Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has just been greeting Donald Trump on his arrival in Riyadh.
It’s fair to say that both men are divisive – but that the leader known as MBS is particularly controversial in the West, despite being a reformist in his country.
He gave women the freedom to drive for the first time in Saudi history back in 2018.
He’s also the man behind Vision 2030 – the project to wean Saudi Arabia’s economy off its reliance on oil, which has seen it invest massively in global sport and entertainment (think investments in Newcastle United and the 2034 football World Cup – which also split opinions).
Then there are some staggeringly ambitious building projects in the Saudi desert as part of the Vision 2030 plan.
But there’s a darker side, too.
Most infamously, he was ostracised internationally after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 to obtain papers he needed to get married. He never came out again.
The Washington Post columnist was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents. US intelligence agencies think MBS directly ordered the killing.
There have been other crackdowns, too, and the crown prince also launched a disastrous military campaign in Yemen.
But MBS wasn’t left out in the cold by other world leaders for long.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accused his predecessor Boris Johnson of “going cap in hand from dictator to dictator” when the former PM met MBS in 2022.
But in December last year, Starmer went to Saudi Arabia, saying he was putting British jobs first.
Donald Trump’s predecessor as US president – Joe Biden – also talked tough on MBS.
He once promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over its human rights record.
In 2022, though, Biden met with MBS.
And more recently, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has established himself as a go-between in some of the world’s biggest conflicts.
In 2023, he hosted Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Riyadh.
This year, he’s held talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
So it seems clear he’s not going anywhere on the global stage anytime soon.
Trump has talked of securing $1trn of investment from Saudi Arabia in the US with his visit – which goes some way to explaining MBS’s ongoing sway with leaders around the world.
