WASHINGTON - Donald Trump will host Saudi Arabia's crown prince in Washington Tuesday, giving the president a receptive audience to denounce rival Iran and a chance to take stock of significant changes the prince is engineering in the kingdom.
Ten months after the last face-to-face meeting between Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Riyadh, the 71-year-old president and the 32-year-old strongman prince are expected to deepen an already warm and congenial relationship.
But they are also expected to take up major developments for Saudi Arabia, both internally and externally: the end of a ban on Saudi women driving, the unprecedented detention of dozens of people that was billed as a high-level anti-corruption purge, Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen, and the crisis with the Gulf state of Qatar.
"It's jaw-dropping how many policy changes the Saudis have pursued at home and in the region since that last meeting," said Lori Plotkin Boghardt, a former CIA analyst now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Many of these changes have touched US security interests."
One example is the summit that the administration had hoped to host this year with the 6 countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which could be difficult to arrange given the continuing crisis with Qatar.
In June, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) began an air and sea boycott against Qatar, which they accuse of financing terrorism and being overly friendly with Iran.
Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, was named crown prince that month by his father, King Salman.
Early on, the prince announced an ambitious "Vision 2030" initiative to build an economy less dependent on oil, while luring more foreign investment.
Toward that end, Riyadh wants to greatly accelerate the pace of its civilian nuclear energy program. The goal: to build 16 reactors over the next 20 years, at a cost of some 80 billion euros ($98 billion), according to officials and analysts.
As the Saudis pursue the technology needed to undertake the ambitious project, they are expected to play potential rivals against one another, reminding their American counterparts that China, Russia and France are also capable of filling their needs.
"It would be virtually impossible for the Saudi government to accept terms that are less than what Obama gave the Iranians -- the possibility of future enrichment,” a source close to the Saudi government told AFP, referring to the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers that was completed when Barack Obama was still president.
BLOODY WAR IN YEMEN
The United States and Saudi Arabia are historic allies. Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud on a US naval ship in the Suez Canal in 1945, every American president has carefully nurtured relations with the Saudi royal family.
But the unstinting support Trump offered when he chose Riyadh as the destination of his first overseas trip as president brought the relationship to a new level.
While Barack Obama said in 2015 that it was important "not to perpetuate any long-term confrontation with Iran, or to even marginalize Iran," Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the nuclear deal reached that year with Tehran, has chosen a very different path.
"Everywhere we go in the Middle East it's Iran, Iran, Iran," he said a few days ago. "Every problem is Iran."
Even before setting foot on American soil, Prince Mohammed struck a scathing tone toward Iran in an interview with CBS, comparing the territorial ambitions of that country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to those of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
And he warned that if Iran were to develop a nuclear bomb, Saudi Arabia would do the same "as soon as possible."
But critics are cautioning the White House not to blindly embrace every stance taken by the Saudi prince, particularly as concerns its role in the bloody civil war in Yemen.
Fighting between the Huthi movement, supported by Iran, and Yemeni government forces, backed by the Saudis and the UAE, has claimed nearly 10,000 lives and left the country on the verge of a disastrous famine.
In an opinion column early this month in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, writing in the form of an open letter to Trump, urged the president not to give in to Prince Mohammed's "bad impulses" as he seeks to modernize Saudi Arabia's "economy and religious/social structure."
He then adds: "If you think you can just applaud his anti-Iran stance and religious reforms and all will work out fine, you're wrong."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday its economy contracted for the first time in eight years due to painful austerity measures as it announced record spending to stimulate growth.
The OPEC kingpin said gross domestic product for 2017 shrank by 0.5 percent due to a drop in crude production in line with an agreement with major oil producers aimed at boosting prices.
Oil sector GDP fell 2.0 percent in 2017, the ministry said
The last time the Saudi economy contracted was in 2009, when GDP fell 2.1 percent after the global financial crisis sent oil prices crashing.
Riyadh also posted a higher-than-expected budget deficit in 2017 and forecast another shortfall next year for the fifth year in a row due to the drop in oil revenues.
It unveiled plans to spend more than ever in 2018 in a bid to stimulate the sluggish economic, saying it expects GDP to grow by 2.7 percent.
The kingdom has set aside 978 billion riyals ($260.8 billion) for expenditure, up 10 percent on this year, said the finance ministry.
