BEIRUT—It was a weekend of political earthquakes in Saudi Arabia, with tremors felt domestically and across the Middle East, as a faction led by the audacious 32-year-old Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman—son of the reigning King Salman—embarked on a stunning power play against rivals at home and abroad. The first of Saturday’s dizzying developments came when Lebanese prime minister and Saudi ally Saad al-Hariri used the occasion of a visit to the Kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, to announce his resignation, thereby toppling his own government and unraveling the fragile power-sharing arrangement that had kept the often-turbulent Mediterranean state relatively quiet for the 11 months since his cabinet was formed last December. Hariri’s uncharacteristically militant speech, broadcast exclusively on Saudi’s Al-Arabiya TV, blasted the “evil” of Iran and its Lebanese “arm” Hezbollah, insinuating the latter was plotting to kill him, as it stands accused of murdering his father, former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, in 2005. “[Iran] does not descend on a place but that it plants strife and destruction and ruin therein … driven by a concealed hatred for the Arab people, and an indomitable desire to destroy and control them. … We live in a climate resembling that which prevailed shortly… Read full this story
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