Intro. [Recording date: January 12, 2026.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 12th, 2026, and my guest is journalist and author Karen Elliott House. Her latest book is The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia, and that is the subject of today’s conversation. Karen, welcome to EconTalk.
Karen Elliott House: Thank you very much.
Russ Roberts: Your book is a portrait of Mohammed bin Salman [MBS], and I may be pronouncing his name incorrectly. You’ll tell me. He is the 39-year-old Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He is commonly known as MBS for his initials. He is the son of King Salman, the Crown Prince, and, indeed, the man who would be king.
Let’s start with how his father came into power and how MBS is so much more than a prince-in-waiting–which would be a normal thing to assume.
Karen Elliott House: Yes. Crown princes in Saudi Arabia typically have just been bodies waiting to ascend when the king dies, but MBS is vastly more than that. His father was Crown Prince under King Abdullah, who outlived three crown princes, and thus King Salman became king. I mean, most people never thought he would be because he was down the line, but the deaths of his brothers brought him forward. So, he became King in January of 2015 when King Abdullah died. And, MBS, who was his father’s assistant at the Defense Ministry–his father was Defense Minister and Crown Prince to King Abdullah–immediately began changing things in his father’s new government.
Russ Roberts: Now, that transition was complicated. We’ll talk a little bit about it in a second. But this family of kings and crown princes–you mention there were three. There are often more than one. The kings of Saudi Arabia often have many wives and children, and sometimes that transition is violent. Give us a little thumbnail of how long, roughly, that’s been going on and that family’s rule–which brings us up to the present.
Karen Elliott House: The story–I have been going to Saudi Arabia for nearly 50 years–and the story and what was written in history, all of that time, was that the Al Sauds founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1744 with the help of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, the brand of Islam that the Saudis had largely practiced.
Under this King and this Crown Prince, they suddenly discovered that the Al Sauds founded the first Saudi state in 1727, and all by themselves. Abdul Wahhab was out there, but he had nothing to do with it. By the time they met him, they were an established state, and they helped him.
So, the co-founding went out the window–obviously, I think, because one of the first things that this King and his Crown Prince did was diminish the role of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia.
But, since that time, whether you take 1727 or 1744, Saudi Al Saud rulers have been sometimes removed violently by their brothers, their cousins, their nephews. And so, it’s commonplace. They lost power in 1824 because someone killed someone, and they regained it and then lost it again in the 1880s because the Ottomans overthrew them for being too rigidly religious.
And so, it is MBS’s grandfather and King Salman’s father that reentered: He fled, he reentered Saudi Arabia in 1904, snuck into Riyadh, and his men killed the then-governor of the province. And they fought a 30-year civil war to reunite all of Arabia under the Al Saud, and he declared the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. So, that is the group that has ruled since then.
Russ Roberts: And, their heritage–
Karen Elliott House: And, that gentleman–I have one little–the last thing on his children: he had 44 sons by 22 wives and an endless number of kind of one-night wives and concubines. Part of his knitting the country together was to marry the people–the wives–of the tribal chiefs he killed, so that everybody, in a sense, is part of the extended Al Saud family.
Russ Roberts: Which one was that? Who did that?
Karen Elliott House: Abdulaziz, the founder of this 1932 kingdom that we’re in now.
Russ Roberts: Okay. And so to my eye, as a newcomer to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is a little different from a number of the other players in the region. Some of them have storied pasts, which different leaders claim to be part of or not part of. An obvious example would be Iran or Iraq. But, some of them are the product of post-World War II empires being dismantled–Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel being the most obvious examples–where borders and the ruling groups don’t have the legitimacy that other nations have, or at least it’s up for grabs. Is Saudi Arabia, in that sense, a little–because of this founding going back to the 18th century–does it matter? Is it a strong part of national pride?
Karen Elliott House: It was never–Arabia was never colonized, like the French controlling Syria or Lebanon, or the British controlling most of the rest of the Middle East. The British provided money to King Abdulaziz when he was trying to hold on to the part of Arabia that he had gained control of; and then he had to get rid of the family of King Hussein, King Abdullah of Jordan. His ancestors were ruling Mecca at the time, and that was part of King Abdulaziz getting rid of people. The British were supporters of the Hussein family in Mecca and of Ibn Saud, and eventually Ibn Saud got–King Abdulaziz got–rid of Hussein.
I think they–it is a different country because, at some level, all Saudis, I think, do have pride in the fact that they, as Jesse Jackson used to say–the Civil Rights leader–‘I am somebody.’ They see themselves as somebody, even though a lot of other Arabs look down on Saudis as tribal people with little education. I mean, that’s obviously changed and is continuing to change as they educate their people.
Russ Roberts: So, MBS’s father came to power about 11 years ago, and we’ll talk about the rather extraordinary changes, which I was unaware of until I read your book, that MBS has somewhat successfully–in various areas very much successfully–done. But, I just want to start with your personal relationship with him. How many hours have you spent interviewing him one-on-one and face to face?