"The 2018 expansionary budget includes a number of new development projects," said powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who oversees economic affairs.
"About 50 percent of the new budget will be financed from non-oil sources," he said, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency.
The contraction comes as the world's top oil exporter tries to cope with persistent budget deficits that began in 2014 when crude prices plummeted.
In the past four years, Riyadh posted a total of $258 billion of budget deficits, drew on $240 billion of its reserves and borrowed around $100 billion.
King Salman said the Gulf country would "continue to decrease its dependence on oil to reach just 50 percent" of total revenues.
The finance ministry estimated a deficit of $52 billion for 2018.
It said the deficit for 2017 came in at $61.3 billion, or 9.2 percent of GDP, and higher than the expected $53 billion.
The shortfall is still 25 percent lower than the $82 billion posted in the previous year.
- Loosening the purse strings -
King Salman told the cabinet that Saudi Arabia expects to continue posting deficits through to 2023.
Revenues in 2018 were estimated to be 783 billion riyals ($208.8 billion), up 13 percent on the previous year's projections.
Actual revenues for the current fiscal year rose by a healthy 34 percent compared with 2016 to $185.6 billion due a sharp increase in both oil and non-oil revenues.
Capital Economics said Saudi Arabia had loosened up its purse strings.
"After the harsh austerity of 2015-16, the government appears to have loosened fiscal policy in 2017," said the London-based think-tank.
It was expected to continue doing so next year, it added.
Actual non-oil revenues collected in 2017 reached 256 billion riyals ($68.3 billion), a 38 percent rise on the previous year, reflecting the impact of hiking prices and imposing fees.
Riyadh has resorted to a string of austerity measures to contain spending and imposed a variety of subsidy cuts and rises in prices of services.
Prince Mohammed, the architect of the "Vision 2030" program of reforms for a post-oil era, has announced a host of mega projects, including a futuristic megacity with robots and driverless cars, which require about $500 billion in investments.
The cornerstone of the reforms is an initial public offering of nearly five percent of national oil giant Aramco planned for next year.
Prince Mohammed has also been behind stunning decisions to allow women to drive and to lift a 35-year-old ban on cinemas.
Last month, the heir to the throne launched a wide-ranging crackdown on dozens of elites, ostensibly to tackle corruption, but experts say it was also a way of consolidating his grip on power.
Since 2015, the ultra-conservative kingdom has introduced a series of price hikes on fuel and electricity.
It has also imposed fees on expats and is preparing to introduce value-added tax in the new year.
The finance ministry said unemployment among Saudis rose to 12.8 percent in June, up slightly on last year.
The government has allocated $13.9 billion for the cash transfer program called the Citizen Account to compensate the needy for hiking prices.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK, United States - Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the actual buyer of a painting by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci that sold for a record-breaking $450 million at auction last month, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The young and dynamic crown prince, known by his initials MBS, used an intermediary to buy the much-sought-after painting of Christ, "Salvator Mundi," the newspaper reported, citing US intelligence and other unnamed sources.
The son of Saudi King Salman is seen to be progressively consolidating his power, and is the architect of a wide-ranging plan dubbed Vision 2030 to bring social and economic change to his country's oil-dependent economy.
He is also seen as the mastermind of last month's rounding-up of more than 200 princes, ministers and businessmen in a sweeping anti-corruption purge.
The painting -- one of fewer than 20 works generally accepted as being by the Renaissance master, according to Christie's -- was bought by little-known Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, reports say.
The Journal reported that Bader was the nominal buyer, but said MBS was identified in US intelligence reports as the true owner.
"He is a proxy for MBS," an unnamed figure in the Gulf art world told the Journal.
American officials are keeping close tabs on the crown prince, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.
On Wednesday, the Louvre Abu Dhabi announced that the record-breaking Da Vinci painting would be displayed there.
The reports come shortly after the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a new military and economic committee, separate from the Gulf Cooperation Council.
In recent years, Qatar has been the biggest player in the Gulf art world, but in June, Saudi Arabia and some of its allies broke off diplomatic and trade relations with Doha, which they accuse of supporting extremist movements.
"Salvator Mundi" -- dated to around 1500 -- is the last known Da Vinci in the hands of a private collector. It was long believed to be a copy but was finally authenticated about a dozen years ago.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
