User:Tarafa15/MBS Defense Minister & Deputy Crown Prince

Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince
On 23 January 2015, King Abdullah died, Salman took the throne and Prince Mohammed bin Salman was appointed Minister of Defense. He was also named as the Secretary General of the Royal Court on the same date. In addition he retained his post as the Minister of the State.

In Yemen, the political unrest (which began escalating in 2011) rapidly became a major issue for the newly appointed Minister of Defense, with rebel Houthis taking control of northern Yemen in late 2014, followed by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and his cabinet’s resignation. Mohammed bin Salman’s first move as minister was to mobilize a pan-GCC coalition to intervene following a series of suicide bombings in Sanaa via air strikes against Houthis, and impose a naval blockade. In March 2015, Saudi Arabia began leading a coalition of countries allied against the Houthi rebels. While there was agreement on the necessity of a response to the Houthis' seizure of Sana'a, which had forced the Yemeni government into exile, Prince Mohammad launched the intervention without full coordination across security services. Saudi National Guard Minister Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, who was out of the country, was left out of the loop of operations. While Prince Mohammed bin Salman sold the war as a quick win on Houthi rebels in Yemen and a way to put President Hadi back in power, however, it became a long war of attrition.

In April 2015, Muhammad bin Nayef, who is King Salman's nephew, and Prince Mohammed bin Salman became Crown Prince and Deputy Crown Prince, respectively, under King Salman’s royal decrees.

In late 2015, Prince Mohammed attended a meeting between King Salman and U.S. President Barack Obama, where the prince broke protocol to deliver a monologue criticizing U.S. foreign policy. When Prince bin Salman announced an anti-terrorist military alliance of Islamic countries in December 2015, some of the countries involved said they had not been consulted.

Regarding his role in the military intervention, Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave his first on-the-record interview on 4 January 2016 to The Economist, which had called him the "architect of the war in Yemen". Denying the title, he explained the mechanism of the decision-making institutions actually holding stakes in the intervention, including the council of security and political affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the Saudi side. He added that the Houthis usurped power in the Yemeni capital Sana’a before he served as Minister of Defense.

In response to the threat from ISIL, In December 2015 Prince Mohammad established the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition (IMCTC), a Saudi-led Islamic alliance against terrorism. The IMCTC's first meeting took place in Riyadh in November 2017 and involved defense ministers and officials from 41 countries.