Mohammed bin Salman: The Crown Prince Reshaping the Middle East and Global Power

Few figures in contemporary geopolitics command as much attention — and controversy — as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. At once the architect of an ambitious national transformation programme and a leader whose methods have drawn sustained international condemnation, the man widely known as MBS has become one of the defining power brokers of the current era, with influence that extends far beyond the Arabian Peninsula.

Now in his late thirties, Mohammed bin Salman consolidated his grip on Saudi Arabia’s political and economic machinery with remarkable speed following his appointment as Crown Prince in 2017. Within a short period, he had sidelined rivals, centralised decision-making in ways unprecedented in the Kingdom’s modern history, and positioned himself as the undisputed successor to his father, King Salman. According to analysts who follow the region closely, the pace and completeness of that consolidation was unusual even by the standards of Gulf monarchies.

A Vision for Saudi Arabia — and Its Contradictions

Central to MBS’s public identity is Vision 2030, the sweeping economic and social reform blueprint he launched to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil revenues. The programme has brought visible changes to everyday life in the Kingdom — cinemas reopened, women gained the right to drive, and a new entertainment sector emerged seemingly overnight. Mega-projects such as NEOM, the futuristic city being constructed in the northwestern desert, have attracted significant international media coverage and investment interest, though reports have raised questions about the scale of displacement of local communities involved in clearing land for the development.

Internationally, MBS has pursued an assertive foreign policy that has reshaped regional alignments. Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the Yemen conflict, now entering its second decade, has drawn consistent criticism from human rights organisations and United Nations bodies, who have documented civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe. The Crown Prince’s government has consistently defended the military campaign as a necessary response to threats posed by Houthi forces backed by Iran.

The 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul remains the sharpest rupture in MBS’s international standing. Intelligence assessments from multiple governments, including the United States, concluded that the Crown Prince approved the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death. Saudi authorities initially offered conflicting accounts before eventually convicting a number of lower-ranking officials. MBS has denied ordering the killing. The episode cast a long shadow over his subsequent diplomatic rehabilitation, which nonetheless proceeded steadily, with Western leaders — driven in part by energy security concerns following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — resuming high-level contacts.

That rehabilitation has taken concrete form. Saudi Arabia has deepened economic ties with both Western partners and China, pursued a landmark normalisation dialogue with Iran brokered by Beijing, and continued expanding its sovereign wealth fund’s footprint in global sport, technology, and finance. Critics argue these moves are as much about reputational laundering as genuine strategic diversification; supporters contend they reflect a pragmatic modernisation of a state long resistant to change.

What is beyond dispute is that MBS occupies a position of singular importance at a moment of global realignment. Whether navigating oil production strategy through OPEC+, courting artificial intelligence investment from Silicon Valley, or managing delicate negotiations in a volatile region, the Crown Prince’s decisions ripple outward in ways that affect economies and security calculations across Europe and beyond. For European policymakers in particular, engaging with Riyadh has become increasingly complex — a balancing act between strategic interests and the values-based foreign policy many European capitals claim to uphold.