Valuetainment - December 11, 2023


Saudi Crown Prince MBS： Can he Bring Peace to The Middle East？


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

203.89156

Word count

3,685

Sentence count

217

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, and why I believe he has the potential to make the temperature in the Middle East go lower, specifically with Iran and Israel.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So I want to break down why I believe MBS Mohammed bin Salman may have a big role in making the
00:00:05.000 temperature in the Middle East go lower, specifically with Iran, Israel, because if you are him and
00:00:09.900 you're very ambitious, you're one of the top 10 most powerful men according to Forbes and
00:00:13.760 one of the most charming, best personalities, you're worth $25 billion, you are the prime
00:00:18.060 minister, you're about to be the king, you got all this personality, charm, salesman,
00:00:22.880 Machiavellian, he probably read the book Prince or 40 Laws of Power, he seems like that kind of a guy,
00:00:28.100 but you are living in the Middle East and you want to get people from all over the world to come to
00:00:32.840 you for tourism and yes, you can say, well, Saudi is a very safe place and we have this and look at
00:00:36.980 Ronaldo's here, Formula One and all these other things that we're doing, but a lot of people still
00:00:40.740 look at your neighbors and say, your surrounding area isn't that safe and a lot of people say
00:00:45.000 they're not going to come over to you, so it's on you to do something drastically that is unconventional
00:00:50.380 for the world to say, I feel safe coming to you, so tough job, but we got a lot of things we
00:00:54.600 investigated about this guy, very, very interesting how he views religion in a way that's controversial
00:01:01.780 to many, even in Saudi, we're going to talk about MBS today. Okay, so if you get value out of this
00:01:07.640 video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel, let's get right into it, so here's what
00:01:10.680 we're going to cover, we're going to learn about him, then we're going to learn about the vision,
00:01:14.280 then we're going to learn about the role Saudi plays in the Middle East as well as world peace,
00:01:18.600 and then you'll be able to make a decision on what you think is going to happen with this guy,
00:01:22.560 so let's get right into it. MBS, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia from June 2017 till today, he's the
00:01:27.740 Prime Minister of Saudi, September 22nd till today, and he used to be the Minister of Defense
00:01:31.880 from January 15th to September of 2022. A couple of the things that he did with foreign policy,
00:01:37.160 after he was appointed Minister of Defense in 2015, he launches a military campaign against Yemen,
00:01:42.480 blockade on Qatar, and efforts to counter Iran's influence in the region, so he's not afraid,
00:01:48.460 pushing his way to Iran and saying, hey, I'm not just somebody that's a young kid coming up,
00:01:52.560 I am my own man, I have my own opinions, I have my own philosophies, I want to lead,
00:01:57.200 building a reputation for himself during that time. Domestic policy in 2016, he drastically cut
00:02:02.440 the powers, this is very interesting, because as a person who lived in Iran, you have to know,
00:02:06.520 there's a lot of power when countries come up with this, and he cut their power, listen up,
00:02:10.260 he cut the powers of the CPVPV, which stands for Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention
00:02:17.900 of Vice, or better known as Islamic Religious Police. The feared CPVP, which had thousands of 0.89
00:02:26.100 officers on the streets and powers to arrest, detain, and interrogate those suspected violent
00:02:30.680 in Sharia, and it was banned from pursuing questioning, asking for identification, arresting,
00:02:36.720 and detaining anyone suspected of a crime. This is very norm when you're living in places in the
00:02:42.980 Middle East. I experienced this personally when you're living in Iran, and I'm walking out with 1.00
00:02:46.880 my mother. So for him to choose to do this, this is one of the ways the government puts fear into
00:02:52.540 the people. It's like, nah, we're not doing this anymore. Controversial. Cinema industry, changes it
00:02:57.980 up, was reinstated, social liberties were expanded, gender mixing and dating have been normalized by the
00:03:04.080 state in public sphere. 2017 Corruption Perch, another one of those things that pissed a lot of
00:03:09.460 powerful people up. In November of 2017, nearly 400 of Saudi's most powerful people, among them
00:03:16.800 princes, tycoons, and ministers, were rounded up and detained in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in what became
00:03:23.400 the biggest and most contentious purge in the modern kingdom's history. This was after the formation of
00:03:30.120 an anti-corruption committee led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Subban. Imagine like, you're coming up,
00:03:37.480 you want to win the country over. The way he does it by bringing in the top 400 most powerful people
00:03:41.620 and saying, hey, you can't be doing all this corruption anymore. Imagine what they're looking
00:03:44.880 at. Who are you to talk to us like this? Who am I? Let me tell you who I'm going to be here and what
00:03:50.100 I'm going to do with Saudi Arabia. Everybody realized, maybe this is just not another kid.
