Mohammed Bin Salman serves as the chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs and chairman of the Council of Political and Security Affairs.
| FactSnippet No. 1,872,995 |
60 Facts About Mohammed Bin Salman
2.
Mohammed Bin Salman is considered the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, being deemed as such even before his appointment as Prime Minister, and he served as minister of defense from 2015 to 2022.
| FactSnippet No. 1,872,996 |
3.
Mohammed Bin Salman was promoted to crown prince after the dismissal of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, King Salman's nephew, in 2017.
| FactSnippet No. 1,872,997 |
4.
Mohammed Bin Salman was personally linked to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian Washington Post columnist who had criticised the Saudi government, but he has denied involvement in the killing.
| FactSnippet No. 1,872,998 |
5.
Mohammed Bin Salman was involved in the escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, the detention of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, the start of a diplomatic spat with Canada, the arrest of Saudi princes and billionaires in November 2017, the alleged phone hack against Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, and treason charges against his cousin and rival Muhammad bin Nayef in March 2020.
| FactSnippet No. 1,872,999 |
6.
Mohammed Bin Salman has touted reforms in an effort to rebrand his regime's image internationally and within the kingdom.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,000 |
7.
Mohammed bin Salman was born on 31 August 1985 to Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz and his third spouse, Fahda bint Falah Al Hithlain.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,001 |
8.
Mohammed Bin Salman is the eldest among his mother's six children and is the eighth child and seventh son of his father.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,002 |
9.
Mohammed Bin Salman holds a bachelor's degree in law from King Saud University.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,003 |
10.
Mohammed Bin Salman worked as a consultant for the Experts Commission, working for the Saudi Cabinet.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,004 |
11.
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman began his ascent to power by becoming second deputy prime minister and minister of defence.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,005 |
12.
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman moved up into the number two position in the hierarchy, as his father became the new crown prince and first deputy prime minister.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,006 |
13.
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was appointed minister of defence and secretary general of the Royal Court.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,007 |
14.
Mohammed Bin Salman added that the Houthis usurped power in Sana'a before he served as minister of defence.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,008 |
15.
Trump and Mohammed Bin Salman pledged "close cooperation" on security and economic issues, according to the White House, and the two leaders discussed the need to cut off support for terrorism, the recent diplomatic dispute with Qatar, and the push to secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,009 |
16.
In May 2017, Mohammed Bin Salman publicly warned "I confirm to you, no one will survive in a corruption case—whoever he is, even if he's a prince or a minister".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,010 |
17.
BBC correspondent Frank Gardner was quoted as saying that "Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is moving to consolidate his growing power while spearheading a reform programme".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,011 |
18.
On 27 September 2022, Mohammed Bin Salman was appointed as prime minister of Saudi Arabia by his father.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,012 |
19.
Mohammed Bin Salman's ideology has been described as nationalist and populist, with a conservative attitude towards politics, and a liberal stance on economic and social issues.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,013 |
20.
On 29 January 2015, Mohammed Bin Salman was named the chair of the newly established Council for Economic and Development Affairs, replacing the disbanded Supreme Economic Commission.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,014 |
22.
In September 2019, Mohammed Bin Salman condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to annex the eastern portion of the occupied West Bank known as the Jordan Valley.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,016 |
23.
In 2016, Mohammed Bin Salman signed an agreement to cooperate with Russia in global oil markets.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,017 |
24.
In 2021, Mohammed Bin Salman signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,018 |
25.
Mohammed Bin Salman took the leadership in the restructuring of Saudi Arabia's economy, which he officially announced in April 2016 when he introduced Vision 2030, the country's strategic orientation for the next 15 years.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,019 |
26.
In October 2018, Mohammed Bin Salman announced that the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia's assets were approaching $400 billion and would pass $600 billion by 2020.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,020 |
27.
Mohammed Bin Salman announced a project to build Saudi Arabia's first nuclear reactor in November 2018.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,021 |
28.
Mohammed Bin Salman established an entertainment authority that began hosting comedy shows, professional wrestling events, and monster truck rallies.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,022 |
29.
Mohammed Bin Salman slashed the state budget, freezing government contracts and reducing the pay of civil employees as part of drastic austerity measures.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,023 |
30.
In October 2017, Mohammed Bin Salman said that the ultra-conservative Saudi state had not been "normal" for the past 30 years, blaming rigid doctrines that had governed society in a reaction to the Iranian Revolution, which successive leaders "didn't know how to deal with".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,024 |
31.
