The Saudi succession crisis persists

Nayef says stop the spring

Correction to this article

HIS lengthy title revealed much about the man’s stature: crown prince, first deputy prime minister, minister of defence and chief inspector of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So did the crowd at his funeral, which included Iran’s foreign minister and an estranged uncle of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, amid scores of other foreign grandees. America's vice-president, Joe Biden, flew to offer his condolences after the burial.

The calibre of this hushed gathering testified not just to the power wielded by Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, who may well have been the world’s richest man, having run the lavishly equipped Saudi army as his fief since 1962. It also reflected apprehension. Under five successive sons of Abdel Aziz bin Saud, the kingdom’s founder, who died in 1953, Saudi Arabia has posed as a rigid bulwark of the regional order. That order is challenged now, not just by shifting geopolitical rivalries, but by the new pressures of the Arab spring.

The exit of Prince Sultan on October 21st, probably aged 86, served as a reminder that the world’s largest oil exporter continues to be governed by a coterie of very old, very conservative princes, who look increasingly out of touch with the world at large. King Abdullah himself, believed to be 88, is visibly frail following a series of back operations. Rule has already effectively passed to his half-brother, Prince Nayef, whose domain since 1975 has been Saudi Arabia’s feared ministry of interior.

Despite his relative youth, the 78-year-old police chief is said to suffer from severe diabetes, wobbly knees and a famously mercurial temperament. Prince Nayef led Saudi Arabia’s harsh but so far successful campaign to stamp out jihadist extremism, following a spate of al-Qaeda terror attacks in the kingdom beginning in 2003. He is also a chief princely supporter of close ties to the conservative Sunni religious establishment, a sceptic on women’s rights, and the main architect of increasingly stifling restrictions on freedom of speech. Three young Saudi film-makers, for instance, have languished in prison since mid-October after airing an innocuous documentary about poverty in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, over the internet.

Prince Nayef is also renowned for his visceral hostility to Iran, Saudi Arabia’s rival for dominance in the Persian Gulf. An unshakable suspicion of its revolutionary Shia regime helps explain the kingdom’s decisive intervention earlier this year in neighbouring Bahrain, where two-thirds of the people are Shias calling for more rights. This blunt assertion of firepower may have served as a warning to Iran as well as an object lesson to Saudi Arabia’s own restive Shia minority of 10%. Yet by polarising Bahrain along sectarian lines it has also precluded, for the foreseeable future, any reconciliation there. The island state is likely to remain a struggling dependency of its bigger, wealthier neighbour.

Some diplomats and Saudis insist that Prince Nayef is more pragmatic and flexible than his reputation would suggest. In contrast to other princes, he is known for personal probity, works hard and rarely goes abroad. In the fashion of the Saudi ruling family he has packed his ministry with close relations, including three sons. As assistant minister of interior, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef is credited with masterminding a carrot-and-stick approach to Islamist extremism. Energetic, low-key and married to a daughter of Prince Sultan, Prince Muhammad is often tipped as a contender for the throne, once the line of succession passes to the generation of King Abdel Aziz’s grandsons.

That moment may come soon. Only a clutch of the founding king’s 35 or so sons survives. Several, such as the deputy defence minister, Prince Abdel Rahman, and the governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman, are considered able. But a royal decree, passed by King Abdullah in an effort to systemise the succession, has delegated authority for choosing future kings to a council made up of princes representing the founder’s 35 branches. Barring a belated challenge from other powerful princes, this council looks likely to endorse Prince Nayef's elevation. But the council will become increasingly dominated by princes of the third generation. After a string of ageing kings, they may well—not before time—choose one of their own.