1
Five years ago, when the UAE signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, it did so with an expectation that advanced military hardware would follow, especially the F-35 fighter jets. Money was spent, political capital was invested, and yet until now, the UAE has received none of what it was promised.
This is important to remember now, as Saudi Arabia steps into the same conversation and suddenly finds itself on the fast track.
The shiny new U.S.–Saudi deal is being sold as just another routine exercise in regional security.An oil-drenched kingdom buying toys with wings. Very respectable. Very normal. But this is just the facade; the F-35 isn’t the prize. It’s the souvenir. Because what Mohammed bin Salman is seeking is the throne itself, and the uncontested legitimacy to reshape the Saudi monarchy in his own image.
2
For nearly a century, the Saudi system of succession worked according to a delicate internal architecture. Founded by King Abdulaziz (1876 – 1953), the throne passed horizontally between his sons. It is not a democracy, but it had its own internal logic and rituals to keep the delicate balance between the other elements of power inside the Saudi society, through a fragile system of Al-Bai’a, the mechanism that managed allegiance, inheritance, and the balance of power within the House of Saud.
Mohammed bin Salman shattered that arrangement, and now he is aiming for a far advanced jump in modern Saudi history: a vertical succession. A monarchy that moves from father to son. In this case, his sons. What emerges is a new royal house: the Salmani dynasty, replacing the broader Saudi one.
And this is not a small shift. The House of Saud aline is enormous — roughly 15,000 royal family members, of whom about 2,000 hold real political and financial power. MBS cannot manage or neutralize this entire network without external support. And This is why he needs Washington.
The next few years inside Saudi Arabia will likely be extremely tense, even brutal. Consolidating a new dynasty means sidelining old branches, extinguishing rival claims, and restructuring the balance of power that has existed for generations. For that, Mohammed bin Salman wants one guarantee above all: the blessing of the United States.
3
What is truly sad in all of this is the American media consestenly cheering in the last years of the “new Saudi Arabia”: the concerts, the comedy shows, the lifted driving ban for women. They mistake branding to reform, and even some of them engage shamlessly in the washing and branding effort. Yet all these is a glossy redecoration of an authoritarian system preparing for its next stage.
Real reform begins when people choose their rulers, shape their system of governance, and control their own resources. None of that is being discussed.
It is succession politics in high definition. And the F-36 is a sideline plot, while the main drama is the old classic theme, the burial of the old Saudi dynasty and the birth of the Salmani era.
Leave a Reply