Domestic politics in the Middle East especially in a country like Saudi Arabia never stays that way for long. Recent events in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, demonstrate the contagion effect not only on the politics in the Middle East but internationally too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On November 3, regime forces of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman embarked on an arrest purge of some of the most powerful figures <\/a>in the country. They called it an anti-corruption<\/a> drive and in some international capitals such as Washington the \u2018cover story\u2019 was parroted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the cover story about a corruption drive, it is clear that the moves reflect the ongoing power-grab by Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince as he clears the way both internally and externally to accede power from his father and remove perceived opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The regional dimension of moves in Riyadh were apparent when the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri who had allegedly been called to visit the Saudi capital city then made a televised announcement of his resignation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Saudi regime also contended with a missile attack targeting Riyadh fired from neighbouring Yemen and responded by closing<\/a> ports and borders on this broken state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Continue reading on the openDemocracy Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The featured image<\/a><\/em> has been used courtesy of a <\/em>Creative Commons license. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The willingness of Mohammed bin Salman to embark on a series of moves against Iranian power in the Middle East already shows evidence of severe miscalculation says Professor Beverley Milton-Edwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2472,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-issues"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":9774,"key":"field_66d0cbf58f930","label":"Authors","name":"authors","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"relationship","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"post_type":["authors"],"post_status":["publish"],"taxonomy":"","filters":["search"],"return_format":"id","min":0,"max":10,"allow_in_bindings":0,"elements":["featured_image"],"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"authors","_valid":1}},"description":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":9776,"key":"field_66d2183027749","label":"Description","name":"description","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","allow_in_bindings":0,"tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":1,"_name":"description","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/76\/2017\/11\/saudi.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_featured_media_url","jetpack_sharing_enabled","amp_enabled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2472"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}