Mohammed Bin Salman stated that he aimed to have Saudi Arabia start "returning to what we were before—a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,025 |
32.
Relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia evolved under Mohammed Bin Salman, granting the two nations the ability to conspire in oil export decisions.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,026 |
33.
Mohammed Bin Salman has justified the mass arrests of human rights activists as being as necessary for enacting reforms in Saudi Arabia.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,027 |
34.
Mohammed Bin Salman has increasingly consolidated power in Saudi Arabia during his tenure as leader.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,028 |
35.
Mohammed Bin Salman significantly restricted the powers of the Saudi religious police.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,029 |
36.
Early in his leadership tenure, Mohammed Bin Salman sought to cultivate an image of Saudi Arabia as implementing various reforms.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,030 |
37.
Mohammed Bin Salman has reportedly created the Tiger Squad, a team of assassins that act as a death squad, to target Saudi critics inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,031 |
38.
Mohammed Bin Salman stated that Loujain mentioned to the family that she had been whipped, beaten, electrocuted in a chair, and harassed by masked men, who would wake her up in the middle of the night to shout threats at her in cell.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,032 |
39.
Mohammed Bin Salman legislated against some elements of Saudi Arabia's Wali system, a topic of a decades-long campaign by women's rights activists.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,033 |
40.
Mohammed Bin Salman leads the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen against the Houthi rebels, who in 2015 seized Sana'a and ousted the Saudi-backed Hadi government, ending multilateral efforts towards a political settlement following the 2011 Yemeni uprising.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,034 |
42.
Western diplomats say that Mohammed was strongly influenced by Emirati politician Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,036 |
43.
In 2018, Mohammed Bin Salman reportedly wanted the US military presence to maintain in Syria, despite President Donald Trump's declaring the withdrawal of American forces from the war-torn country.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,037 |
44.
Mohammed Bin Salman's inviting of "a constant stream of Western male and female singers, bands, dancers and even American female wrestlers" to perform in Saudi Arabia is in complete conflict with religious conservatives who have spoken "against the opening up of the kingdom to secular Western culture".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,038 |
45.
In 2016, Mohammed Bin Salman took steps to drastically curtail the powers of the "Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice", or Islamic religious police.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,039 |
46.
Mohammed Bin Salman is "probably the only leader in the Arab world who knows anything about Islamic epistemology and jurisprudence", according to scholar of Islamic law Bernard Haykel.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,040 |
47.
Mohammed Bin Salman subsequently defended the Trump administration's travel ban for nationals of 7 Muslim-majority countries, stating that "Saudi Arabia does not believe that this measure is targeting Muslim countries or the religion of Islam".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,041 |
48.
In November 2017, Mohammed Bin Salman forced Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri to resign when he visited Saudi Arabia.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,042 |
50.
The Toronto Star reported that the consensus among analysts indicated that the actions taken by Mohammed Bin Salman were a "warning to the world — and to Saudi human rights activists — that his Saudi Arabia is not to be trifled with".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,044 |
51.
In October 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Mohammed Bin Salman, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,045 |
52.
Saudi Arabia denied the accusations and 13 days later Mohammed Bin Salman invited Turkish authorities to search the building as they "have nothing to hide".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,046 |
53.
The Washington Post reported that Mohammed Bin Salman had earlier sought to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and detain him.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,047 |
54.
Mohammed Bin Salman has denied any involvement in the murder and blamed the assassination on rogue operators.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,048 |
55.
Mohammed Bin Salman denied in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes aired on 29 September 2019 any personal involvement in the killing, adding that "once charges are proven against someone, regardless of their rank, it will be taken to court, no exception made", but said that he had to take "full responsibility for what happened".
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,049 |
56.
Mohammed Bin Salman concluded with "medium to high confidence" that Bezos' phone was hacked by a multimedia message sent in May 2018 from Mohammed's WhatsApp account, after which the phone begun transmitting dramatically higher amounts of data.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,050 |
57.
On 6 April 2008 Mohammed married his first cousin Sara bint Mashour, a daughter of his paternal uncle Mashour bin Abdulaziz.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,051 |
58.
In 2022, The Economist reported that on at least one occasion, Mohammed Bin Salman beat his wife so severely that medical treatment was required.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,052 |
59.
Mohammed Bin Salman has travelled extensively around the world, meeting with politicians, business leaders and celebrities.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,053 |
60.
In December 2020, Mohammed Bin Salman invested money into Take-Two Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Activision Blizzard through Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.
| FactSnippet No. 1,873,054 |