00:03:54.020 He's got a real big vision. So look, I've been in the financial industry since 9-11, the day before
00:03:58.160 9-11, and I've owned stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, crypto, gold, you name it, I've owned it.
00:04:03.360 But the one thing that's very important part of my portfolio all these years is gold. I love having
00:04:09.080 a percentage of my net worth in gold that I have access to in case of many different things. A few
00:04:14.660 facts you need to know about gold. Number one, the gold market cap is $11.8 trillion. Since 2000,
00:04:21.920 the compound annual growth rate for gold has been 9.24%. And during times of high inflation,
00:04:28.340 3% plus has been 15.35%. Now, those are just some numbers for you, but there's some other benefits
00:04:34.800 to add gold to your portfolio. Number one, hedge against inflation. Number two, results showed
00:04:39.680 recently that 93% of central banks are working on a CBDC. So this means what? That could be a
00:04:45.820 manipulated currency that they own. If you own gold, it's a non-duplicatable asset. You're now hedging
00:04:51.640 against CBDC taking place. Number three, a potential cyber threat. If it happens, you don't have access to
00:04:56.980 your money. You don't have access to your accounts, but you have access to your hard physical gold.
00:05:01.220 Number four is anonymous. No one knows you have that gold. And last but not least, diversification.
00:05:05.420 That's why we chose to work with our new sponsor, American Hartford Gold. If you have retirement
00:05:10.120 funds that you cannot afford to lose, American Hartford Gold will ship physical gold or silver
00:05:14.460 directly to your door. Also, if you have retirement funds that you can't afford to lose, now is the time
00:05:18.720 to call American Hartford Gold, a precious metal dealer you can trust. They have the finest products,
00:05:24.040 amazing customer service, and a buyback commitment. They've earned a five-star rating
00:05:28.400 from thousands of reviews and an A-plus from the Better Business Bureau. Tell them I sent you and
00:05:33.080 they'll send you up to $5,000 worth of free silver on your first order. So click on the link in the
00:05:37.800 description or call 866-939-6984. Again, 866-939-6984. So again, anytime you have somebody that's very
00:05:47.320 ambitious, you're going to create a lot of enemies and journalists are going to come out and
00:05:50.340 criticize. You're going to be like, well, he's doing this, he's doing this. And as a person that's
00:05:53.540 getting a lot of attention, in different places, you handle it in a different way. In this case,
00:05:58.220 in 2018, MBS Global Reputation suffered after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
00:06:05.120 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The CIA eventually concluded that he had ordered the
00:06:10.540 assassination a claim Saudi Arabia denies. This is something that the Middle East has to deal with 0.99
00:06:16.200 because in the Middle East, this is what people fear. If you want athletes, if you want celebrities,
00:06:20.460 if you want stars, if you want all these people to go to Saudi, I want to go to the Formula One
00:06:24.720 race. I'm going to go watch a wrestling. I'm going to go watch this. They have to feel the safety to 0.79
00:06:28.540 know that these types of things won't happen. This was a bit of a flaw in his reputation and his
00:06:33.880 ambitions. Early on in his political career, MBS began his political career as a special advisor
00:06:38.320 to his father, who was then the governor of Riyadh. His early roles in the Saudi government included
00:06:43.080 positions and expert commissions of Saudi council of ministers and Saudi cabinet. His father's
00:06:47.780 ascendancy and key appointments, his rise to prominence accelerated when his father became
00:06:51.880 the king of Saudi Arabia in 2015. Shortly thereafter, MBS was appointed minister of the
00:06:56.140 defense, making him one of the world's youngest defense ministers at the time. This position placed
00:07:00.640 him in charge of the Saudi military and its ongoing involvement in Yemen. So now here's a Vision 2030
00:07:05.660 that he cast. Okay, in 2016, MBS unveiled Vision 2030, a strategic framework to reduce Saudi Arabia's 0.98
00:07:12.940 dependence on oil, 87% of the GDP, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors. Davos in the
00:07:20.740 desert to track FDI. This includes ambitious projects such as Neom, a $500 billion plant, mega city that
00:07:28.800 aims to be a hub for innovation, technology, and sustainable living, investment in sports leagues,
00:07:34.480 investment in entertainment. So think about it, when you invest into entertainment, are entertainers
00:07:38.940 mostly conservative or liberal? They're mostly liberal, which means if you want entertainment to
00:07:44.300 come to Saudi, you have to be a little bit more liberal than any other Middle Eastern
00:07:48.340 country, which is kind of a, isn't that a country? How are you going to do it? That's not easy. So he
00:07:53.940 decides to give Ronaldo $200 million. Think about you, Ronaldo's beautiful wife. You guys got kids.
