According to a royal announcement on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz named his son and successor, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as Prime Minister and his second son Prince Khalid as Defence Minister.
In a royal announcement released by state news agency SPA, the elderly king said another son of the reshuffle, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has been appointed as energy minister.
The announcement shows that Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Finance Minister Mohammad Jadan and Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih remain in office.
The crown prince, known as MbS and promoted from Defence Minister, has been the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East.
A Saudi official said his new role as Prime Minister is in line with the king’s previous delegation of duties, which include representing the kingdom on foreign visits and chairing summits organised by the kingdom.
The official said that historically such delegation of duties had happened several times in the state. Prince Khaled bin Salman, MbS’s younger brother, was a former deputy defence minister.
According to the SPA, the crown prince said that Saudi Arabia has increased the self-sufficiency rate of the military industry from 2% to 15% and plans to reach 50% under the newly appointed defence minister.
The announcement revealed that King Salman would still preside over the cabinet meetings he attended. After the announcement came into force, state television showed Raja presiding over the weekly cabinet meeting.
The 86-year-old king, the guardian of Islamic holy sites, became ruler in 2015 after serving as crown prince for 2-1/2 years. Over the past two years, he has been hospitalised several times for various ailments.
Crown Prince Mohammed has fundamentally transformed Saudi Arabia since taking power in 2017, leading efforts to diversify the economy away from oil, allow women to drive and limit the power of the clergy.
However, his reforms were accompanied by a crackdown on dissent, with activists, royals, women’s rights activists and businessmen jailed.
In 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, damaging his reputation and straining Saudi relations with the US and other Western allies.
