He talked about the movie business with Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Dwayne Johnson over dinner at Rupert Murdoch\u2019s house. He discussed space travel with Richard Branson in the California desert, and philanthropy with Bill Gates and technology with Jeff Bezos in Seattle. He visited Harvard and MIT, brokered arms deals with President Trump and sat down with Wall Street financiers. He even met with Oprah Winfrey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For nearly three weeks, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 32-year-old heir to the Saudi throne, has crisscrossed the United States, on an ambitious, choreographed journey through modern American life, while under heavy guard because of his many enemies in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prince, who arrived in America with a reputation as an aggressive consolidator of power back home and a zealous interventionist abroad, is seeking to change the perception of Saudi Arabia from an opaque and conservative kingdom, where mosques promote extremist ideology and women are relegated to second-class status, to a modernist desert oasis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prince Mohammed also has sought to attract American investors for industries going well beyond Saudi Arabia\u2019s Aramco petroleum giant. He is pressing what he has described as a transformative economic agenda, to wean the kingdom from reliance on oil and diversify its economy through public infrastructure investments and development of an entertainment industry \u2014 including theme parks along the lines of Six Flags and Disney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s brilliant and I will tell you why,\u201d said Adam Aron, the chief executive of the movie theater chain AMC, who has met with the prince. \u201cThe crown prince is aware that Saudi Arabia has had a difficult image in the United States, because it\u2019s been such a conservative country for so many decades. He wants to transform Saudi society in ways that will be very appealing to Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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