00:07:59.060 Cristiano comes home and says, hey, babe, what's that? I got a contract. Awesome. Where are we going?
00:08:03.580 Barcelona? No. Manchester? No. Where are we going? Saudi Arabia. What are you talking about, babe?
00:08:10.960 Yes. We're going to take our kids to Saudi. We're going to feel safe there? I don't feel safe, babe. 0.99
00:08:15.600 How about for $210 million? Let's take the kids to Saudi Arabia, right? That's what happens. So he's
00:08:20.320 willing to give the money, but the same money didn't work for everybody. Messi became a Saudi 0.99
00:08:24.700 ambassador promoting tourism in the country. His contract reviewed by the New York Times shows that
00:08:29.280 he could earn up to $25 million for his promotion over three years. His deal also angered Paris Saint
00:08:34.820 Germain, a Qatari owner, and was contributing factor to as why he was ousted from PSG. Aston Martin
00:08:42.080 announced long-term strategic partnership with Aramco, which includes joint title sponsorship of
00:08:47.320 the British manufacturer's F1 team. Live Golf announces an eight-tournament schedule for its new
00:08:52.420 tour, which will include four-man teams competing for 54 holes with shotgun starts. The seven regular
00:08:57.660 season events will have $25 million purse. The team's championship will have $50 million in
00:09:03.960 prices. It gets a little crazier with golf. Live Golf announces that it is expanding its team series
00:09:08.900 to 14 tournaments in 2023 with $405 million in purses. I think that's going to draw a lot of
00:09:15.980 golfers who want to go golf there. Bloomberg reports Saudi Arabia's public investment fund
00:09:20.300 explored making a $20 billion bid. You know for what? For the entire Formula One. Not like one race,
00:09:27.440 for the entire Formula One. In January 2022, Liberty Media completed its acquisition of the series for
00:09:33.480 $4.4 billion in 2017. Now Andy Murray says he reiterates that he will not play in Saudi Arabia.
00:09:39.520 I wouldn't play. No, I would imagine it will only be a matter of time before we see tennis tournaments
00:09:44.340 played there. A couple other people, Roger Federer turns down an invitation later saying he didn't want
00:09:49.320 to play there at the time. This is right after what happened with Khashoggi. And at the same time,
00:09:53.300 John Cena from WWE is removed from his scheduled match days before he is scheduled to appear at
00:09:58.540 Crown Jewel as the WWE faces mounting calls to cancel the event following the death of Khashoggi.
00:10:04.940 And this small golfer, you may know his name, you may not. His name is Tiger Woods. He turned down
00:10:09.520 $800 million to stay with PGA. Why did he say no to live? For $800 million? Having said that,
00:10:19.180 again, anybody that has major aspirations, that personality is going to be very complicated,
00:10:25.780 especially someone that has the kind of power. When you look at oil reserves, there's only one
00:10:30.180 country that has more reserves than these guys. If you look at this list from Statista, it's Venezuela.
