Tuesday, December 12, 2006
A shake-up in Saudi diplomacy?
This "sitrep" from Stratfor reports some very peculiar news:
Sources within the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., said Saudi Ambassador to the United States Turki al-Faisal resigned unexpectedly "for personal reasons" Dec. 11. Director-general of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate for nearly 25 years, he was appointed ambassador in 2005.
Speculation alert: Al-Faisal's resignation has something to do with this op-ed piece, which was widely regarded as a deniable threat by the Saudis, but which al-Turki repudiated on "Meet the Press" on December 4. What, precisely, I do not know.
Any House of Saud experts out there should add their more considered thoughts in the comments.
MORE: Per GreenmanTim in the comments, Crossroads Arabia has a bit more.
2 Comments:
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Tue Dec 12, 05:27:00 PM:
Crossroads Arabia, which I note on your blogroll and find to be an excellent source for analysis of all things Saudi, covered the story today and agreed with a Washington Post piece suggesting that Turki is a possible replacement for his ailing older brother, Prince Saud al-Faisal. You can read it at
http://xrdarabia.org/blog/archives/2006/12/12/pr-turki-al-faisal-resigns-as-ambassador/
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Dec 12, 07:58:00 PM:
I saw nothing to disagree with. I'd also like to mention, though, that this country is ruled by a *family,* and not in a touchy feely symbolic way like Britain. It's possible that Turki would be removed if his son nailed King Abd-Allah's favorite niece and then refused to marry her. There's just no way to know.
