Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia plays the diplomat

AS A YOUNG buck, Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, thought he could take on the world. He charged into Yemen, detained Lebanon’s prime minister and had his people chop up a mild-mannered dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Turkish city of Istanbul. When Western countries, such as Canada and Germany, criticised his human-rights record, he recalled his ambassadors. When President Barack Obama made overtures to Iran, a Saudi rival, Prince Muhammad threatened to sell the kingdom’s American assets. To the prince, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was akin to Hitler. He even tried to marshal an array of Arab and Sunni countries against Iran.Six years after his father, Salman bin Abdelaziz, became king, the prince, now in his mid-30s, may be changing, switching tactics from maximum pressure to maximum diplomacy, cutting his losses and trying to defuse conflicts. Facing resistance in the region and disapproval from President Joe Biden, he may have decided that the cost of his foreign ventures is unsustainable. Saudi foreign policy has begun to look much less aggressive.