The new ruling family in Riyadh will likely push Saudi Arabia to the verge of collapse through impulsive and rash decisions. 

The crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), as the chief decision-maker, has been pursuing dangerously erroneous policies in his short political life: he has ordered invasion of Yemen, blockaded the tiny state of Qatar, started open hostility with Iran, and recently pressing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign with the aim of unsettling Lebanon.

That the Saudi kingdom has been caught in a quagmire in Yemen is open to all. It has been pounding Yemen incessantly since March 2015, yet it has failed to make the least advances against the Houthi rebels who are aligned with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the army. Probably, the crown prince’s only gains are that he has starved millions of people in Yemen and committed war crimes there. And how Saudi Arabia would manage to bring the tragedy and chaos to an end in Yemen remains an open question.

Also through the blockade of Qatar, MBS proved that he is another Saddam Hussein in the region. Like Saddam whose army invaded Kuwait in 1990 and then annexed it, MBS would have also ordered invasion of Qatar if it had not been for Doha’s military alliance with Turkey.

In this adventurous move Riyadh suffered another blow. It automatically pushed Qatar to the arms of Turkey and Iran. 

His open animosity with Iran, despite restraints by Tehran, is another self-humiliating move. MBS and his close family friends are well aware that Saudi Arabia is not a match for Iran. However, he is trying to entice Donald Trump, through extremely lucrative arms deals, to attack Iran.  

Saudi Arabia’s strong hatred of Iran has reached a degree that it is even approaching Israel which has deprived the Arab Palestinian nation of their basic rights in violation of all humanitarian principles and international law.

In his newest remarks, even the crown prince surprisingly blamed the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran for the Saudi-inspired violent ideology in the form of Wahhabism and Takfirism.  

That how the revolution in Iran, which by itself was a great step toward democratization and republicanism, pushed Saudi Arabia toward religious extremism is a question that only bin Salman can invent an answer to.

MBS does not want to admit that Saudi Arabians are being ruled by a family which its examples can only be found in the dustbin of history and its regime’s intolerance of religious diversity in the Middle Ages.

Also by putting pressure on the Lebanese prime minister to announce his resignation while in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia not only humiliated the Lebanese, it also proved that the new ruling family has no reservation to push Lebanon, which is still suffering from the wounds of the 1975-1990 civil war, toward a new crisis.

The next reckless behavior by bin Salman may come in the future days. The person who is trying to portray himself as a great reformer and anti-corruption leader is pushing Saudi Arabia to the verge of suicide because reforms and impulsive behaviors cannot go together.