Erdogan and his Wahhabi friends expect that MbS, even if not replaced, will lack the fire within him to continue his campaign to modernise Saudi Arabia.
Had Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia advisors of competence, his sleuths and operatives would by now have uncovered the dozens of examples of suppression of journalists by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A counter scandal is the most effective defence against scandal, and there are more than a few in the cupboards of the Turkish neo-Wahhabis who are now in control of a state that had been driven away from Arab lands by that theology, and which in its modern form was fashioned as a fort dedicated to protecting liberal Islam. Across the region, Wahhabis have watched with anxiety the numerous moves made by MbS to “cap, roll back and eliminate” Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, a necessary reform that had never before been attempted by a member of the Al Saud dynasty. Just as Israel is slowly being placed in danger of instability by the steady increase of ultra-Orthodox Jews within its population, the Muslim world has experienced severe blowback from the ascendance of the Wahhabi International as a consequence of the lavish funding received by that group from the Saudi, Qatari and other GCC rulers, especially since the 1980s. It is only a matter of two decades at most before crude oil becomes a worthless resource, given the steady improvements in clean energy technology, including wind, wave and solar energy. Another possible breakthrough is in thorium technology, where India (as part of a consortium of countries such as Japan) could pioneer nuclear energy through the thorium route, a process that has been sought to be sabotaged for several years by overt and covert pressure from countries unwilling to see India emerge as a global leader in the production of thorium energy. Given that oil is on the way out, there is no option for Saudi Arabia but to ensure that its educational system get freed of Wahhabi zealots and that a complex of job opportunities get created that are based on industries other than petroleum. In such a process, an IPO for companies such as Saudi Aramco makes sense, which is what Crown Prince Mohammad is seeking to accomplish.
However, his campaign against Wahhabism has generated a global effort to ensure that the Crown Prince get replaced by a Saudi royal who follows Standard Operating Procedure, which is to lead a sybaritic life (mostly in lengthy stays abroad) while funding Wahhabis and acquiescing in their control of Saudi institutions. President Erdogan, who is refreshingly honest about his adherence to Wahhabi theology despite his Turkish heritage, saw an opportunity to bring down the Crown Prince when a group of Saudis apparently did to Jamal Khashoggi what gets done as a matter of routine to all Saudi nationals who seek to bring about regime change in Saudi Arabia, which was to ensure his departure from the living. There are dozens in Turkey who have met a similar fate, as well as hundreds of journalists in prison, but the Saudi authorities (several of whom may be in sympathy with the moves to depose Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman) do not seem to have either collated such information or disseminated it. Had they done so, the rush of news reports seeking to implicate MbS in the Khashoggi murder would have been impacted and ultimately overwhelmed by reports about the primary tormentor of MbS, Recip Tayyip Erdogan. Thus far, the Saudis have only been reactive, which is, in most situations, a wholly inadequate defence. Instead, they ought to have brought the battle to Erdogan’s doors, revealing details of the financial and personal doings of the small group that have the confidence of the Turkish Head of State, details that are well within the capacity of the Saudis to gather, through both overt as well as covert means. Given Saudi defensiveness and confusion, the expectation of Erdogan and his other Wahhabi friends and contacts is that the Saudi Crown Prince, even if not replaced, will become a “lame duck” at the age of 34, lacking the fire within him to continue his campaign to modernise Saudi Arabia so as to prepare the Kingdom for a future in which crude oil will no longer be able to supply the country with financial resources.
Should the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia get replaced with a traditional Al Saud (who plays to the austere Wahhabi beat while in the kingdom and to wild disco tunes while abroad), the impact would be to generate confidence within the Muslim Brotherhood and other Erdogan-backed groups that it would be possible to remove entirely the Al Sauds and replace them with a party or coalition of parties which represent the values and aims the Muslim Brotherhood espoused in Egypt before getting removed by General Al Sisi. Unlike the Trudeaus and the Macrons, thus far Donald Trump has withstood pressure to abandon Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman the way Hillary Clinton and her nominal boss Barack Obama saw off Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. As a consequence, it is likely that Erdogan will fail to get an Al Saud of his choice installed as the next Saudi Crown Prince, despite the strong support extended to his mission by Senator Lindsey Graham, whose friendship with the Wahhabi International has never been secret. MbS may conclude that the present global Wahhabi effort at removing him from office as indicating the necessity to move with even greater despatch on his mission of dragging his country from the 16th to the 21st century. And in this he would be correct. The only chance for Saudi Arabia to have a stable future is to break away from the shackles of Wahhabism the way Oman and the UAE have. And along the way, cease his war on the Shia and on Shia groups in locations such as Yemen. Winning over foes through negotiation is the Saudi way, not bombing them to shreds in the manner NATO has resorted to in its 21st century wars in Asia.