Saudi Arabia on Tuesday appointed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the country’s inaugural prime minister.
Private TV correspondent reported that the announcement came amidst major restructuring in the Saudi council of ministers-the top-most decision-making body of the country after the royal court.
As prime minister, Prince Salman will lead the council of ministers.
As part of the sweeping restructuring of the 35-member council, Prince Dr Mansour bin Miteb bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has named as a Minister of State. Prince
Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as Minister of Energy. Prince Turki bin Muhammad bin Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as Minister of State. Prince Abdulaziz bin
Turki bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as Minister of Sports.
Prince Mohammed, who has already the kingdom’s de facto ruler for several years, previously served as deputy prime minister under King Salman as well as defence minister.
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He is being replaced as defence minister by his younger brother, Khalid bin Salman, who was deputy defence minister.
The heads of other critical ministries, including interior, foreign and energy, remained in place, according to a royal decree from King Salman published by the official Saudi Press Agency.
Prince Mohammed, who turned 37 last month, has been first in line to succeed his father as king since 2017.
Saudi Arabia has for years sought to quell speculation over the health of the 86-year-old king, who has ruled the world’s top oil exporter since 2015.
In 2017, it dismissed reports and mounting speculation that the king was planning to abdicate in favor of Prince Mohammed.
King Salman has hospitalised twice this year, most recently a one-week stay in May that involved tests including a colonoscopy, according to state media.
Sweeping changes:
Prince Mohammed became defence minister in 2015, a key step in a swift consolidation of power.
In that role he has overseen Saudi Arabia’s military activities in Yemen, where the kingdom leads a coalition backing the internationally recognised government in its fight against Iran-aligned Huthi rebels.
He has also become the public face of a sweeping reform agenda known as Vision 2030.
Changes have included granting women the right to drive, opening cinemas, welcoming foreign tourists, de-fanging the religious police and hosting pop stars and high-profile heavyweight fights and other sporting events.
Yet he has also jailed critics and, in a sweeping purge of the nation’s elite, detained and threatened some 200 princes and businessmen in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in a 2017 anti-corruption crackdown that tightened his grip on power.
He gained global notoriety for the 2018 killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.
Last year, US President Joe Biden declassified an intelligence report that found Prince Mohammed had approved the operation against Khashoggi, an assertion Saudi authorities deny.
But the spike in energy prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spurred a number of Western leaders to travel to Saudi Arabia to appeal for ramped-up oil production, notably then-UK prime minister Boris Johnson and Biden himself, who swallowed an earlier vow to make the Saudi leadership a “pariah”.