So these youths just steamrolled the resistance from the roughly 30% of Saudis whom I'd describe as hyperconservative.
(Saudi sources tell me that about 500 of the most extreme clerics have been locked up.
MBS is wisely still paying other very conservative government religious officials, like the religious police, but he has disempowered them -- not without personal risk to himself.)
Iran, by contrast, has unleashed the full brutality of its religious authorities to steamroll Iranian youths, who went into open civil war with the regime in September 2022 after an Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody.
She had been arrested for allegedly not properly covering herself in public.
As one young Saudi official recently remarked to me, MBS was able to sideline the religious extremists in the kingdom, without starting a civil war, by unleashing all the pent-up energy of young Saudis, who wanted to realize their full potential by being connected with all the cutting-edge global trends. So these youths just steamrolled the resistance from the roughly 30% of Saudis whom I'd describe as hyperconservative. (Saudi sources tell me that about 500 of the most extreme clerics have been locked up. MBS is wisely still paying other very conservative government religious officials, like the religious police, but he has disempowered them -- not without personal risk to himself.) Iran, by contrast, has unleashed the full brutality of its religious authorities to steamroll Iranian youths, who went into open civil war with the regime in September 2022 after an Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in police custody. She had been arrested for allegedly not properly covering herself in public.
