分类： politics

Seven centuries ago, 14th-century North African historian Ibn Khaldun posed a timeless observation on dynastic rule in his seminal work *The Muqaddimah*: great powers often collapse after three generations when ruling lines fail to produce capable, steady leaders. Today, that observation hangs over the House of Saud, as questions grow over whether Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has eroded the very dynasty he was positioned to strengthen and secure.

The kingdom now faces converging pressures from both domestic discontent and international instability, with nearly all of the crown prince’s core policy bets unraveling simultaneously. His central strategic gambles – defeating the Houthi movement to install a pro-Saudi government in neighboring Yemen, overhauling Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy through his ambitious Vision 2030 agenda, and relying on a Donald Trump-aligned United States as a steadied long-term ally – have all fallen short of their promised outcomes.

Growing circles of critics both inside and outside the kingdom argue that the only path forward to avoid catastrophe is a transfer of power: replacing Prince Mohammed with a more viable successor, restructuring the kingdom’s failed diplomatic and economic frameworks, and implementing long-delayed democratic governance reforms. Without such changes, observers warn the kingdom could fragment into rival fiefdoms controlled by competing royal factions, dissolving the unified Saudi state that has existed for nearly a century.

External powers eager to access Saudi Arabia’s unmatched energy and mineral wealth – which includes not only the world’s largest proven fossil fuel reserves, but also an estimated 114 million tonnes of rare earth minerals and uranium-bearing ore – stand ready to exploit any internal fragmentation, analysts warn.

Having failed to achieve its strategic goals in Iran, some geopolitical analysts argue Saudi Arabia has become the next, far more vulnerable target for external interference. This assessment is reinforced by the refusal of former U.S. President Donald Trump and Western powers to step up robust support for Prince Mohammed against ongoing Houthi attacks, they add.

Since consolidating de facto power, critics argue Prince Mohammed has done more harm than good for Saudi Arabia’s long-term stability. Most critically, he has accumulated a wide network of enemies both at home and abroad while failing to deliver on his core promise of securing the kingdom. Today, Saudi Arabia spends roughly $83 billion annually on its military, equal to 6.5% of its total GDP and approximately 3% of global military spending. In 2015, when Prince Mohammed served as defense minister, that figure reached 13% of GDP – one of the highest military burdens in the world.

The starkest proof of the kingdom’s vulnerability came in an October 10 Houthi missile strike on Riyadh’s main international airport, which killed at least 13 people and undermined global confidence in Saudi Arabia’s ability to protect critical infrastructure and keep international visitors safe.

It was that same 2015, under Prince Mohammed’s leadership, that Saudi Arabia launched a massive military campaign against Houthi-controlled northern Yemen in coordination with the United Arab Emirates. What was billed as a quick, decisive operation dragged on for eight devastating years. A brutal air bombardment campaign and total blockade created catastrophic shortages of food and medicine, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 700,000 Yemeni civilians, according to global humanitarian estimates.

In total, Riyadh has poured roughly $200 billion into the Yemen conflict, yet it has failed to defeat a low-budget, guerrilla-style adversary whose entire military budget amounts to less than $7 billion. Critics explain this lopsided failure by arguing that much of Saudi Arabia’s military spending has been directed not at securing national borders, but at entrenching Prince Mohammed’s hold on power and suppressing domestic rivals.

Beyond the costly quagmire in Yemen, critics argue the crown prince has squandered billions of dollars of the kingdom’s sovereign wealth on ill-conceived, overambitious economic projects tied to his Vision 2030 plan, which was designed to wean Saudi Arabia off its dependence on oil exports. Billions alone have been spent on international consultancy fees to market the vague, sweeping plan, observers note.

Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist murdered and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, warned in his reporting that if these massive megaprojects failed, Saudi Arabia could eventually slip into becoming one of the poorest countries in the Middle East.

