*[Enwl-eng] What's Saudi Arabia's image rehab all about?
ecology
What's Saudi Arabia's image rehab all about?There's a growing divide between "haves" and "have-nots" in the country.
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A real estate conference this week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Real Estate Future Forum, featured a number of major figures on the global stage and in media, including Tony Blair, Richard Branson, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Piers Morgan, and Tucker Carlson. What does this mean for Saudi Arabia’s future, normalization, and wealth? Ekō News talked to Andrew Leber, an assistant professor at Tulane University's Department of Political Science and MENA Studies Program, and a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about the kingdom’s political moves and cozy relationship with world leaders. Here’s our conversation. What is Saudi Arabia up to with the real estate forum and appealing to Western leaders? A few things are going on here. First and foremost, real estate is big business anywhere but especially in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 policies aim to financialize the housing sector through a wave of mortgage lending and attract foreign investment in the new hotels and luxury properties of a more “livable” (i.e. less socially repressive) Kingdom. Lots of Western businesses are hoping to cash in, especially with new laws that allow non-Saudis to invest in property. Still, bringing in folks like the Clintons, Boris Johnson and Tucker Carlson is obviously an odd fit for a real estate conference (I assume there weren’t many questions about the Whitewater Development Corporation). Part of this is Saudi Arabia cultivating ties with individuals it sees as influential in the future. Even if Saudi firms are working to line the pockets of the Trump Organization (and family), it’s not surprising the Kingdom is hosting a conservative ex-PM while there’s a Labour government in the UK, and a former Democratic President and candidate while the GOP holds the White House. It’s the same reason a Saudi sovereign wealth fund gave Jared Kushner $2 billion to play around with under the Biden administration; even if there’s no quid pro quo, it makes sure that Saudi officials can have in-roads to power down the line. Plus, it can’t hurt to show that Saudi Arabia is rehabilitated to the point where folks like the Clintons are fine not just showing up, but getting photographed with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. US and other Western corporations are looking to benefit from Saudi Arabia’s largesse. Can you explain this for our audience, motivations, who benefits, etc? After President Biden’s trip to Riyadh and mutual visits by Trump and MBS this year, most corporations have few worries about reputational risk in engaging with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has an enormous cash stockpile and is looking to build up non-oil sources of revenue while it locks itself into important (and non-oil) global supply chains. Western corporations know that the kingdom’s state investors are willing to spend big on perceived opportunities—just look at the 25% premium a Saudi-backed consortium is paying to take Electronic Arts private. What can citizens across the world do to express their distaste for how Saudi Arabia is rebranding? One thing citizens can do is amplify important work by organizations like the Middle East Democracy Center and ALQST that sheds light on rights abuses in Saudi Arabia (such as arbitrary detentions and executions). The eight years ahead until Saudi Arabia hosts the 2034 World Cup will be a key time period to press Saudi Arabia to roll back restrictions on political speech, migrant labor rights, and gender equality (despite improvements in the 2022 personal status law). This is a country whose leaders still care about avoiding critical headlines in the New York Times, even if they swear otherwise. Citizens can also raise questions and press elected officials about deals that give undue influence to Saudi firms, as they should for any that that privilege returns to capital above local needs. One clear example is the response to Saudi agro-businesses taking advantage of existing loopholes to suck groundwater out of Arizona. My one word of caution is to do some research on actual Saudi rights abuses of late before expressing distaste. Criticism of the country can sometimes veer into crude stereotypes of “barbaric” Arabs or Muslims that can turn off even sympathetic audiences in the kingdom—especially when Western countries countries are seen as complicit in a genocide as bad or worse than anything Saudi policy has produced. Anything you want to highlight for our audience about the country right now? U.S. social-media users aren't the only ones who've noticed that the Clintons aren't exactly known for their real estate acumen. Alongside the chorus of praise for the Kingdom's ability to bring in high-profile names, you can find Saudi accounts on Twitter and elsewhere raising questions about why, exactly, Saudi money is being paid to bring in prestige foreigners. This speaks to a growing divide between "haves" and "have-nots" in the country, and the growing questions about the wisdom of how billions upon billions in spending have been allocated. In other newsDue to the long interview, we’ll keep it brief. Here are a few things we’re looking at: Here’s your campaign of the day
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Date: пт, 30 янв. 2026 г. в 10:51
Subject: What's Saudi Arabia's image rehab all about?
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