Karen Elliott House: I’ve seen him seven times in an interview setting and a few other times at a dinner somewhere where you can talk to him, out there. And, I’m a reporter, so I never let go of an opportunity to talk to somebody. And, lots of the interviews were two and three hours. So, I would say probably 16, 18 hours of talking to him.
Russ Roberts: And, you made many trips to Saudi Arabia and went and talked to many, many other people–ministers and many others–from the government, from other sectors. We’re going to learn in the course of our conversation that this is a very complicated man, a very ambitious man. But, let’s start with his political ambition and what he did when he came into the Crown Prince role, when his father came into office, and the role that the Ritz-Carlton played, because it’s a telling story.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah. He was not–when his father was initially–they paid their allegiance, the brothers and ancestors, due to the new King. When he was originally sworn allegiance, MBS was, as I said earlier, just his father’s Defense Chief of Staff. But he immediately called together four ministers and began reorganizing his father’s government. He wasn’t Deputy Crown Prince, he wasn’t Crown Prince; but he obviously had his father’s approval, and it’s part of this young man in a hurry. I mean, he said to them: I want to get rid of all of these councils they had that simply gummed up the works. They didn’t actually, like a cabinet for the president here, they go through stuff and then the president is supposed to see, decide, and sign. They just spun the paper, was his view. And so, he said to these four ministers, ‘I need this done.’ And, they said, ‘Well, this will take time.’ And, he said, ‘Take time, but be finished by tomorrow morning.’
So, they were. But, you know, that’s the speed at which he started out. And then, fairly soon his father made him Deputy Crown Prince.
So, in 2016, when he unveiled his Vision 2030 Reform Agenda and removed the–that is an agenda to take Saudi off of dependence on oil and diversify the economy into many other things, including tourism. And, infidels visiting Saudi Arabia was something the religious did not approve of. For many reasons. He sidelined the religious police and said, ‘Don’t come on the street anymore. You are not allowed to arrest anyone. If somebody is truly doing something wrong, you can alert the police, who will handle it, but you can’t go around as they used to do with their sticks hitting women’s legs or hitting the doors of businesses, demanding that they close for prayer.’
So, that was a shock, and a very popular one to people in the community.
The next big shock was when he began calling people and saying, ‘The King wants to see you,’ and then putting them in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for corruption, for money they had allegedly bilked from the government. And, I’m sure in most cases it was true, because when I did my first book, everyone said that 30% of the budget, at least, every year, simply disappeared. It didn’t go into anything.
And, that became very controversial in 2009 when there was a big flood in Jeddah and lots of people died because the money that was supposed to have been spent on sewage and disposal had gone into someone’s pocket.
So, he began putting not just normal people, but senior business people, senior princes into the Ritz-Carlton, and they were accused by the government corruption apparatus of X, Y, and Z.
And, that was an even bigger shock to the people of Saudi Arabia. And externally, I think, to see. And, the Saudis liked this, too, most of the ones I talked to–to see the biggest names in princely heaven and the business heaven in a certain kind of hell at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which is the fanciest, nicest hotel in Riyadh.
Over days, months, years, some of them got out. Some of them still are not out. King Abdullah, one of his sons who had been the governor of Riyadh, refused to confess that he had taken any money and is still–not in the Ritz–but in prison.
So, some people got out under house arrest. Some people paid money. But it has left a very, I would say, what’s the right word? A frigid fear in people that you have to be careful. You can’t participate in corruption. I am sure there is still corruption going on because they are arresting people for corruption, and you read about it; but how much of that is real corruption and how much of it is an enemies list? I don’t know. It may be all corruption.
But, at any rate, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel was a far bigger shock to the Saudi people than the death of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, we’re going to get to that in a little bit. But the first two things you’re talking about are shocking, and it was a clear signal that under the new King and his crown–not crown prince, but the man who took power effectively–this young man in his 20s at this point, late 1920s, as you say, is a man in a hurry.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah, he was 29.
Russ Roberts: And, it’s the end of business as usual on two extremely central parts of Saudi culture at this point. Right? The role of religion literally in the public square–literally in the public square–meaning where people going around with sticks checking women’s clothing, headdress, headwear, businesses closing for prayer, and then the arrest and prosecution of who knows what level of legitimacy, but a lot of people who disappeared for short and then some long periods of time. The other–
Karen Elliott House: The role of religion and the role of corruption, two huge things in Saudi Arabia–
Russ Roberts: That had been central. Obviously, you said they were both popular. They weren’t popular with the religious police, and they probably weren’t so popular with whoever owned the Ritz-Carlton, because it’s not so good for business to have a lot of rooms taken up by prisoners. But, the religious police were–accurately, the religious, the clerics, and others who wielded power over the population–they didn’t like this. How did they respond, and how did MBS deal with that?
Karen Elliott House: What he told me is, ‘I’m trying to get the religious to have a conversation with themselves.’ But, obviously that conversation was–the light of intimidation was over it, once you take the religious police and say, ‘You cannot arrest people.’ They did not fire them. They still are paid–because that’s the Saudi way, not to upset people’s finances too much.
