July 2, 2014 | Quote
Saudi Arabia Takes a Hardline Stance as Militants Make Gains
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“Nothing focuses the mind like having al-Qaeda [or the functional equivalent] on your borders,” said David Weinberg, senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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“Rumors Prince Bandar is now in charge of the Qatari file still for the time being seem to be just that: rumors,” Weinberg said. “However, putting somebody in charge of dealing with Doha who reportedly bashed the al-Thani regime as 300 people with a TV station would not be a particularly conciliatory action by the Saudis. On the other hand, King Abdullah and Emir Tamim apparently just exchanged a warm message and a phone call this week, so counter-intuitively perhaps, things are actually getting better between Doha and Riyadh.”
Weinberg asserted that the only lasting takeaway from Saudi Arabia’s musical chairs in May is that the king has been successfully using a series of staff shakeups to put his sons in increasingly important positions.
“Any shift in a so-called moderate direction may now be being erased. Yet King Abdullah’s son is still sitting pretty as the new governor of Riyadh,” he said.
The latest staff shakeup is bad news for Saudi Arabia’s defense sector, Weinberg said.
“At a time when neighbors like Abu Dhabi are making great strides comparatively in defense, Crown Prince Salman can only implement so much actual defense policy himself, so this leaves a empty a position that in essence is more of an acting defense minister than it is a deputy position.”
“Saudi Arabia has been through deputy defense ministers in the last two years and clearly Prince Bandar never really went anywhere in the first place.”
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