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Mohammed bin Salman

Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (Arabic: محمد بن سلمان آل سعود, romanized: Muḥammad bin Salmān ʾĀl Su‘ūd; born 31 August 1985) is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. The heir apparent to the Saudi Arabian throne, he is currently Crown Prince and Prime Minister. He is the seventh son of King Salman of Saudi Arabia and grandson of the nation's founder, King Abdulaziz. Mohammed was born as the first child of Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz and his third wife, Fahda bint Falah Al Hithlain. After obtaining a law degree from King Saud University, he was an advisor to his father. He was appointed deputy crown prince and Defence Minister after Salman became king, then promoted to crown prince in 2017. He succeeded his father as prime minister in 2022. Since his appointment as crown prince in 2017, Mohammed has introduced a series of social and economic reforms. These include curtailing the influence of the Wahhabi religious establishment by restricting the powers of the religious police and improving women's rights, the removal of the ban on female drivers in 2018 and weakening the male-guardianship system in 2019. His Saudi Vision 2030 program aims to reduce the Saudi economy's reliance on oil through investment in non-oil sectors including technology and tourism; however, the economy remains heavily dependent on oil. Under Mohammed, Saudi Arabia began co-ordinating its energy policy with Russia and also strengthened its relations with China. Mohammed leads an authoritarian government. Those regarded as political dissidents are systematically repressed through methods including imprisonment and torture. A 2021 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report found that Mohammed had orchestrated the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has denied involvement in the killing. Mohammed was the architect of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen and was involved in the escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, as well as a 2018 diplomatic dispute with Canada. Between 2017 and 2019, he led the purge of competing Saudi political and economic elites, seizing up to $800 billion in assets and cash and cementing control over Saudi politics. In 2018, Mohammed was ranked by Forbes as the eighth most powerful person in the world, with a personal wealth of at least $25 billion, and was included on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time.