That warning has gained new traction following a leaked Wall Street Journal audit of NEOM, Prince Mohammed’s flagship $500 billion smart city megaproject launched in 2017 in Tabuk Province. The audit found the project is effectively bankrupt, with the crown prince shifting available funding away from its centerpiece development – The Line, a planned 170-kilometer car-free linear city – to cover infrastructure costs for the 2030 World Expo and 2034 FIFA World Cup. Shuttering the partially built project would cost the Saudi government up to $16 billion in write-downs, the report found.

Recent regional conflicts have compounded these economic woes. The U.S.-Israeli escalation against Iran and associated disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have hit Saudi oil exports particularly hard. Later blockades of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and Houthi and Iraqi militia attacks on Saudi Arabia’s critical East-West oil pipeline have further blocked export routes, draining the kingdom’s single largest source of revenue.

Where the International Monetary Fund initially projected the Saudi economy would grow 4% in 2026, updated projections now point to a 3.3% contraction this year.

Amid rising security threats, separate Wall Street Journal reporting notes that Prince Mohammed frequently rotates his residence between multiple palaces and underground bunkers, a precaution widely interpreted as a measure to avoid assassination attempts by drone. While Houthi forces have not yet targeted his specific location, domestic royal rivals and internal opponents could easily do so, observers warn.

Experts point to historical precedent for regicide within the House of Saud: King Faisal, widely considered one of the dynasty’s most capable and effective monarchs, was assassinated by a member of his own family in 1975, with longstanding rumors of foreign involvement in the plot.

For decades, the House of Saud followed a traditional horizontal system of succession, passing power from brother to brother among the sons of the kingdom’s founder, Ibn Saud, rather than vertically from father to son. That longstanding norm was broken in 2017, when Prince Mohammed, backed by his father King Salman, orchestrated a de facto palace coup to sideline the then-designated successor, former Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef, who remains under house arrest to this day.

Critics view the 2017 shakeup as a blatant power grab, and many suspect the move could not have happened without at least tacit backing from the United States – a particularly bitter irony given that Prince Mohammed accused the detained princes of maintaining contacts with foreign powers to stage a coup. What concessions Prince Mohammed may have offered Washington in exchange for its backing remains undisclosed, but analysts widely note that U.S. diplomatic support for such power plays rarely comes without strings attached.

To be fair, Prince Mohammed did shift toward more pragmatic diplomacy in 2021, ending the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar and opening exploratory talks for a peace deal with the Houthis. Before the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel that ignited the ongoing Gaza war, there were unconfirmed reports of a U.S.-brokered deal that would have seen Saudi Arabia formally recognize Israel in exchange for U.S. security guarantees. That deal is now completely off the table amid the ongoing regional war escalation centered on Iran.

While Vision 2030 was marketed as a plan to end Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil, critics argue Prince Mohammed’s policies have only worsened economic strains, increased Riyadh’s reliance on fossil fuel revenue, and weakened national security. Once counted among the world’s wealthiest nations, Saudi Arabia is now in clear, if not accelerating, decline, with the crown prince’s policies driving the kingdom deeper into sovereign debt.

As Houthi attacks put the kingdom under unprecedented pressure, no Western power has stepped forward to offer meaningful military or political support. Only a handful of Muslim-majority nations have offered backing, but these states operate with competing strategic interests that could lead to infighting, analysts warn, creating a power vacuum that advances the goal of expanding Israeli influence across the Middle East.

Nearly 65% of Saudi citizens are under the age of 27, and observers argue this young majority must look past the crown prince’s rhetorical promises of “freedom” and “modernization” to ask a simple, critical question: do his policies serve the Saudi people, or only his hold on personal power? Never in the kingdom’s modern history has Saudi Arabia faced such clear risks of collapse from internal fragmentation, while also facing intensifying pressure from external powers eager to exploit its weakness.

