The British newspaper, Independent, posted on Sunday, January 10, an article in which it blasted the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman, describing him as naive and arrogant.

The British newspaper, Independent, posted on Sunday, January 10, an article in which it blasted the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman, describing him as naive and arrogant.

The paper quoted a memo, published by the German intelligence agency, as portraying bin Salman – the powerful 29-year-old favorite son of the ageing King Salman, who is suffering from dementia – as a political gambler who is destabilizing the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.

"Spy agencies do not normally hand out such politically explosive documents to the press criticizing the leadership of a close and powerful ally such as Saudi Arabia. It is a measure of the concern in the BND that the memo should have been so openly and widely distributed. The agency was swiftly slapped down by the German foreign ministry after official Saudi protests, but the BND’s warning was a sign of growing fears that Saudi Arabia has become an unpredictable wild card."

The BND lists the areas in which Saudi Arabia is adopting a more aggressive and warlike policy, as in Syria and Yemen.

None of these foreign adventures initiated by Prince Mohammad have been successful or are likely to be so, but they have won support for him at home, the Independent concluded.