Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud - Dead

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

Heir to Saudi Arabia throne dies Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, 83-year-old defence minister, has died "outside the kingdom following an illness".

Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, the 83-year-old defence minister and first in line of succession to become king of Saudi Arabia, has died.

"With deep sorrow and sadness ... King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz mourns the death of his brother and his Crown Prince Sultan who died at dawn this morning Saturday outside the kingdom following an illness," the Saudi state press agency said.

Prince Sultan's funeral will be held on Tuesday, the statement said.

He was an "important and influential senior prince" who played a key role in relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council, particularly Yemen, said Hussein Shobokshi, a columnist for the Asharq Alawsat newspaper.

"He was always in favour of stability and has always been in touch with various sectors of Yemeni society, tribal, governmental, and he was keen on having ... a smooth political climate that does not affect the kingdom," Shobokshi said.

With Prince Sultan's death, his brother Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, the longtime minister of interior, becomes the most probable candidate to be next in line to rule after King Abdullah.

Analysts believed Sultan had been suffering from a form of dementia, and a March 2009 US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks said he was "for all intents and purposes incapacitated".

He received a diagnosis of colon cancer in 2004.

Prince Sultan was the seventh of the 36 sons of King Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, who united and founded Saudi Arabia in 1932. Like Nayef and the deceased former King Fahd, he was a member of the "Sudairi Seven," the powerful alliance of seven surviving sons of Abdul-Aziz and one of his wives, Princess Hissa Al Sudairi.

Prince Sultan served as defence minister for nearly 50 years, the longest term of any Saudi minister, and brought advanced military hardware to the kingdom from the United States and United Kingdom.

Among his sons are Prince Khalid, who has overseen fighting against Yemeni rebels and commanded Arab forces against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, and Prince Bandar, who served as ambassador to the United States between 1983 and 2005.

A changing kingdom?

In 2006, the king formed an Allegiance Council meant to help oversee succession issues. The king has ultimate authority to choose the next crown prince and heir, and it remains unclear how exactly the council will interact with him.

Khaled al-Maeena, editor in chief of the Arab News newspaper in the Saudi capital Riyadh, said that whomever was chosen to succeed Abdullah would need to take into account "new faces" and a changing kingdom.

"It is very important for those who follow now, and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, to take into account, not because of Arab springs or Arab winters, but to take into account that there is a young constituency with different wishes and goals," he said.

Prince Sultan's official birthday in the kingdom is January 5, 1928, but some Western analysts believe he was actually born in 1924.

click here for article (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011102235021833.html)

[ВАЛТЕР]

Another Monarchist dead?

Nothing of value was lost.

[Nox]

inb4 USA accuses Iran of assassinating him

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

inb4 USA accuses Iran of assassinating him

They did, they injected him with cancer and dementia.

I think it also bares mentioning that the new possible successor (Prince Nayef) is more conservative than his brother King Abdullah.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Sultan Abdul, we hardly knew ye! He seems to have been a "liberal" within the extremely constricted context of Saudi Arabia.

Okay, is there a Saudi version of "Camelot"? Will we have Oliver Stone making conspiracy films about his death? will a whole generation of Saudi's spend the next several decades boring their offspring with accounts of exactly what they were doing when fate called Prince Abdul away?

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

Sultan Abdul, we hardly knew ye! He seems to have been a "liberal" within the extremely constricted context of Saudi Arabia.

This is what is potentially concerning.


Okay, is there a Saudi version of "Camelot"? Will we have Oliver Stone making conspiracy films about his death? will a whole generation of Saudi's spend the next several decades boring their offspring with accounts of exactly what they were doing when fate called Prince Abdul away?

:lol:

One can only hope.

[Iron Felix]

Saudi Arabia has been told to liberalize by their masters in America, and the personal opinions of the next Monarch will be irrelevant. This makes no difference, you already have Saudi tanks crushing civilians in Bahrain(tanks sold to Saudi Arabia by the USA, by the way).

[rundontwalk]

Speaking of Bahrain, I don't get what the US is trying to do here geopolitically speaking. Saudi's Eastern Province is mainly Shia, and that's where most of the oil is. So why are we antagonizing Shias by helping to oppress them in Bahrain? Don't get it.

And to the guy who died: Adios.

[Rafiq]

It upsets me he didn't die a more painful death, to be honest.

[bricolage]

ken livingstone's a scabby tool of the spectacle but I've always agreed with his comments on lampposts

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think it also bares mentioning that the new possible successor (Prince Nayef) is more conservative than his brother King Abdullah.

This is an interesting point, although "liberal" in Saudi Arabia consists of giving women the right to drive a car.


Saudi Arabia has been told to liberalize by their masters in America, and the personal opinions of the next Monarch will be irrelevant. This makes no difference, you already have Saudi tanks crushing civilians in Bahrain(tanks sold to Saudi Arabia by the USA, by the way).

The king of Saudi Arabia is one of the most powerful people on earth. Just because the USA is the dominant world empire it doesn't mean we should write off anyone who is strategically aligned with the US as a proxy. Saudi Arabia on the contrary is one of the more important Imperial powers of our era (they are the ones most responsible for "restoring order" in Bahrain for instance)


Speaking of Bahrain, I don't get what the US is trying to do here geopolitically speaking. Saudi's Eastern Province is mainly Shia, and that's where most of the oil is. So why are we antagonizing Shias by helping to oppress them in Bahrain? Don't get it.

And to the guy who died: Adios.

Because the Shiites do not have long-term control over the oil resources, the king does, and Capitalists are often more focused on short-term objectives than long-term ones.


It upsets me he didn't die a more painful death, to be honest.

For someone so quick to attack "Idealists" you are quite quick to offer moralizing judgement about people and the "worth" of their lives-no offense, that's just something funny I noticed.

[Iron Felix]

The Saudi royal family is the result of generations of incest and all that bullshit, don't overestimate their importance. They control the oil because America backs them and if they can't control it anymore America will stop backing them, or if America stops backing them they won't control it anymore either. They are puppets.