But, the clerics, the senior clerics who actually determine what they say is the right religious conduct, as you say, were not pleased. Some of those people found themselves in prison. Some of them were quietly removed because the top senior clerics, the Council of Ulama, are appointed by the King. So, if you want to keep that appointment and you want to keep all of the goodies that have gone with it, you learn to see religion through a different light. So, some of them did not, some of them did. As I describe in the book–some of them did recant earlier things they had said and say, ‘I was wrong to say that. More moderate Islam is the right way to go.’ But, some found themselves in prison.
Russ Roberts: Speculate for a minute about the motivation of MBS in this maneuver on the religious front. Obviously, he is exposed to ideas and books and people and places that the average Saudi citizen is not. It’s also a question of power. By reducing power, he strengthened his own. Do you have any thoughts on this? Why he viewed this as so important, giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was in some dimension he thought it was good for the country, not just for himself?
Karen Elliott House: Well, I think he did think it was good for the country, because what he wanted to do in Vision 2030 was revamp the economy. And, to do that, he wanted to allow women to drive and work. And, both of those things were forbidden by the religious authorities. A woman could teach in a girl’s school, but she could not work in a government office unless it was men and women were separated, and most people were fearful of allowing their daughter to work in even the segregated environment for fear that, at some point, the men and women would have a business reason to talk to each other, and a religious policeman would walk in on it; and then your daughter would be ruined for life.
So, I think he did feel that, yes, it removed a power center. And, King Abdullah had talked about that, about allowing women to work. He tried to allow women to sell lingerie in a department store. So, to stand here and sell to you, a gentleman. And, the religious police said, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ And, they shut it down. Whereas, it’s apparently okay for me to stand on this side of the counter and buy intimate lingerie from a man, it is not okay for a man to buy it from a woman.
So, I think MBS, just like any of us, would say, ‘That’s silly.’ And, if you want to unleash an economic boon into the country, women are better educated by and large than men: 58% of university graduates are women, not men.
So, he did want, I believe, for economic reasons to allow women to work in private-sector, government offices, etc. And, it’s amazing to me now, if you go in a private office or a government office, you see men and women ascending in the elevator, jammed in against each other–again, which would have just been horrifying. I knew a lot of men who wouldn’t get in an elevator if there was a woman in the elevator because they didn’t want to risk any accusation of anything. Now they’re all jammed in, headed up to their offices, and nobody seems to think anything about it.
Russ Roberts: And you saw this personally in your own trips. Then you wrote a little bit about it in passing. How long have you been going to Saudi Arabia?
Karen Elliott House: 47 years.
Russ Roberts: So, when you went there 47 years ago, you conformed to the dress codes of the religious–
Karen Elliott House: Well, 47 years ago–1978–the country was conservative but not religiously rabid. This was under King Faisal. No, I’m sorry, King Khalid. So, I wore a knee-length skirt and a long-sleeved blouse; and I was taken when I landed in Jeddah the first time to the Oil Minister’s house, Zaki Yamani, and I had asked to interview him. So, I was thinking, this is an interview. It was a big party with women and men mixing, alcohol. We watched the World Cup Soccer Final from Argentina on satellite. You know: It was a normal life. The women were wearing long dresses, and nobody said a thing about me not having an abaya or anything.
Russ Roberts: What’s an abaya?
Karen Elliott House: The abaya is–it used to be only black. It’s now multiple colors–but what you shroud your body in so that men don’t just see a moving black mountain.
Russ Roberts: Is your face covered in the abaya?
Karen Elliott House: No, that is the hijab, covers your hair. And the niqab covers your face. And people no longer have to do that. The last time I saw the Crown Prince, I was wearing my black abaya, and I walked in, my head just like this, and he said to me, ‘You know you don’t have to wear that.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ I mean, I think he would like fewer people to wear them, actually. But, I find it convenient because you attract less attention if you’re wearing your black abaya. I also have a pale green one now.
Russ Roberts: So, what changed between 1978 and 2016 when it went more fundamentalist?
Karen Elliott House: Two things happened. In 1979, the Shah fell in Iran, and the Saudi royal family did not want to go the way of the Shah. So, they began to accommodate to what the religious officials told them: get women off TV, get women’s pictures out of the newspaper, cover women up. All of these things begin to rear their head.
And also, in 1979, a group of very–I don’t know how religious they were, but at least they alleged to be–took over the Mecca Mosque. And, that was truly frightening for the Saudis. They tried to hide the news for–it took about two weeks to get the occupants out. And they finally had to call in the French, who used a poison gas to evict the people, because the man who was doing the prayer in the mosque was suddenly charged at with people with knives, and they put one to his throat, and it was–I mean, I don’t blame the royal family for being frightened.
But, those two things–the fall of the Shah, and then this attack on the holiest place in Islam by people who alleged they were the new Mahdi, M-A-H-D-I, the new man from heaven to rule–and that obviously would have eliminated the Al Saud. So, those two things changed everything.
