On Thursday, the Atlantic published excerpts from a lengthy interview with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (commonly known as MBS). According to the transcript published by the Saudi Press Agency, the crown prince stated that “We don’t look at Israel as an enemy. We look to it as a potential ally, with many interests that we can pursue together.” Nonetheless, he seemed to insist that the Israel-Palestinian conflict would have to be resolved before that could happen. Yoni Ben Menachem analyzes MBS’s comments about Israel and about Iran, and seeks to put them in context:

This is the first time the Saudi crown prince has publicly referred to Israel as a “potential ally.” He also spoke about Iran in a different tone. In an Atlantic interview four years ago, bin Salman compared Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to “Hitler” and said Iran was leading the “axis of evil.” This time such talk was replaced by calling the Iranians “neighbors” of Saudi Arabia. . . . Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna, Saudi Arabia has been very cautious in its statements about its Shiite rival, Iran.

Mohammad bin Salman is the “strongman” in Saudi Arabia, already wielding major security and diplomatic power, and he is apparently on track to become the next Saudi king. This only underlines the importance of what he says about Israel and how he views it as a “potential ally” of Saudi Arabia against Shiite Iran, though he did not say that explicitly.

MBS sees Israel as an ally of Saudi Arabia, but so long as his elderly father, King Salman, is alive, it is hard for him to deviate from the traditional Saudi line on Israel. At the same time, calling Israel a “potential ally” is undoubtedly a further positive step in preparing Arab hearts and minds for normalization with Israel, especially when done on the eve of a renewed nuclear deal with Iran in Vienna.

What, then, explains MBS’s tepid rhetoric about the Islamic Republic? The crown prince knows he is in a bad odor with the current administration, and is likely unwilling to antagonize it further with any statements that might come across as critical of its Iran policy.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.