Governments and businesses beat a path to Riyadh

• Survivors of the Morocco earthquake called for more help as the death toll passed 2,800.
• North Korea’s Kim Jong-un arrived in Russia by train ahead of a planned meeting with Putin.
• An American man was rescued from a cave in Turkey after being trapped for over a week.

A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death for social media posts. Mohammed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, a retired teacher, published anti-government posts to ten followers on two anonymous Twitter accounts.

So what? For this, he is due to be beheaded. The sentencing comes almost five years after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered with a bone saw in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) became the pariah-in-chief. Today it is a different world. 

Saudi money and diplomacy and slick Western PR firms are persuading governments and business to park their qualms and beat a path to Riyadh. They’re courting the Kingdom on everything from sport and AI to civilian nuclear energy and Arab-Israeli relations.

Make it rain. Oil prices rose to $90 a barrel last month after Saudi Arabia and Russia cut production. This helps Russia’s war effort. But it also means the Gulf states are rolling in petrodollars. 

• Saudi Aramco, the state-owned Saudi oil goliath, made a record $161 billion profit in 2022, up from $110 billion the year before. 
• Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman could earn $3.5 trillion from fossil fuels over the next five years, The Economist predicts.
• The Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund of more than $600 billion in 2023, is flexing its muscles. 

MBS and his ally in the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zahed Al Nahyan, are spending big to guarantee strategic interests and diversity in their economies before the green revolution takes hold.  

In a rich man’s world. Starved of capital investments and cauterised by high-interest rates at home, Western hedge funds, start-ups and financiers are flooding to the Gulf. While some executives are missing “Davos in the Desert,” Saudi Arabia’s annual financial conference in October still has enough demand to charge $15,000 a head.

Attendees want capital which is hard to raise elsewhere, and Saudi is seizing the moment, pushing to raise its profile in everything which isn’t oil, from global sports and tech to healthcare and electric cars. 

By the numbers:

$1 trillion – likely cost of the futuristic city of Neom, should MBS persevere with it.

2.5 – per cent of GDP which Saudi Arabia intends to spend on research and development by 2040 ($16 billion), primarily focused on ageing and chronic diseases. 

$6.3 billion – Saudi expenditure on sports deals since early 2021, radically changing the face of football and golf. A Saudi club reportedly offered a record-breaking €300 million for France’s Captain Kylian Mbappé.

$20 billion – planned Saudi outlay on AI projects by 2030. 

$170 billion – planned investment in mining by 2030. The PIF is reportedly in talks with the US about securing stakes in minerals in Guinea, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo that are needed for the energy transition. 

MBS has played a careful game, pivoting between the US, EU, China and Russia.

• Earlier this year, China negotiated a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, easing tensions in the Gulf after almost 50 years of rivalry. 
• Riyadh has been invited to join the Brics and is currently flirting with the proposition.
• The US is trying to pull off a dazzling deal with Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinians. This would see Riyadh acknowledge Israel’s existence for the first time; a huge win for both Jerusalem and Washington. 
• It would mean more security guarantees from America and access to even more advanced American military tech and civil nuclear engineering help, getting Saudi on side for anything against China.
  

Lest we forget. Few Western principles stand up when these sorts of sums start to flow. But for the record: 

• Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system is still in place. It requires women to seek their permission for marriage, living arrangements, travel and in legal cases.
• Last month, Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabian border guards used machine guns and explosive mortar rounds on Ethiopian migrants coming in from Yemen, killing hundreds.
• Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29 year-old fitness instructor, has been held in solitary confinement and will be tried for not wearing the full-length abaya and tweeting under feminist hashtags.
  

Most will politely agree to forget about Saudi’s abuses. Al-Ghamdi’s case will probably end up like Khashoggi’s – under the carpet.