And then, in 1980, when I was there, I went to see Prince Turki, who was the Head of Intelligence and a son of the late King Faisal and an American ambassador to Washington–and London subsequently. But, he saw me in my normal clothes. But his aide said to me, ‘I can’t drive you home. I can’t drive you to your hotel in the front seat of my car unless you cover up.’ And he gave me, like, a–just a huge piece of black silk, and you were supposed to put it over your head and around you. And a scarf that you covered your face with. So, I was totally swathed. And since 1980, I have worn an abaya in Saudi Arabia.
Russ Roberts: Where did MBS go to school?
Karen Elliott House: Only in the kingdom. He went to the Riyadh School, a school that his father owned, and then he went to King Saud University and to King Saud University Law School. So, that’s why he knows a good bit about–beyond growing up in Saudi Arabia–he knows more about Sharia law, the Islamic law that guides life and punishment in Saudi Arabia. So he’s not, because of that, I think, as intimidated by some cleric as others might be.
Russ Roberts: So, we’ve got the religious police neutralized. We have the role of women. Again, this is extremely abrupt. This is in the last 10 years. And, a lot of this occurred right away, as soon as–
Karen Elliott House: 2018, the women got the freedom to drive.
Russ Roberts: And, that’s just a symbolic of, a representative of a much wider rate of change as they were encouraged to go to work; they could dress differently than they had. And, the culture around the citizens of Saudi Arabia becomes extremely Westernized, as you describe it–rock concerts, amusement parks, sporting events.
And, some listeners will know about the forays of Saudi Arabia into the golf tour and trying to lure the best golfers in the world there. Ronaldo, although not in his prime, considered one of the greatest soccer players, football players, of all time, is playing in the Saudi League. This is a transformation of the popular culture that is–it’s hard to think of a parallel. Was it disconcerting? Exhilarating? both? How did the people on the street take this?
Karen Elliott House: Well, Saudis are not demonstrative people. I mean, I think they are a society that is accustomed to largely accepting that the ruler is the ruler; and in Islam, you are only supposed to criticize the ruler publicly. You can try to talk to him privately, but criticize the ruler publicly if he is doing something against Islam.
So, I think people, my impression from talking to people, is that younger people, MBS’s age and below–he’s now 39–the below-30 people, and 60% of the population is below 30. So, they have no recollection except of this religious rigidity. And, with it, they got the Internet when they were teenagers or younger, so they began to see how the rest of the world lived, and they wanted a life more like that. I think their parents and grandparents were more shocked by all of this change, and they don’t criticize it openly.
And if you know somebody well from previous times, some of them will say what they think; but now it is clearly not socially acceptable, or it’s hazardous to your health, to be out criticizing.
So, I think–my impression is that the country is more conservative than what you see going on around you. I’ve been struck the last three or four times–the last several years of going back–that you see more women now wearing black abayas again. In the beginning, obviously, a lot of them still did, but there was more of the beige and gray and unsnapped, so you could walk around with it flowing back and show off your expensive clothes or your sports clothes, whatever you were wearing underneath. And, now I’m just struck, when you walk in public places, you see more people–some young women with their head covered very tight; some with the scarf just draped, looking quite glamorous; some with the whole thing across their face and just their eyes showing; and some with just normal clothes. You don’t see people wearing short dresses much.
But, I think the society is, as this has played out, that they’re getting–the natural conservatism that exists in Saudi society, I think, is becoming more visible. And, for the young, what they want out of this was more personal freedom and a good job. So, if the economy can grow and they can get good jobs, that’s probably very good for the government.
The last time I was there, I heard more young Saudis in October–October 2025, when I was last there–expressing that it’s difficult to get a job because the government has a conflict between two goals. One is, quote, “Saudization”: increase the number of Saudis in jobs. And the other is the need for more sophisticated talents as the crown prince wants to move the economy to AI [artificial intelligence] and high-tech.
And, so more people are finding themselves with degrees in marketing, and they’re kind of a glorified tour guide somewhere. So, if they can’t get out of that, they’re not going to rise up the income ladder over the next 20 years. I know some people who predict that there will be great unhappiness 20 years from now by the 40-year-olds because they won’t have the kind of incomes they expect. And, some people who believe that when King Salman dies, the country will move back a bit: that, the Crown Prince will be under more pressure from the public to–having to lean forward like that–to just tilt it up a little.
Russ Roberts: Now, you mentioned Vision 2030, which includes–you summarized it in a phrase of being less reliant on oil. It includes some extraordinarily grandiose–or grand, I guess, depending on your perspective–projects, many of which have been scaled back dramatically from their original exuberance. Give us a thumbnail sketch of how successful that diversification has gone in the last–it’s a decade roughly.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah. They have, on the diversification front writ large, they have had some success, mostly in, I would say, tourism, because there is a–I don’t know how familiar all your audience is with the Petra in Jordan, the Nabataeans ruins in Jordan, but they’re spectacular. And, Saudis have a set of Nabataeans ruins called Hegra in a region called Al-‘Ula, which is beautiful.
And they have tried–they have built in Riyadh, Riyadh Boulevard, Riyadh World–so, all of these theme parks that people can enjoy, that they have one outside of Riyadh, about 45 minutes, called Qiddiya, which now has the world’s highest roller coaster, beating one–the largest one now is in New Jersey, not an hour from me. I haven’t been on it, but I wouldn’t go on the one in Saudi Arabia. But I would like to see it.
