Saudi Arabia: Gambler in charge

By the end of 2015 the BND, the German foreign intelligence service, had grown so concerned that it warned the government about Saudi Arabia's new Deputy Crown Prince and defense minister, 30-year-old Muhammad bin Salman. "The previous cautious diplomatic stance of older leading members of the royal family," it wrote, "is being replaced by an impulsive policy of intervention."

At that point, Prince bin Salman had been defense minister for just one year, but he had already launched a major military intervention in the civil war in Yemen and committed Saudi Arabia to open support for the rebels in the Syrian civil war. He had also taken the bold decision to let oil production rip and the oil price crash. 

No wonder the BND characterized Prince bin Salman as "a political gambler who is destabilizing the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria." Not just a gambler, but one who was betting on the wrong horses.

The first bet to fail was his intervention in the Yemeni civil war, with an aerial bombing campaign that has killed at least 10,000 Yemenis (around half of them civilians) and cost Saudi Arabia tens of billions of dollars.

Prince Muhammad bin Salman (or MBS, as he is known in diplomatic circles) sold the war as a short, sharp intervention that would defeat the Houthi rebels in Yemen and put Saudi Arabia's own choice for the presidency, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, back in power. It has turned into a long, exhausting war of attrition:
the Houthis still control of the capital, Sana'a, and Hadi will not be going home any time soon.

Then the Deputy Crown Prince's second big bet, an open commitment to support the Syrian rebels, failed when the Syrian army, with Russian and Iranian help, reconquered eastern Aleppo last...