Look, I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking that it’s just a matter of time (where “time” means days or possibly hours or maybe even minutes) before King Salman abdicates the throne, yielding complete power of Saudi Arabia to his 32-year-old son.
And the reason you’re thinking that is because it is now abundantly clear that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is running the entire show in the Kingdom and in case that wasn’t absolutely crystal to anyone, MbS removed any doubt last weekend when he rounded up a bunch of his relatives and locked them all up in the Ritz Carlton on the way to seizing everyone’s assets.
Rumors started to swirl midway through the week that the King would soon make things official, and those rumors appeared to emanate from Iranian media, which by definition means they were propaganda. But not all propaganda turns out to be meritless and indeed, the notion that King Salman will ultimately abdicate seems less like a rumor and more like a foregone conclusion.
Unsurprisingly, senior Saudi officials are trying to dispel that notion.
“There is no possibility whatsoever that the king will abdicate,’’ one official told Bloomberg, in response to written questions on Sunday, adding that Saudi kings are in the habit of remaining in power even when they’re sick and besides, King Salman “enjoys perfect physical and mental powers.”
“Abdication is unthinkable,” the official concluded, on the way to suggesting that anyone who doesn’t understand that “does not understand royal customs and traditions in Saudi Arabia.”
Obviously that’s spin – what else are they going to say? When the Crown Prince does ascend to the throne well ahead of “schedule”, they’ll come up with some excuse, but the writing isn’t just on the wall here, it’s scrawled on the wall in giant, gold letters.
“There is one precedent of a Saudi monarch stepping down while still alive – King Saud bin Abdulaziz abdicated in favor of his brother and heir, Prince Faisal, in the mid-1960s after pressure from ruling family members,” Bloomberg reminds you, before noting that “the prince had already claimed broad powers to counter a financial crisis that engulfed the kingdom at the time.”
Meanwhile, a familiar scene unfolded in Saudi stocks on Sunday, with the benchmark falling as much as 1.5% intraday only to rebound sharply to close just 0.3% lower. This has been going on in every session since the purge:
“State-linked funds once again bought stocks in late trade, a deliberate operation to support the market and prevent a crash,” Reuters notes, before adding that “total volume was at its lowest level since the investigation was announced, suggesting the funds were no longer having to work as hard to support the market.”
So that’s “good news” – less intervention is necessary to stave off a collapse.
Bloomberg is out with some data on who’s buying and who’s selling and unsurprisingly, it’s Saudi mutual funds picking up the slack. They were net buyers of shares valued at 3.97b riyals in the five days through last Thursday, Bloomberg notes. That’s versus 304.6m riyals of purchase the week before.
On the other hand, foreign investors were net sellers of shares worth 1.1b riyals last week compared to a net purchase of 1.32m riyals in the prior week.
This of course comes as rich Saudis liquidate regional assets in an effort to get their money out of harm’s way which, in this case, means beyond the grasp of the Crown Prince.
Tensions are still running high, and although this weekend wasn’t the rollercoaster last weekend was, the flashpoint (figuratively and literally) is now the Bahrain pipeline attack.
As for Aramco , CEO Amin Nasser told Al Arabiya on Sunday that no decision has yet been made on the location or the terms of the listing. As you’re aware, Trump is pushing the Saudis to list in New York, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Trump’s urgings came just a month after reports suggested that a private placement led by China was now the most likely scenario.
Actually, I wasn’t thinking that at all.
What I was thinking about was the behind the scenes collaboration between Israel and the Saudi kingdom and the impending war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. One of the few benefits of the nuclear deal with Iran was the strengthening of ties between these two strange bedfellows.
if they go that route they’re out of their minds. you cannot “win” a war with Hezbollah. it’s an exercise it futility. at the same time, Hezbollah obviously cannot “win” either, but the difference is that Hezbollah “wins” just by fighting. they’re going to “win” one way or another. if they’re fighting a weaker enemy (think: Sunni extremists in Syria) they just crush them, and if they’re fighting a stronger enemy (e.g. Israel), they’ll just figure out how “not to lose” which Hezbollah being Hezbollah, is good enough to call it a “win.” Meanwhile, Iran just laughs at the whole spectacle. the risk here is obviously some kind of direct confrontation between the Saudis and Iran or between Israel and Iran and that still seems unlikely to me. i cannot see Russia and the U.S. letting that happen. surely to God someone in the Pentagon would inform Trump about what the consequences of something like that would be.
There isn’t going to be any “War” with Hezbollah…the Saudis are the equivalent of bringing a knife to gun fight..and even that worn analogy does them too much justice. Israel has nothing to gain. Israel will keep doing what it has been doing.
What we’re hearing is very loud wolfing by MbS…the real action is domestic and involves repatriating large sums of other people’s money to the Saudi Bank Account. The real intrigue involves whatever possibilities there are for a counter coup…there is always someone who thinks he can let loose the bigger dog.
I think the dynamic with the proliferation of viable nuclear weapon capabilities into the hands of religious extremists hell-bent on introducing the return of their 12th Imam changes that equation. The end-game for them is the end of the world as we know it, and the destruction of Israel, there is no alternative strategy. At some point you reach the conclusion that there is no more time left. You must either act, as horrible as that decision will be, or wait for the inevitable. That time is getting very close.
My favorite quote from Benjamin Netanyahu, from a couple of years ago after being asked about on-going negotiations concerning the so-called Palestinian land was;
“And what shall we discuss? The method of our decapitation?”
This is part of the realignment now that Pres Trump is fighting back against Russiagate. The Saudis realize that they are in big trouble.
Today, at 4 pm, Bill Binney, a 30 year prominent veteran of the National Security Agency, Diane Roark, the Senate Staffer of the House Intelligence Committee from 1985-2002, and the staffer in charge of the NSA after 9/11; and Ray McGovern, CIA analyst will speak at Symphony Space in New York City, following a viewing of the film A GOOD AMERICAN. The film was written and directed by Friedrich Moser and produced by Oliver Stone. The production is the story of Bill Binney and his team at the NSA, who contend their programs, could have stopped 9/11 and other terrorist actions. Those programs were stopped by the NSA.
All three speakers are members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity — a group of prominent intelligence professionals, many of whom sacrificed their careers to publically attack faulty intelligence, including the intelligence and media campaigns that resulted in the US war in Iraq in 2003. The VIPS recently sent a public Memorandum to President Trump documenting their opposition to the conclusions of the January, 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)” that charged Russian interference in the US elections — also known as “Russiagate”.
OMG, not Binney AGAIN!