So, they have a lot of stuff that people can–Saudis can–enjoy, and they try to keep it priced so people can all go, that it’s not just something for the wealthy.
But, the big projects to transform Neom is the most famous one. The Line, this city–mirrored city like this–taller than the Empire State Building and stretching the distance from 105 miles. So, basically from New York City to Philadelphia. And, that one has really been scaled back because the height of it messes up bird migration; and the length of it means, contrary to the advertising that you could get from one end to the other in 20 minutes, you can’t get from one end to the other if the train stops anywhere else to let people on. And, the architects, who I quote at length in the book on, ‘Yeah, this is something, and we’ll have to figure this out,’ haven’t been able to figure it out. So, the government has scaled it back.
Russ Roberts: It’s also just a little bit pricey, the original design. So, there’s also been some recognition that maybe this is not the best use of money, right?
Karen Elliott House: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right now for the kingdom, they need to fund all of these projects and their budget and this big building. They need $100-a-barrel oil. And oil has been going down. It’s about in the $60 range. And, of course, President Trump is trying to use Venezuelan oil and get it down to $50 a barrel so that American consumers will have cheap gasoline next year during the midterm elections.
Russ Roberts: You’re such a cynic. I’m sure it’s well-intentioned.
Karen Elliott House: I’m sure. But, that’s one impact he would be happy to see. And, if he succeeds, that’s not particularly good for Saudi Arabia.
And the other thing that I think if you were–I’m going to Saudi Arabia soon–they must be very, very nervous about Iran with all of the tension in the streets and Trump saying, ‘I’m going to intervene if you kill people.’ And, the Saudis have tried–or MBS has tried–everything to quiet the region down. I mean, he hasn’t had help. There’s Gaza, there’s Iran, there’s Yemen, with the UAE [United Arab Emirates] in it. So, his quiet strategy is not entirely successful.
But, if something happens, the Iranians are now saying–and this doesn’t take a genius; they don’t have to say it for the Saudis to know it–that if something goes wrong in Iran, the Iranians may choose to retaliate against American forces in Saudi Arabia. And, we saw it in Qatar already. And, in a way, worse yet: if Iran should turn out the way the human-rights people hope and become a democracy–I mean, a functioning democracy–other than Israel, I don’t think that’s at the top of the Crown Prince’s wish list. I mean, stability is at the top of his wish list, in Iran, I’m sure, whoever is in charge.
Russ Roberts: And, he would certainly like to have Iran’s power in the region reduced; but a revolution isn’t quite what he has in mind–would be, I guess, the way to summarize it.
Karen Elliott House: Well, their power has been reduced. So, if he could have just–
Russ Roberts: Oh, dramatically.
Karen Elliott House: Between Israel and the United States, and if he could have just stopped the clock back in June or not too long after, it would have been good.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. I’ll remind listeners, we’re recording this on January 12th, 2026. There are a lot of people–it may be wishful thinking–but there are a lot of people saying there is a serious chance Iran could–that the Ayatollah could be out of power. Some kind of revolution besides marching in the streets, which is what’s going on right now. I guess, by the time this airs, maybe we’ll know.
Russ Roberts: But, let’s turn to Jamal Khashoggi, who you mentioned earlier. Give us a two-minute introduction to that story. He was murdered. It had a, I suspect–I think you say this–a surprisingly negative impact on MBS’s reputation. I don’t–from your telling of it, think he was unprepared for that. He hasn’t been blamed directly for the murder, but he, quote, “has taken responsibility.” So, give us a little bit of the background of that.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah, Jamal Khashoggi, I knew from, I don’t know, probably 2004 or 2005 when I was working on the first book. He was basically–I don’t call him a journalist because he worked for the government. And, he was somebody that King Abdullah’s people would have talked to people like me. He was a very conversational guy. He knew a lot. He ran the Arab News at one point, and he ran an Arab language newspaper, Al Watan, at another point. But just a, I would say, hale fellow, well met, with a lot of curiosity and knowledge. So, I saw him, and the last time I saw him–
Russ Roberts: He was a Saudi, right?
Karen Elliott House: He was a Saudi.
Russ Roberts: You say he was working for King Abdullah. He was working for the King of Saudi Arabia at the time.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, go ahead.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah, yeah. No, he was working for his government. And, the last time I saw him, he was not saying anything nasty about the crown prince. Indeed, he might not yet have been the crown prince in 20′–I think I saw him in 2016 or 2017.
Anyway, he was annoyed that he was not being allowed to write, and he knew that that had to come from MBS. But, he said–and he had a good sense of humor–he said, ‘I prefer democracy, but at least we have KPIs.’ Key Performance Indicators. Because MBS was famous for having an iPad with KPIs on it for every minister on what they were supposed to deliver. So, he was making fun of–at least this was some accountability–MBS was tracking their KPIs.
Russ Roberts: Just to clarify: You said 2016, 2017. This is when MBS’s father is in power. MBS is doing a lot of things, but he hasn’t been nominally titled the crown prince, even though he is acting like one and doing many changes already, correct?
