Saudi Crown Prince’s Mass Purge Upends a Longstanding System

What Crown Prince Mohammed was doing, Mr. Stephens said, “is a more genteel way of making sure there are no challenges to your power.” Time will tell, Mr. Stephens said, whether the arrests signal a slide into despotism or “whether we will look back and say Mohammed bin Salman is the one guy who saw the wall coming and managed to hurdle it.”