King Salman of Saudi Arabia has inherited the throne from his older brother and with it a host of pressing challenges in a turbulent region.
To the south, Yemen is in chaos. To the north, the militant group ISIS is wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria. More broadly, Saudi Arabia remains locked in a regional cold war with Iran.
Within the kingdom’s borders, Salman has to decide how to pace sensitive reforms while keeping a lid on extremism. And with reported health concerns of his own, he faces a headache over how to manage the monarchy’s long-term succession plan.
The stakes are high in one of the leading regional powers in the Middle East and a key U.S. ally.
“Saudi Arabia has been critical to preserving some degree of regional stability in the face of a growing Iranian threat, during the rise of Islamic extremism that followed the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and during the new wave of upheavals that began in the spring of 2011,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a commentary this month.
Here are some of the main challenges Salman now faces:
Yemen
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But there are unconfirmed reports that Salman, 79, is already in bad health. And uncertainty surrounds who will the the next-in-line after Muqrin, 69.
The Saudi monarchy is approaching a generational shift: Abdullah, Salman and Muqrin are all sons of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz.
Muqrin is “widely believed to be the last capable son” of Abdulaziz, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, so his rise to crown prince poses “the unprecedented challenge of picking a next-in-line from the grandsons” of Abdelaziz.
“That will raise questions of legitimacy not faced in the last century of Saudi rule,” Riedel wrote in a commentary.
According to Weinberg, there are two key decisions that are likely to result in “very significant battles” within the monarchy.
“One is the very symbolic position of the second deputy prime minister, which is basically a next-heir-in-waiting position and an important decision-making position,” he said. “And then ultimately, there will be the question of who gets appointed to be the next crown prince after the current crown prince — what’s known as the deputy crown prince.”
“It sounds silly in the title, but it’s very important in the stakes inside the kingdom,” he said.