Karen Elliott House: He became Crown Prince in 2017, I believe.
Russ Roberts: Okay.
Karen Elliott House: Anyway, yeah. So, then he moved to Washington, and I didn’t actually–
Russ Roberts: Khashoggi?
Karen Elliott House: Mr. Khashoggi moved to Washington; and I did not see him in the United States after that. I saw him on TV some, when he was in the United States. But then suddenly he turns up murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The U.S.–the CIA’s [Central Intelligence Agency’s]–report said that the Crown Prince, the government, was responsible because nobody would do this without the permission of the government.
Russ Roberts: What year is this, Karen?
Karen Elliott House: 2018.
Russ Roberts: Okay.
Karen Elliott House: And, it was such a–for the Crown Prince, he was here in the spring of 2018. He was in America, and he was hailed all over the country as this new, active, young–
Russ Roberts: Breath of fresh air.
Karen Elliott House: Crown Prince, breath of fresh air doing modern things: letting women drive and work and chaining the religious police, etc., etc.
And then in the fall, Khashoggi’s murder–the contrast was huge. People in Saudi Arabia–I was there shortly after–were upset that the Americans were so hard. They said, ‘The Americans are hard on the country. We didn’t do this.’ So, they began to sort of at least side with the Crown Prince because ‘the Americans are being too nasty to us.’
Anyway, I think he was a bit shocked by it. And if you recall, when he was in the Oval Office with Trump during the Crown Prince’s visit here in November, one of the reporters asked him something like, ‘How do you feel now that you murdered Khashoggi?’ And, Trump jumped all over her and said ‘He didn’t even know it,’ etc. And, the Crown Prince sat there calmly. And then, he said–he rightly, I think, chose to answer for himself and not let Trump answer for him–and he said something to the effect that, ‘It’s a tragedy when someone dies.’ And ‘I have accountability.’ And–
Russ Roberts: It was on his watch, is I think what you said, you wrote he said.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah. ‘Because it’s on my watch.’ Right. So, he stepped up and, instead of letting Trump defend him with, ‘He didn’t even know it,’ he didn’t say whether he knew it or not. He just said, in essence: ‘It’s a tragedy when someone dies and I’m taking steps to make it not happen again.’
Russ Roberts: But, this murder dramatically derailed MBS’s attempt to drag Saudi Arabia into the modern world and redeem the reputation of the country from a backwater, from a fundamentalist religious theocracy to a modern state with women’s rights and great sports and a tourism attraction. And now it turns out it’s a thugocracy. It’s a place where dissenters get not just censored or jailed, but murdered. Do you think somebody made a bad miscalculation of how the West would view this? You suggest in your book that it was maybe an operation that was intended to kidnap him and bring him back to the country. What’s your guess as to why he was targeted, given how it turned out so badly?
Karen Elliott House: Because I think they saw him as a threat. I cannot personally imagine why, but their view was he was in bed with Qatar, with the Muslim Brotherhood. He was taking money from Qatar. He was a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, and the Muslim Brotherhood is bad. So, I can see why they would think–they do this, as I write in the book–they picked up a prince. And, the man who was in charge of this operation against Khashoggi in the consulate, Mr. Qahtani, is the same one who was posing as a pilot when they picked up a prince and brought him home–400-pound prince–threw him down the stairs. He hasn’t been seen since.
And then, Mr. Qahtani, the, quote, “pilot,” shows up the next day and meets with the stewards on the plane and says, ‘My name is Mohammed Qahtani.’ And, he lets them go.
And he was the head of the Royal Court Press Office when I met him, and he was removed from that job after this Khashoggi incident. So, I can easily believe that they wanted to get him back to the country and put him in prison or something. I mean, the human-rights people would probably track that and protest because Khashoggi was a well-known person, but the Saudis wouldn’t get, I believe, normally as much negative press if someone is just taken back to the country and they sort of disappear, and is he in prison or not? And, as when someone is murdered and his body chopped up and taken out in suitcases.
Russ Roberts: Karen, do you get money from Qatar?
Karen Elliott House: I do not.
Russ Roberts: I don’t either. I think we’re the last two. I’m kidding, of course. But–
Karen Elliott House: I know, I know.
Russ Roberts: But, a lot of people–and Qatar does have a lot of money, and they do spend it. We know about some of the people–
Karen Elliott House: Everywhere–
Russ Roberts: We know about some of the places they spend their money. We know they spend a lot of money on American university campuses, and I presume they get something in return. Is it plausible that Khashoggi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter, taking money from Qatar and advancing an agenda that was threatening to Saudi Arabia? Is there any evidence for that?
Karen Elliott House: Yep. I guess it’s possible, but to my knowledge–I mean, I am not a sleuth reporter–I have never tried to track that.
Russ Roberts: Okay.
Karen Elliott House: But, I mean, somebody might’ve taken money. This is why you can’t take money from people.
Russ Roberts: However, this is the Middle East, and taking money from people is a very old pastime here.