Weeks before Libya’s east-based House of Representatives approved a divisive maritime boundaries agreement with Turkey, Athens launched intensive diplomatic outreach to its key regional partners – Cairo, Jerusalem, and Abu Dhabi – in a last-ditch effort to block the deal, multiple senior regional officials confirmed to Middle East Eye. Despite Greece’s lobbying, the Benghazi-based parliament voted to ratify the accord on Tuesday, a development that underscores both Turkey’s growing regional influence and a sweeping geopolitical reordering across the Middle East that has undermined Greece’s coordinated effort to counter Ankara. \n\nThe ratification cements Turkey’s outsized role in Libyan politics and confirms a cross-factional Libyan consensus backing Ankara’s expansive claims to Eastern Mediterranean maritime territory, analysts note. “Turkey has entrenched its position in Libya so deeply that any future Libyan leader would struggle to reverse course and strike a deal favorable to Greece,” explained Constantinos Filis, director of the Athens-based Institute of Global Affairs, in an interview with Middle East Eye. “There is now a unified Libyan position that aligns with Turkey’s interests, which is a major strategic shift from just a few years ago.”\n\nFar from being just a bilateral setback for Greece or a routine diplomatic win for Turkey, the accord lays bare how rapidly regional alliances are realigning as the United States reduces its security footprint in the Middle East and new tensions linked to the ongoing Israel-Iran standoff have reshaped national priorities across the region. For Greece, the failure of its closest regional partners to block the deal exposes a gap between its expectations and shifting regional interests, a reality rooted in the ongoing geopolitical reconfiguration of the Middle East.\n\nOver the past decade, the Eastern Mediterranean has emerged as a flashpoint for competing Greek and Turkish claims, a rivalry that predates the 2011 collapse of the Muammar Gaddafi regime that split Libya into rival administrations based in Tripoli and Benghazi. The two NATO allies even came close to open conflict in 1996 over a remote uninhabited Aegean islet, with the United States historically stepping in to de-escalate tensions between its two alliance partners. Today, however, that dynamic has shifted dramatically: Washington has reduced its engagement in Middle Eastern security affairs, and NATO itself is grappling with internal divisions amplified by the war in Ukraine, while Turkey has built a robust domestic defense industry that has reduced its reliance on Western military suppliers. \n\nAgainst this backdrop, Turkey’s regional influence has expanded steadily: it backs a sympathetic government in Syria, and an increasing number of Gulf states now view Ankara as a critical security partner as U.S. influence wanes. Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria and Iraq, acknowledged this shift in comments Tuesday, noting that the decades-long U.S. “oil for security” framework for Gulf relations is currently in a period of transition.\n\nA senior Libyan source with knowledge of internal negotiations told Middle East Eye that the ratification of the maritime deal is part of a broader, U.S.-backed plan to unify Libya under a single national government, an initiative that Washington has agreed to advance in coordination with Ankara. The source added that the U.S. wants Turkey to broker a power-sharing agreement between the rival Benghazi and Tripoli administrations, a development corroborated by this week’s visit to Tripoli by the head of Turkish intelligence, Ibrahim Kalın.\n\nFor its part, Greece has worked aggressively to build a counter-coalition of regional partners to push back against Turkey’s expanding maritime claims, which Athens says violate Greek sovereign rights over large territorial zones, including around the populous island of Crete, home to more than 600,000 Greek citizens. Greece has deepened its longstanding warm ties with Egypt: when Turkey first signed a maritime demarcation deal with the Tripoli-based government in 2019, Athens responded by signing its own agreement with Cairo to codify its competing claims. Greece has also moved closer to the United Arab Emirates: Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was among the first foreign leaders to visit Abu Dhabi amid heightened 2020 tensions between the U.S. and Iran, and when Greek-Turkish tensions spiked that same year, the UAE dispatched military aircraft to Crete in a show of support.