Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud

Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (; born 31 August 1985), colloquially known by his initials MBS or MbS, is Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia. He also serves as the chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs and the chairman of the Council of Political and Security Affairs. He is considered the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, being deemed as such even before his appointment as prime minister in 2022. He served as minister of defense from 2015 to 2022. He is the seventh son of King Salman. In 2018, he was ranked by Forbes as the eighth most powerful person in the world, with a personal wealth of at least $25 billion. Mohammed was born as the first child of Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz and his third wife, Fahda bint Falah Al Hithlain. After obtaining a law degree from King Saud University, he served as an advisor to his father. After Salman became king, he appointed Mohammed defense minister and deputy crown prince in 2015. Mohammed was promoted to crown prince in 2017 after the dismissal of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, King Salman's nephew. Salman ceded the position of prime minister to his son in 2022. Mohammed rules an authoritarian government. There are no democratic institutions in Saudi Arabia, and repression is widespread. Islamic scholars, human rights activists, women's rights activists, journalists, former insiders, Islamists, and other political dissidents are systematically repressed through tactics including torture and jailing, and some reports have alleged that Mohammed uses a group known as the Tiger Squad to carry out extrajudicial killings. A CIA report released in 2021 implicated him of having orchestrated the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi government. Mohammed has denied involvement in the killing. Mohammed was the architect of Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen which has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis and famine there. His government was also involved in the escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, the 2017 detention of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, a 2018 diplomatic spat with Canada, the arrest of Saudi princes and billionaires in 2017, the 2018–2019 Saudi crackdown on feminists, an alleged phone hack against Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos in 2019, and treason charges against his cousin and rival Muhammad bin Nayef in 2020.