🇸🇦🇾🇪 Khaled Aljabri: MBS has more power than any Saudi king before him, but his biggest problem may be a war he cannot win
I had a fascinating conversation with Khaled Aljabri, whose father was a senior Saudi intelligence official before fleeing to Canada in 2017.
His family has paid an extraordinary price for the struggle over power in Riyadh.
Khaled says two of his siblings have been detained since 2017, and his father was the target of an assassination plot in Canada.
But what interested me most was his assessment of Mohammed bin Salman's position today.
Khaled doesn't believe MBS is about to be overthrown. Quite the opposite. He argues that the crown prince has consolidated power so thoroughly that even widespread dissatisfaction within the royal family is unlikely to become an organized challenge.
The real danger, he believes, comes from Yemen.
In 2015, MBS thought he could defeat the Houthis quickly. Instead, Saudi Arabia spent years fighting a war that left the Houthis more capable of threatening the kingdom.
Now Saudi airports and energy infrastructure are under attack, and Khaled sees little prospect of a successful Saudi ground invasion.
His proposed solution is surprisingly straightforward: stop trying to determine Yemen's political future and concentrate on protecting Saudi territory.
The problem is that doing so would require MBS to acknowledge that his original strategy failed.
We also discussed the growing rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and how MBS's concentration of power helped turn the 2017 dispute with Qatar into a four-year blockade.
What stayed with me was the distinction Khaled made between having power and having good options.
MBS may have eliminated nearly every serious political rival at home. That doesn't mean he can force his enemies abroad to surrender.
@JabriMD
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