\n\nMost significantly, Greece has forged a close strategic alliance with Israel, which is itself locked in a regional power struggle with Turkey that plays out across conflict zones from Syria to the Horn of Africa. In August, Athens finalized a $3.5 billion defense deal with Israel – the largest arms sale in Israeli history – a move that cemented the growing military partnership between the two countries. \n\nThe ratification of the Turkish deal by eastern Libya’s parliament is a particularly stinging defeat for Greece because eastern Libya has long been backed by Egypt, the UAE, and Israel – the same three countries that Athens counts as its core regional partners. The territory is controlled by military commander Khalifa Haftar, who for years was seen as a bitter rival of the Turkey-backed Tripoli government, making his failure to block the agreement all the more notable for Athens. Greece had lobbied Cairo heavily in recent months to pressure Haftar to reject the deal, and just five days before the vote, an Egyptian diplomatic delegation traveled to Athens for high-level talks on how to prevent ratification.\n\nIn a striking turn of events, even Khalifa Haftar’s son and likely successor, Saddam Haftar, has recently moved closer to Ankara, despite Turkey’s past intervention to block his father’s attempt to capture Tripoli during Libya’s civil war. Multiple sources confirmed to Middle East Eye that amid pressure from the UAE, Saddam Haftar traveled to Athens for talks earlier this summer, even as he deepened his rapprochement with Turkish officials. \n\n“It was unrealistic for Greece to expect Egypt and the UAE to prioritize Greek interests over their own evolving regional priorities,” Filis noted. “Their positions have shifted dramatically in recent years, and it was unwise to assume they would align with Athens on this issue at the cost of their own improved relations with Turkey.”\n\nJust a few years ago, both Egypt and the UAE were openly at odds with Turkey: Cairo and Abu Dhabi backed the Haftar-led campaign in eastern Libya during the civil war, while Turkey supported the Tripoli government. Today, however, both states have taken significant steps to normalize relations with Ankara. Egyptian officials have repeatedly emphasized to Middle East Eye that Cairo’s rapprochement with Turkey is not directed at Greece, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty reaffirmed this position in a call with his Greek counterpart on Tuesday, stressing the ongoing shared interests between Athens and Cairo. \n\nEven so, regional analysts note that Egypt and Turkey now find themselves aligned on more regional issues than they compete on, even if both continue to hold competing maritime interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. “Egypt does not want to see the Eastern Mediterranean dominated by Turkey, but it has bigger fish to fry,” one senior Arab official told Middle East Eye. Both Cairo and Ankara are deeply wary of expanding Israeli territorial ambitions in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which has resulted in widespread civilian casualties and the occupation of additional territory in Syria and Lebanon. The two countries also share aligned interests in the Red Sea region: both support Somalia’s territorial integrity and oppose Israel’s recognition of the breakaway Somaliland republic, and both back Sudan’s transitional government against the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly acknowledged is sympathetic to Jerusalem. In Libya itself, Egypt has major economic interests at stake, including plans to construct a $1 billion oil pipeline from Tobruk in eastern Libya to the Egyptian port of Alexandria, creating an incentive for Cairo to maintain stable relations with all Libyan factions, regardless of their alignment with Turkey.\n\nThe UAE, while still holding competing interests with Turkey in some regions including Sudan, has also worked to resolve its differences with Ankara in recent years. A notable example of this thaw came in 2022, when Abu Dhabi purchased a fleet of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, a major signal of improved bilateral relations. \n\nThe most striking development came just this week, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a map labeling much of the Eastern Mediterranean as “friendly territory” for Israel, the UAE, and Greece – only days after eastern Libya’s parliament approved the Turkish maritime deal. A Libyan source confirmed to Middle East Eye that Saddam Haftar met with Netanyahu in the UAE back in September, aligning with previous reporting. One senior European official told Middle East Eye that Israel may actually view the expansion of Turkey’s maritime claims as a net positive for its own strategic interests, as it pushes Greece even deeper into Israel’s orbit.\n\nUltimately, the failure of Greece’s regional allies to mobilize against the ratification of the Turkish-Libyan maritime deal is a clear marker of how dramatically the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East has shifted in recent years, as old rivalries give way to new alignments shaped by shifting U.S. engagement and evolving regional security priorities.