Russ Roberts: I want to turn–let’s turn to Israel, where I’m sitting. And, before October 7th, 2023 with the Hamas attack coming out of Gaza, there was a lot of optimism here about a potential normalization of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. People have speculated–who knows?–but people have speculated that Iran’s proxy, Hamas, one of the reasons that Hamas attacked was to derail that normalization. Which, of course, it has, at least for the last two years. Since then, Saudi statements–and it’s hard for people, I think, to not remember. It’s hard for people to remember that statements are often not exactly what people actually believe, but are done to accomplish things.
This is a–as a journalist, you know this quite well, but most of us can forget that. But, the public repeated statement that we get from Saudi Arabia these days–oh, and one footnote: as far as I know, Bibi Netanyahu would love to have normalization with Saudi Arabia as a piece of his historical legacy. For obvious reasons. It would be great for–I think would be good, depending on what it costs, though, not clear. But, the public statement is that Saudi Arabia will not normalize with Israel until the Palestinian issue–and there’s a number of phrases I’m going to use here, none of which are precise–‘is resolved,’ or ‘until there’s a two-state solution,’ or ‘until there’s a path toward a two-state solution,’ or ‘until there’s a vision of a two-state solution.’
Karen Elliott House: The Crown Prince’s exact words have been ‘until there is a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.’
Russ Roberts: Okay. So, that statement, which could be retracted under the right carrots and sticks and who knows what. But, what’s your best read on–you’ve said very clearly Saudi Arabia wants quiet. Because, they want to have an economy that grows. There are a handful of players in this region who see that as their goal. And many who don’t. What are your thoughts on where the Saudis’ views might actually be, Saudi Arabia’s views, or the Prince’s, on this issue?
Karen Elliott House: My belief is he still, for reasons outlined, would like to have relations with Israel. He does not see Saudi Arabia as part of the Abraham Accords because those are small, little countries. He is the leader of the Islamic world, the big Arab country. So, he would be joining in, I think, in his mind, in a different league than the others that are in it. So, I think he still wants it because the corridor of development moving things through from India into Europe, through Israel, and not having to deal with the–
Russ Roberts: Iranians–
Karen Elliott House: I was going to say Panama Canal. The–
Russ Roberts: the Suez Canal. Or the Iranians.
Karen Elliott House: Suez Canal, and the Iranians, yeah. But, I personally think it’s quite a ways off. I know there are a lot of people that predict that, that he’s dying to do it, and there’s going to be some sleight of hand among he and Bibi and Trump. And, I think, obviously, Trump would like to have it as part of his legacy.
Russ Roberts: That too, yeah.
Karen Elliott House: But, whether–I think the next period, at least year, for the Crown Prince is going to be one of being more cautious than usual. Because, the King, even though he’s very ill, is a respected elder. And, without him, I think the Crown Prince is somewhat more vulnerable until he can establish himself as the respected ruler. Which sounds strange because me and everyone else says he’s been running the country, but there is a difference between being–what’s his name at Berkshire Hathaway?
Russ Roberts: Warren Buffett–
Karen Elliott House: Yeah, Warren Buffett, and some successor of his without Warren Buffett. So, I think if the Crown Prince loses his Warren Buffett, it’ll still take a little time, so that he doesn’t. So, that’s one reason.
Another is–and it’s part of the same, I guess–but young Saudis are very much against recognition of Israel, if you believe polls done by Western entities. And, I think there’s no reason for him to go into the buzz saw. I’m sure that the 90% who say they’re against it, if he did it tomorrow, that number would drop to 40% or lower just because of the kind of obedience syndrome.
But, you know, there comes a time–you’re watching Iran; the obedience syndrome is diminishing. So, for all of those reasons–and Iran being a huge other reason: you don’t need to be causing new issues when Iran is as unsettled and potentially dangerous to your short term health. And, maybe if it disintegrates, that’s even worse and more preoccupying. So, I think he will be cautious for–I don’t know when his father will die, obviously–but King Abdullah died at about 90-and-six-months, I think. And King Salman turned 90 on December 31st. So, that gives him by history another six months. So–I mean, obviously, I’m not God, so I don’t know when he will pass on. But I think everything points to the caution.
Russ Roberts: The gap between the leadership and the people in these non-democratic autocracies–it’s true in countries that are in the Abrahamic Accords–the leaders went–are ahead of their people, if you want to use that metaphor. The average citizen–at least this is the received wisdom–is that the leadership is much more liberal, much more interested in peace, much more interested in a more centrist, moderate version of Islam than perhaps the people in the street. I don’t know if that’s true of Islam in Saudi Arabia.
Russ Roberts: But, one last question about the Prince; then I want to give you a chance to give us a final word. I asked where he was educated because, when I read your book–I’m sure you told me in the beginning–but by the time I finished, I’d forgotten, and I didn’t get to check it before the interview.
And, listening to you talk about him and thinking about his overall perspective, he seems like an Oxford-educated person from the Middle East, which is a long tradition; or somebody who had gone to an elite American university as a young man because his father would have wanted him to get exposed to Western ideas. So, here’s a guy who goes to Saudi universities. He’s got an iPad with KPIs, which sounds like he’s been to Wharton, but he hasn’t. How do you understand that the innovative perspective he’s taken? The entrepreneurial part of it is fascinating. Right? His understanding or belief that he has to take an enormous leap, a radical change in a very unradical country to preserve its future given its young people’s demographic–what are his influences? That would be a better way maybe for me to ask the question.