00:10:35.420 18% of the world's reserves is with Venezuela. 17% is with Saudi Arabia. Then you have Canada,
00:10:43.260 Iran, Iraq, Russia, Kuwait, UAE. But Saudi, you are the person up there. You're worth $25 billion
00:10:50.840 at the lowest, and it's just going to get more. And you're given all this power and influence,
00:10:55.300 and you've got aspirations, you've got a vision, you're going to be a target. You have to be a
00:10:58.880 complicated person to want to do something like this. But when somebody comes out and says the
00:11:04.860 following, I want to read this to you. Saudi Crown Prince lambast his kingdom's Wahhabi
00:11:10.140 establishment, let me read this to you. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has delivered his
00:11:13.460 sharpest attack yet on the kingdom's Wahhabi religious establishment, declaring its ultra
00:11:18.060 conservative interpretation of Islam out of date, out of date. Who are you to say this? When he said
00:11:24.300 this, he was 36 years old. Imagine the people that are there, 36 years saying we're out of date,
00:11:28.340 and often based on a faulty interpretation of Islamic scripture, speaking on national television in
00:11:32.960 the midst of the holy month of Ramadan, he also defended his promotion of secular Western
00:11:38.500 entertainment in the kingdom. When I had the Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi on last week,
00:11:46.280 his father in Iran, the king, which he's about to be, he was a young king at 21 years old, similar to
00:11:54.060 him. He was a very wealthy man, very. At one point, CBS called Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the most
00:12:01.280 powerful man on earth. He was kind of going like this, trying to make Iran similar to Western, 1.00
00:12:08.200 because he wanted Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, sports, concerts. He wanted that to be taking
00:12:14.340 place. It's given me the vibes of wanting to do that, which by the way, when he did this,
00:12:19.800 a lot of the local people from the religious sect called Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi a puppet of the
00:12:26.820 West. So he's going to get criticized for that as well. Let me continue. I'll give you more feedback
00:12:30.120 here. Again, the whole part about the Western entertainment in the kingdom, which he had long
00:12:34.060 condemned as heretical by its once powerful Wahhabi clerics. And now he's saying promoting of secular
00:12:40.920 Western entertainment, which by the way, so where does the inspiration for this come? Why are you
00:12:45.020 all of a sudden flipping your position from who you were to now promoting secular Western entertainment
00:12:50.540 in the king? What are you talking about? That's what the old school folks are thinking about. But
00:12:55.220 here's where his ideology comes from. His ideology has been described as a nationalist and a populist
00:13:00.300 with a conservative attitude towards politics and a liberal stance on economic and social issues.
00:13:06.340 It has been heavily influenced by the views of his former advisor, Saud al-Khattani, and the ruler of
00:13:12.500 Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed. So he has his own people he's looking at as visions, but it tells me he's
00:13:19.520 kind of going through the playbook of wanting to do what Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi did in Iran. So is that a
00:13:24.100 good thing or a bad thing? Here's the reality of it. If he is trying to do this, the number one thing he needs
00:13:28.940 to have with his brand is a word that starts with the letter S. Because if you don't have that, people are not
00:13:34.520 going to come to you in the droves of tourism that he wants. And what's the S word? What do you think? Safety
00:13:40.820 and security. We, as tourists, have to feel safe going there. If I told you right now, what criticism do you get
00:13:47.380 of going to Dubrovnik, Croatia? You don't think about threats or something happen to you. Hey, let's go to
00:13:54.200 vacation. We're going to go to Barcelona, Spain. You're not really too worried about it. But if you
00:13:58.840 say we're going to go to Saudi Arabia, well, maybe. Why? Because it's in the Middle East. But Saudi's not
00:14:03.360 that problematic. It's safe. Yeah, but you could be living in a safe house. But if your neighbors are
00:14:08.180 problematic, that region is not that safe. So he almost has to bring the word safety to the entire
00:14:13.360 Middle East because that's what the Shah did in Iran. When the Shah was in Iran for 37 years, the Middle East 0.85
00:14:18.960 was safe. They had good relationships with Israel. They had good relationships with U.S., decent
00:14:25.160 relationships with Russia, decent relationship with others, decent, decent relationship. And there
00:14:30.620 wasn't chaos there. So to lower the temperature in the Middle East, I think one of the most important 1.00
00:14:36.520 pieces of that happening is this man, MBS. He may be one of the top three dominoes of making that
00:14:45.560 happen. And he may even be the first domino. And when you look at his allies and enemies,
00:14:50.700 the top four of his enemies, you'll hear Iran, you'll hear Turkey, you'll hear Qatar, you'll hear
00:14:56.980 some of those names as an enemy to him. Iran's staying the way it is and it's kind of reckless 0.93
00:15:01.360 and it's unconventional and it's funding Hezbollah and it's causing mayhem with Israel and all this
00:15:05.600 stuff that's happening. Does he want Iran to be like that? Probably not. So maybe he wants to see a 1.00
00:15:09.800 revolution taking place there. Maybe he wants to see democracy being there. Not sure what sect he wants it to be.
