BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a series of predawn appointments on Wednesday, King Salman of Saudi Arabia eased the potentially treacherous issue of royal succession by placing a new generation of security-focused leaders first in the line of succession. The far-reaching changes carry the potential to reshape not only the kingdom and its place in the region, but its relations with its most important ally, the United States.
“The government is now in the hands of the next generation, under the supervision of the king,” said Khalid al-Dakhil, a Saudi political analyst.
With Saudi Arabia locked in bloody proxy wars with its longstanding regional rival, Iran, for influence in Yemen and Syria, the 79-year-old king promoted the two princes most responsible for the kingdom’s security.
Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 55, the interior minister who has headed the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts, was installed as crown prince, with King Salman pushing aside his youngest half brother, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, 69.
The defense minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who may be in his mid-30s or even younger and is one of the king’s youngest sons, was named deputy crown prince. It was a startling move in a royal dynasty that puts great stock in age; when lining up to greet the king, Al Saud princes long stood in a row according to age.
And Prince Saud al-Faisal, who served as foreign minister for four decades, was replaced by the much younger Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the United States.
While not of royal blood, Mr. Jubeir is well connected in Washington and has recently served as the international spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition that intervened this month in Yemen’s civil war.
Propelling the moves are the death, aging and ill health of the top princes, as well as frustration with what Saudi leaders see as American neglect and an overeagerness to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran. As with many important decisions in the kingdom’s opaque ruling structure, the changes were announced by a royal decree. This one was released at 4 a.m. on Wednesday.
It is a historic change, in that Prince Mohammed becomes the first heir apparent who was not a son of King Abdulaziz, who founded the kingdom in 1932. By nominating a grandson, the king answered a question that has been hanging over Saudi Arabia for at least a decade, as succession passed from one ailing, elderly son of the founding monarch to the next.
“This is King Salman’s solution to the aging-leader problem,” said a veteran Saudi analyst and onetime adviser to the government, Jamal Khashoggi. “I am sure that the king, who is aware and has an interest to preserve the dynasty in Saudi Arabia, came up with this solution.”
The new leaders, relatively young, consider terrorism and Iran to be the biggest security threats. They have shown little interest in democratic or social reforms. While advocating strong ties to the United States, they are increasingly willing to act independently — as in the Yemen campaign.
While the new appointments may cause some grumbling among left-out princes, they were not likely to destabilize the monarchy, said Steffen Hertog, an associate professor of comparative politics at the London School of Economics who studies Saudi Arabia. “I don’t think there is any organized resistance, and no one else in the family still has a strong power base,” he said.
Few Saudis were surprised by Prince Muqrin’s removal, which Saudi state news media said was by his own request. In addition to leading the country’s widely praised counterterrorism effort, his successor, Prince Mohammed, is a son of the longtime interior minister, Nayef bin Abdulaziz, who held the sensitive position of liaison to the country’s influential religious conservatives.
Still, some saw an inauspicious precedent: If King Salman could remove the crown prince designated by his predecessor, what would stop the next king from overriding King Salman’s choice?
“In a sense, the king has set a precedent that may actually harm his son’s future career as much as aiding it,” Michael Stephens, the head of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar, wrote in an essay published online by Al Jazeera.
The new line of succession clearly centers state power in the hands of King Salman and his two successors at the expense of other branches of the family, Mr. Hertog said. All three men share a security-oriented view of the region that has led Saudi Arabia to pursue a more openly interventionist foreign policy. In the past four years, the kingdom has struggled to deal with political upheaval across the region that has resurrected the rivalry between the Sunni Muslim majority and the Shiite minority that stretches back to the earliest era of Islam.
In Iraq, King Salman has maintained Saudi Arabia’s role in the United States-led coalition that is bombing the jihadists of the Islamic State, even as that bolsters the fortunes of Iran’s allies in Baghdad.
The Saudis have also stepped up coordination with Turkey to arm rebel groups fighting in northern Syria against the Iran-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad, contributing to recent rebel advances there, analysts said. Saudi leaders have long been frustrated that the United States has not done more to force Mr. Assad from power in Syria or to limit Iran’s influence in Iraq.
The three men have also been the architects of Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen, its southern neighbor, where the Houthis have seized territory and forced the Saudi-backed president into exile.
Fueling these interventions is a prevailing sense among Saudi leaders that the United States, its longtime ally and security guarantor, has withdrawn from the region, leaving a vacuum that Iran has exploited. The Obama administration’s focus on reaching a deal with Iran on its nuclear program has only increased this sense of neglect, Saudis say.
“With the withdrawal of the U.S. and the collapse of Syria and Iraq, and the exposure of the influence of Iran reaching the borders of Saudi Arabia, I think Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states concluded that they have to step in to protect themselves,” said Mr. Dakhil, the Saudi analyst.
But such interventions come with risks, especially if they exacerbate conflicts in ways that might pose a threat to Saudi Arabia. Chaos in Syria has provided a haven for the Islamic State, whose supporters are increasingly trying to target the kingdom. And any loss by the Houthis in Yemen could be exploited by Al Qaeda
“Saudi Arabia is responsible for Yemen,” Mr. Khashoggi said. “It must finish the job and bring stability, or it will be blamed for it just like Bush is blamed for Iraq, and that is not a good position.”
Aside from consolidating the throne around two key princes in the security establishment, the new line of succession also restores the Sudairi clan to the core of power. The seven sons that King Abdulaziz had with Hassa bint Ahmed al-Sudairi, his favorite wife, long formed a powerful alliance within the sprawling royal dynasty.
For nearly three decades, King Fahd and two Sudairi brothers, Prince Sultan, the defense minister, and Prince Nayef, the interior minister, were the triumvirate who ran the kingdom, brooking little criticism and jailing dissenters.
King Abdullah, who succeeded King Fahd in 2005, somewhat diluted the grip of the powerful clan, but with these changes, King Salman, a Sudairi, has firmly returned his clan to center stage.
The decree announcing the changes said that it had been approved by the Allegiance Council, a committee made up of one member representing the family of each of the roughly 36 sons of the founding monarch.
But in the past, some senior princes, notably Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz, the father of the billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, have suggested that they should be considered for succession. It was considered an unlikely prospect, since Prince Talal was banished in his youth for leftist tendencies.
It was not immediately clear what happened in the Allegiance Council that led to the elevation of the two young princes.
With 7,000 members of the ruling family, periodic predictions that the House of Saud was wobbling have long seemed implausible. The fear instead was that competing factions within the Al Saud clan, with princes controlling the key governorates and military branches, would turn on one another in the fight for the throne. If King Salman’s decision sticks, that appears less likely, as he has named successors who are expected to be around for decades to come.
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