A top senior advisor to former US President Donald Trump has announced a historic reorientation of Washington’s approach to the Arabian Gulf, bringing an end to an 80-year-old foundational arrangement that traded US security guarantees for access to Gulf oil supplies. Speaking Tuesday at the Doha-based Global Security Forum, Tom Barrack — the current US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria and Iraq — made clear that the long-standing global order where the United States served as the sole security guarantor across the Middle East is now a thing of the past.

Barrack, a figure long known for his critical views of colonial-era divide-and-rule policies in the Middle East and his vocal praise for the Ottoman Empire’s governance of the region, argued that Western powers for decades intentionally benefited from regional instability. “Conflict and controversy was actually to the western favour,” he explained. “The more off-base the region was, the more [the West] could manipulate fossil fuels for its own benefit. That’s not in existence anymore.” He emphasized the core new direction of US policy: Washington no longer seeks to exercise direct ownership or control over the Gulf region.

The policy shift comes in the aftermath of a tense diplomatic rift earlier this year, when Gulf states lobbied the US to reject plans for a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, only to see their appeals ignored by Washington. Following the February 28 strike, Iran launched retaliatory waves of drone and missile attacks targeting the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, leaving the region to grapple with the fallout of the aggression.

When pressed on whether Gulf states could continue to depend on the post-WWII US security umbrella that has anchored regional security for generations, Barrack gave a blunt answer: no. “In the region, everybody is saying if we have America and we are selling oil and gas in dollars and we buy weapons in dollars and we have bases of Americans… we are going to have free seas, and we are going to have a security guaranty. All of a sudden, that doesn’t happen,” he noted. Barrack traced this dramatic reassessment of US commitments directly to the fallout of the joint US-Israeli campaign against Iran.

Crucially, Barrack stressed that the policy shift does not amount to a full US withdrawal from the region. “The bargain is not to own, not to control, but not to leave. We’re not leaving,” he clarified. Describing the transition to a new regional framework as a awkward, challenging process, he compared it to raising a teenager: “What’s happening in this administration is not an abandonment. It’s a message for realignment. And that message is like raising a teenager. It’s not easy.”

Under the new approach, Washington will back regional efforts to build local security architectures to replace the old US-led framework, including the Mecca Pact. Barrack pointed to Saudi Arabia’s activation of joint defence pacts with Pakistan and Turkey to counter Houthi aggression as an example of the new, region-led order taking shape. “Everybody’s got to be on their own regional alliances, which is what’s happening,” he said.

Barrack’s landmark remarks arrive as the entire Middle East braces for the possibility of a new, full-scale war against Iran. In recent weeks, leaders from Qatar and Egypt have issued repeated warnings that the region is on the brink of a major new conflict. While large-scale kinetic attacks have calmed in recent weeks, with Iran continuing targeted strikes on commercial shipping in the strategic Strait of Hormuz and the US maintaining its strict economic blockade of the country, tensions have been reignited by former President Trump’s recent escalation.

Ahead of Israel’s upcoming general elections this month, Trump openly endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and raised the stakes for new military action. In comments Sunday, Trump said he wanted Netanyahu to remain in office to help “finish the job” against Iran unless the Iranian government quickly alters its policy trajectory.

The center of current regional hostilities has shifted to Yemen, where the Iran-aligned Houthi movement has carried out crippling attacks on Saudi civilian airports and critical energy infrastructure. Saudi Arabia backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government, but deep internal divisions within the administration have prevented any successful large-scale counter-offensive against Houthi positions. Though Riyadh and its Yemeni allies have repeatedly pledged to retake all occupied territory from the group, Barrack cast serious doubt on the likelihood of a military victory.

“These kinetic reactions have never worked. It doesn’t work. It’s probably not likely that it’s going to work,” he said when asked about Saudi prospects for defeating the Houthis militarily. He added that while Trump remains committed to providing logistical support to Saudi Arabia, the US will not commit ground troops to another Middle Eastern conflict: “The president has been clear that he supports Saudi Arabia, and the backing they need logistically he will supply, but America getting involved in a ground kinetic battle somewhere else sounds fruitless.”

