change in Saudi Arabia’s oil policy under King Salman and Prince Mohammed. After decades of taking pride in putting oil above politics, the royal palace has become more interventionist and its energy machinations more politicized.
In this sense, Prince Abdulaziz described the cut in production as a “political and sovereign” and not a “technical” step. It will also be expensive. At current prices, it will cost the kingdom $ 3 billion a month in lost oil revenue, according to calculations by Bloomberg News, although the real number may end smaller.
But its global impact was immediate. Oil prices jumped to a 10-month high, above $ 50 a barrel. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is allowing Russia to increase production for the first time and less than a year after its price war. It is another sign that the kingdom is not looking for confrontations for the time being.
– With the help of Vivian Nereim, Farah Elbahrawy and Abeer Abu Omar