00:15:15.160 Does he want it to be religious like the way it was with Khamenei or Khomeini? I don't know. He doesn't
00:15:18.840 give me those vibes. But very, very interesting character. There's a reason why so many people
00:15:24.660 are curious about this man. So in order to do that, you have to have leverage over other people. So what
00:15:30.660 is Saudi's leverage over other countries in the Middle East and worldwide? Well, one leverage that 0.89
00:15:35.600 they have is you got a lot of oil, period. They have enough oil reserve. There's data showing when is
00:15:41.000 all the oil in the world going to run out? And I think if you go on the website today, it's 44 years,
00:15:46.080 38 or seven days and some few hours left with oil reserves going to run out. Except for Saudi. You 0.98
00:15:51.660 know how long Saudi's oil is going to last? You ready? 221 years. They're going to be okay,
00:15:56.620 right? With the amount of leverage that they got. So the way to fight off to not need Saudi is to go 0.95
00:16:02.820 nuclear. But a lot of people don't want to go nuclear and it's going to take a long time until these
00:16:06.560 other guys do. So you're going to need Saudi, which what does this mean when you're doing that?
00:16:10.600 Well, Saudi is the biggest country in the Middle East land-wise, but population-wise,
00:16:15.540 they're number five. Number one is Egypt. Number two is Turkey. Number three is Iran. Then it's Iraq.
00:16:19.760 Then it's Saudi. So they don't have the most people, but they have the most land. They have the most oil.
00:16:23.760 And they're in a location where they kind of need to get the other people to kind of work with them.
00:16:28.040 So there is a lot of leverage for MBS to be able to do this. But I think he's the number one
00:16:33.720 that can make this happen. So this doesn't work if only he has leverage, which is good. He has the
00:16:37.980 leverage because he's got something everybody wants, but there's got to be something everybody
00:16:41.560 else has on him for there to be an equal exchange, which is what? He's very ambitious. And what's the
00:16:46.960 word he used? He used the word defended his promotion of secular Western. Those two words don't
00:16:53.380 get used in the Middle East and it's supported by the elderly, which means if you want to do that,
00:16:58.300 you have to make it safer. You have to get people like us. I want to come to 87% of your country's GDP
00:17:03.100 is tied to oil. That's like having a business that does a million dollars a year, but one of
00:17:07.080 your clients does 870,000. If that person, you're problematic if something happens there, right?
00:17:11.940 Okay. So he needs other business. He needs other technology. He needs people to want to move there.
00:17:16.680 He needs it to be safe. He needs entertainment. He needs a lot of different things. It's a lot of
00:17:20.520 exchange, many different opportunities. If I was a president or a leader of a country, the first thing I
00:17:27.180 would say, Hey, let's figure out a way to collaborate to make it a safer place that people feel more
00:17:31.140 comfortable moving there. What commitment can you make to the world for us to know that? What is
00:17:35.440 that going to look like? That would be my first step. And I would look at making it even more
00:17:39.440 peaceful in other countries around the area, especially the number one enemy that they have,
00:17:44.200 which is Iran. So if you got value out of this video, give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel.
00:17:48.280 If you are interested in the Middle East, we did a video a few months ago titled,
00:17:52.820 Are Muslims the Angriest People in the World? And by the way, you would be surprised 1.00
00:17:56.780 where Armenians rank on that list. If you've not seen it, click here to watch it. Take care,
00:18:03.460 everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.