Barrack is the second high-profile Western leader to publicly rule out a military solution to the Houthi conflict. Earlier this week at the same Doha forum, former MI6 director John Sawers made similar remarks, stating plainly that “the Houthis are here to stay.”

A 35-year-old Hasidic religious worker from Israel, Yehonatan Ovadia, is currently detained at New York City’s Metropolitan Detention Center and at risk of deportation back to his home country—penalties his legal team say are rooted solely in his participation in peaceful pro-Palestinian advocacy, marking the latest case in a sweeping Trump administration crackdown on dissenting speech regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Ovadia first entered the United States in 2022 on a temporary religious work visa, and successfully re-entered the country in April 2024 under a visa set to expire in November 2025, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed to Middle East Eye. When Ovadia’s congregation applied to extend his worker status, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) initially granted an extension through 2028—only to reverse the decision days later in a discretionary denial.

The reasoning for the reversal was explicitly tied to a 2023 pro-Palestinian demonstration Ovadia joined in Ramapo, New York, USCIS informed his legal team. Anonymous community sources report that Ovadia was hit with multiple hate crime-linked charges after an Israeli flag was torn down at the protest. While Ovadia has openly acknowledged he attended the demonstration and drove participants to the site, he denies any involvement in removing the flag. Prosecutors ultimately dropped all charges against him, leaving him with no criminal convictions on record.

Ovadia’s lawyers argue that the flag at the center of the incident was likely displayed illegally, and emphasize that an immigration judge has already ruled Ovadia poses no public safety risk. They characterize his ongoing detention as unlawful, noting that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has repeatedly used the same punitive framework against pro-Palestinian protesters across the nation, and has now applied it to a serving Hasidic religious worker.

DHS confirmed that ICE took Ovadia into custody in August. A department spokesperson defended the action, claiming the administration acted within its legal authority to detain non-citizens who “advocate for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and steals property.”

Ovadia’s legal team rejects this characterization and calls the administration’s actions unlawful. “This is a peaceful protest being dressed up as a crime to punish speech the (Trump) administration doesn’t like,” a legal representative stated. “Federal judges have called out DHS and ICE again and again for breaking the law. We are calling them out now, and we trust that a judge in this case will too. Justice is coming.”

Beyond the legal battle, Ovadia’s detention has inflicted severe hardship on his family. A husband and father of children, Ovadia was the sole breadwinner for his household before his arrest, and community members recently launched a fundraiser to cover two months of back rent the family could not pay. Court documents dated October 1 also outline troubling conditions of Ovadia’s detention: he reports losing at least 25 pounds since being taken into custody, and multiple critical religious accommodation requests have been denied. According to the filings, when Ovadia requested adjustments to accommodate his religious practices, facility staff responded, “you’re not special.” During the recent high holy holiday of Yom Kippur, Ovadia did not receive the correct religious texts for prayer and was denied a dedicated appropriate space for worship.

Ovadia’s case is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader pattern of targeting by the Trump administration, which has publicly pledged to purge anti-Israel rhetoric from public discourse among non-citizens. In recent months, pro-Palestinian protesters, scholars, activists, and journalists have faced arrest, detention, or loss of access over the administration’s expanding free speech restrictions.

High-profile prior cases include Badr Khan Suri, a Georgetown University scholar and legal U.S. resident married to an American citizen, who was detained by ICE in March 2025 on orders from Secretary of State Marco Rubio over claims he “spread Hamas propaganda and promoted antisemitism on social media.” He was released two months after his arrest. Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia was arrested outside Columbia University for participating in pro-Palestinian protests and spent more than a year in ICE detention. Green Card holder Mahmoud Khalil, another Palestinian activist married to a U.S. citizen, was detained for over 100 days for his involvement in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian campus encampments.

The crackdown has also extended to press freedom: last month, CNN, MS Now, and Politico were banned from White House access after President Donald Trump criticized their coverage, though a federal judge ordered their press credentials restored just days later. Critics of the administration argue these interconnected cases reflect a deliberate campaign to suppress free speech and press freedom, particularly for voices that criticize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.