Sixty years ago, the House of Saud for the first and only time stripped a sitting king of his powers and turned them over to another prince. The immediate cause of King Saud’s fall from power was a botched Saudi intelligence plot to assassinate Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser and put in Syria a military junta favoring Riyadh. Once Nasser publicly exposed Saud’s plot, the family backed by the Wahhabi clergy moved quickly to transfer power to Crown Prince Faisal. It was seen in Washington at the time as a major setback for America.
There are obvious comparisons to today. Saud was widely regarded as unfit to rule before Nasser exposed him because of his incompetence and corruption, much as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is today regarded by his many critics. Saud was behind a botched intelligence caper; MBS was the mastermind behind the premeditated murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to Senators briefed on the CIA’s assessment of the Istanbul caper.
The 1958 episode was a crucial and defining moment in Saudi history. Faisal is rightfully regarded as the savior of the kingdom. The situations then and now have many differences, but it is worth studying what happened in 1958 as we ponder the future of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The article below was originally published in the December issue of Studies in Intelligence.
