{"id":27110,"date":"2018-12-27T15:54:02","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T15:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27110"},"modified":"2018-12-27T15:54:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T15:54:02","slug":"saudi-king-demotes-foreign-minister-adel-al-jubeir-in-reshuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27110","title":{"rendered":"Saudi king demotes Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in reshuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has appointed a new foreign minister as part of a major cabinet reshuffle, according to Saudi state media.<\/p>\n

A royal decree named Ibrahim al-Assaf as new foreign minister, demoting outgoing chief diplomat Adel al-Jubeir to the position of minister of state for foreign affairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thursday’s shake-up is the first since the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi<\/a> in Istanbul in October by a Saudi hit squad.<\/p>\n

The death sparked outrage internationally and jeopardised Riyadh’s relations with its western allies.<\/p>\n

Turkey and western intelligence agencies have either hinted at or directly named King Salman’s son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman<\/a>, as the mastermind behind the killing but the monarch left his heir’s portfolios unchanged in the latest reshuffle.<\/p>\n

Marwan Kabalan, head of policy analysis at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, said the move did not come as a surprise given that al-Jubeir was seen as a “leftover from the [late] King Abdulla era”.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been expecting al-Jubeir to be out for some time. Even before the Khashoggi affair,” Kabalan said in reference to the murder of\u00a0Khashoggi\u00a0on October 2.<\/p>\n

“But I now think he’s been used as another scapegoat in this issue.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Authorities in Riyadh admitted to the killing of the government critic in an operation they described as being undertaken by “rogue elements.”<\/p>\n

“I think he is out now – perhaps at the right time for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As I said, the crown prince wanted to use somebody as a scapegoat and also hold him responsible,” Kabalan added.<\/p>\n

“Because the Saudi consul general in Istanbul was very much involved in the killing of Khashoggi and that would fall under al-Jubeir.”<\/p>\n

A former finance minister, al-Assaf was among dozens of royal family members, government officials, and top businessmen detained during an “anti-corruption purge” in November 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other notable changes include the appointment of Prince Abdullah bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz as chief of the National Guard, replacing Prince Miteb bin Abdullah.<\/p>\n

General Khalid bin Qirar al-Harbi was also named general security chief, while Musaed al-Aiban was appointed national security adviser.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has appointed a new foreign minister as part of a major cabinet reshuffle, according to Saudi state media. A royal decree named Ibrahim al-Assaf as new foreign minister, demoting outgoing chief diplomat Adel al-Jubeir to the position of minister of state for foreign affairs.\u00a0 Thursday’s shake-up is the first since the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}