Gee, You Think?

Saad Aljabri, a former intelligence officer serving the House of Saud, has Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as a psychopath.

I think that recent history has shown that the family of Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud does not possess a surfeit of the milk of human kindness, but Crown Prince "Bonesaw" has sense of entitlement and impunity appears to be extreme even by those standards:

A former senior Saudi intelligence officer has claimed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a “psychopath with no empathy” who once boasted that he could kill the kingdom’s ruler at the time, King Abdullah, and replace him with his own father.

In an interview on US television, Saad Aljabri, who fled Saudi Arabia in May 2017 and is living in exile in Canada, also said he had been warned by an associate in 2018, after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, that a Saudi hit team was heading to Canada to kill him.

Aljabri told 60 Minutes on CBS he was warned “don’t be in a proximity of any Saudi mission in Canada. Don’t go to the consulate. Don’t go to the embassy.” When he asked why, he said he was told “they dismembered the guy, they kill him. You are on the top of the list.”

………

Saudi Arabia has previously denied there was an attempt on Aljabri’s life in Canada. The kingdom has also denied that the murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was ordered by Prince Mohammed. But a declassified US intelligence assessment – released earlier this year – concluded the murder was approved by the crown prince.

According to Aljabri’s account of alleged plans to assassinate him in Canada, a six-person team landed at Ottawa airport in mid-October 2018, lied to Canadian border officials about knowing one another, and carried suspicious equipment for DNA analysis. The team was deported by Canada after being intercepted by the authorities at the airport. The Canadian government has said: “We are aware of incidents in which foreign actors have attempted to threaten those living in Canada. It is completely unacceptable.”

Even if one practices realpolitik, and chooses to turn a blind eye toward the disruptive and immoral policies of the House of Saud, it is increasingly obvious that the dynamics withing the Royal Family point toward an imminent collapse of this regime.

They make Czar Nicholas look like FDR.

The question is how to organize a transition from the Saud's monarchy to something that is sustainable, and it will not happen with MBS in charge.