Mohammed Bin Salman named Crown Prince - Saudi civil war now inevitable

Now that Mohammed Bin Salman has replaced his cousin as the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the odds of civil war rising out of the monarchy have increased exponentially.

Mohammed Bin Nayef and King Salman have a history of cautious decision making in the kingdom, balancing the various powers and religio-political structures through their roles as King and Crown Prince, and in their previous positions as well. By contrast, Mohammed Bin Salman is hopelessly outmatched in every arena.

As Minister of Defense, Mohammed Bin Salman orchestrated the Yemen war, which has led to military failure and stalemate, an Al-Qaeda stronghold and famine in northern Yemen. Mohammed Bin Salman has been pushing for the 2030 Vision, an ambitious project that seeks to modernize the kingdom and take it further away from its roots in Salafi doctrine, to move it towards modernity, to solidify its position as the US' top Arab partner.

ISIS and Al-Qaeda have been already using Mohammed Bin Salman as their personification of everything wrong with Saudi Arabia. From the terror groups' perspective, Mohammed Bin Salman represents the poison of America, staining the land of the two holy mosques with an implicit alliance with Israel against Iran - and, by extension, against the Palestinians.

But with Mohammed Bin Salman's plan of internal modernization to be coupled with curbing of external "Salifization" - the process of making the Sunni Muslim world identify more with the Qur'an and the Sunnah, without modern contextualization, which leads to ISIS ideology - the only place where Salifization would be able to occur would be from within the kingdom of Saudi Arabia against Mohammed Bin Salman in either a civil war or a revolution.

In fact, unlike King Abdullah, King Salman and former Crown Princes Muqrin and Mohammed Bin Nayef, Mohammed Bin Salman is severely handicapped by one thing above all others: age. His age, 31, gives more reason for Saudis to doubt his ability. This is not only linked to a lack of experience - which he has shown - but also to the innate Arabic culture which respects men with white hair and white beards more than any others. Should Mohammed Bin Salman rule Saudi Arabia as king, he will be younger than self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. And this matters in Arabic culture.

With Sunni-Shi'ite tensions rising in the Gulf; with the Yemeni war showing no end in sight; with Syria stabilizing; with Iran showing dominance across many countries surrounding Saudi Arabia; with Turkey standing against Saudi Arabia with Qatar; and, most of all, with Mohammed Bin Salman leading the kingdom from one foreign policy blunder to another, civil war in Saudi Arabia now seems inevitable.

The only one who may have been able to stop such a civil war is an older member of the Saudi royal family. A king Mohammed Bin Salman is incapable of such a task - even worse, his life is at risk.

How the Afghan War stopped Syrian chaos

Obama withdrew from Iraq in 2011, saying that Iraq's future was now in the hands of its people. At the same time, Obama overthrew Libyan President Gidaffi in a limited air strike campaign, endorsed the Arab Spring and sent Libyan National Army weapons to Syria to help fund the rebels - all the while refusing a peace agreement in Syria until Bashar Al-Assad had stepped aside.

The following should be stated more often: It is more important to win the old wars than to start new ones. It is much easier to start a war than to win a war. Obama himself showed a preference for starting wars over winning wars.

That said, while Obama's withdrawal from Iraq gave him more leeway in interfering during the Arab Spring, he campaigned on fighting the "good war" in Afghanistan. The focus and financial spending on the Afghan War meant that Obama was too invested in continuing said "good war" to really commit in Libya or Syria. In Libya, he limited his airstrikes to overthrowing Libyan President Gidaffi. In Syria, Obama only funded the Syrian rebels and never installed a no-fly-zone to depose Assad, though in 2013 he came dangerously close to doing so.

Trump is also handicapped by the Afghan War and unable to really commit to a ground war in Syria. Like Obama before him, Trump is not as interested in overthrowing Assad as he is in defeating ISIS. Though striking Syria after the alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Trump has stated that the US is not going into Syria.

Many of the same voices that scream for the US to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan also scream for the overthrow of the Syrian Government. Neither Trump nor Obama listened to said voices completely, and as a result both committed themselves to fighting the old war in Afghanistan rather than starting a new one in Syria.

Yet unlike Obama, whose policy of withdrawal from Iraq was almost repeated in Afghanistan, Trump is planning to win the Afghan War and to stay in Iraq, which will prevent him from interfering militarily to the same extent Obama had during his Presidency. Trump plans on letting Russia absorb Obama's Syrian and Libyan conflicts, to make sure that, in US foreign policy, Obama's name is forgotten and Trump's name is remembered.

The Afghan War, stated by so many as being a wasted mission, has actually succeeded in a different mission entirely: stopping the US military industrial complex from making the chaos worse in Syria. Bashar Al-Assad is President of Syria to this day, in part, because of the Afghan War. And the world should be grateful for that.

Qatar-Gulf relations in ruins

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Saudi Arabia has been leading the way in cutting ties with Qatar over their links to sponsoring Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Countries that are with Saudi Arabia against Qatar include Bahrain, United Arab Emirates (Dubai), Yemen and Egypt.

This news is astonishing. It suggests that Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia has worked in changing the minds of leaders in several Arab countries against terrorism in a strong way. Whatever can be said about other nations' sponsoring of terrorism, Qatar is perhaps the worst sponsor of terrorism in the world, and nations seeking to isolate Qatar for terror-related activities is definitely a step in the right direction.

The rest of the Gulf is as of now blockading Qatar. Should sanctions go on Qatar, the nation itself will be in trouble, as most of Qatar's money comes from their oil and gas reserves. It leaves Qatar more open to instability and terrorism and, should war break out in Qatar, ISIS would find a very receptive crowd there.

It also means that Qatar will try and destabilize its neighbours in hopes of removing the blockade. This makes Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates more vulnerable to ISIS detonation, so while it is commendable that these Gulf countries moved towards decreasing terrorism in the region, it is likely to have a negative impact on the Gulf in the short-term.

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are particularly vulnerable due to flaring tensions between the Shi'ites and Sunnis in the two nations. Should Qatar direct its resources to instability in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain through a Shi'ite-Sunni conflict, surely ISIS would benefit and absorb the smaller kingdoms - and much of Saudi Arabia - into a new Caliphate. This would, inevitably, absorb Qatar as well.

Perhaps ISIS' next capital after Raqqa is Doha. Or perhaps it will be Dubai, or Bahrain. It is a scary time for the Gulf, with the only certainty being that ISIS will come to the Arabian Gulf and destabilize it completely.