David Bell

And MBS had been slowly cutting him off from his sources of power for several years at this point.

So this is the result of a fairly long family conflict.

For most of the 21st century, Saudi Arabia had been ruled not just by the king, but by the black prince and another senior prince, a guy named Sultan, who headed the defense ministry before MBS.

All three of these men died between 2012 and 2016.

So now, just like two years into King Salman's

being the king, right, in 2017, he and his father have neutered the clerics and the religious police.

They've eliminated Crown Prince Nayef, and the other crown princes who might have acted as barriers to their total power were gone.

They are the ones running everything.

There are no other major power centers.

They've done this in about two years, right?

So this is a very successful consolidation of power.

Yeah, it's some Game of Thrones shit.

Yeah, it really is.

Yeah.

Now all they had to do was discipline a squabbling cadre of lesser princes and officials, some of whom had supported rival princes and others of whom may have eventually represented a threat themselves.

More to the point, they were all corrupt, and King and Prince Salman both knew their continued support would hinge on being seen as fighting corruption.

In the fall of 2017, Mohammed bin Salman spoke before a major investment conference in Riyadh that had earned a reputation for being the Davos of the desert.

In a bid to attract foreign investment into the kingdom, he deliberately played down the country's connection to Wahhabism and announced that by June of 2018, Saudi Arabia would finally allow women to drive.

What a reformer!

Huge move!