Karen Elliott House: That is precisely what led me to write the book. Where did he get these ideas? He’s not somebody that went to Oxford or Cal or MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] or Wharton. And, he said–he is, as the book says, the sixth son of the King. The first of his mother’s six sons. She’s wife number three. So, wife number one had five sons and a daughter, and there was a second wife who’d had a son who is the seventh son. He’s after MBS. But, the older boys went to–one of them went to Oxford. And, the Energy Minister, who is his half-brother, is a very erudite Western kind of guy who loves Italy and has spent a lot of time there.
And, he didn’t.
And, he said that, when I asked him about these things, he said his mother is the one that–his mother said to him as her eldest son, ‘I don’t want you to be an also-ran to the first wife’s boys.’ So, he needed to step up and learn. That she made them go to classes after school, that they had to read books and do book reports to their father. And, that he seemed to have always had this sense that he sat below the salt: that he wasn’t somehow seen as as good as the older princes, not just his older–
Russ Roberts: That’s a table, a dining room table reference for those who–that’s a very arcane–
Karen Elliott House: Ancient [inaudible 01:09:12].
Russ Roberts: It means you’re not seated near the head of the table.
Karen Elliott House: Yeah.
So, he seems to have a kind of pugnacious–he told me that–this is in the book–that he got an allowance–$500 a week–but when he was 11–I didn’t get any at any age, I had to iron shirts to earn money. But, anyway, he got $500. And that he said, but his cousins, his older cousins, most of them got $20,000.
I think he’s a striver, and he seems to be data-driven. He told a story about how the deputy governor of Riyadh was concerned that re-arrests were occurring, and so he hired more policemen to arrest people. And he said if he had just looked at the data, he would have realized that what you have to do is find ways to reduce recidivism. That it was different: it was the same people being arrested again and again. It wasn’t a bunch of–and he’s very into data. So, the KPIs, and what are we doing, and how are we doing it, and is it working?
And, I think most of the ministers–the Minister of Planning is MIT educated. Another one of the ministers is a Harvard Law grad. They’re all very different from the ministers I dealt with for the previous 35 years who went to work at 11 o’clock in the morning, went home for lunch, went back from 5:00 to 7:00, and that was it. These guys are working all day long. You can see a minister now at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning, which would never have happened. And, they all are up until midnight because that’s when he tends to conduct his meetings. Most of my meetings with him have been: you get there and wait, and wait and wait, and then you’re in there from midnight until 2:00 A.M. or something.
So, I think he is a really interesting man for how does his mind work.
And, the other thing that people say about him was that because he had not much to do as a kid other than school and what his mother made him do when he got home, he played video games all the time. And, that one person said he believes that anything you can do in a video game, you can do in real life. And, I think they said that seriously.
I think there is some real truth to that: that it’s part of why The Line went on and on and on, was that whatever you dream, you should be able to do it. That he asked one of–‘Could we build the deepest building you can build underground?’ ‘Maybe, but why would you want to?’ I mean, he clearly has a very active imagination, and it didn’t come from the Saudi religious authorities who tell you, ‘Keep your mind on getting from here to eternity.’ And, his mind is on–expansively on everything, it seems.
Russ Roberts: So, just to be clear, all the liberalization we’ve talked about–the role of women, the reduction of power in the religious police, the entry of extraordinary western culture into daily life for many Saudis, the amusement parks, rock concerts, sporting events–this has not been accompanied by political liberalization. He is a harsh autocrat. And, as you point out, many of his competitors or dissenters have either been put away or are not seen. And, you ask a question at the end of your book that I want to close with: “Is he a transformative historical figure or just another Arab tyrant?” Close quote. What’s your answer?
Karen Elliott House: I think he has a chance to be transformative if he listens to people around him; and how much of that, there’s no way for me to know. Obviously, if I were in a meeting with him and one of his ministers, it wouldn’t be the kind of meeting they’d be having alone; and I’ve never had a meeting with him and one of his ministers.
I think there is a chance. I think it’s getting harder because the money is getting harder. They’re not getting the kind of foreign direct investment they need, partly because the region didn’t turn out to be peaceful and stable in Saudi and Israel, so people are more reluctant to put money in.
They have borrowing capability, but their own revenue is–they’re going to be running deficits for the next, by their acknowledgement, three years, and they’re trying to cut back to get closer–to cut spending–to get closer to balancing.
So, in a word–in three words–I don’t know. I think there is a possibility, but it is harder than it looked five years ago. And, these next five years, I think, are going to be a very critical test for him. It’s easier to announce plans and spend money than to actually execute the plans and earn money. And that’s the position they’re in now. The second decade has to be about executing and earning, not spending and big plans.
Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Karen Elliott House. Her book is The Man Who Would Be King. Karen, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
Karen Elliott House: Thank you, I appreciate it.
