ISLAMABAD: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dismissed remarks by Donald Trump in which the US president said that he had warned the king he would not last in power “for two weeks” without US military backing and demanded he pay up.
“I love working with him. You know, you have to accept that any friend will say good things and bad things,” Prince Mohammed said in a Bloomberg interview published on Friday.
“We believe that all the armaments we have from the United States of America are paid for, it’s not free armament. So ever since the relationship started between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, we’ve bought everything with money,” Prince Mohammed added.
Trump made the comments at a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday.
Despite the harsh words, the Trump administration has had a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, which it views as a bulwark against Iran’s ambitions in the region.
Trump made Saudi Arabia his first stop on his maiden international trip as president last year. Saudi Arabia is the world’s top oil exporter and the de-facto leader of OPEC, which has been criticized by Trump for high oil prices.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince insisted the stalled plan to sell shares in oil giant Aramco will go ahead, promising an initial public offering by 2021 and sticking to his ambitious view the state-run company is worth $2 trillion or more.
The comments show 33-year-old Mohammed bin Salman’s determination to press ahead with the IPO even after Riyadh’s original timetable was undone by skepticism over the company’s valuation and a plan for Aramco to buy a controlling stake in the country’s biggest chemical producer.
“I believe late 2020, early 2021,” he said, discussing the timing of the IPO at the royal palace in Riyadh. “The investor will decide the price on the day. I believe it will be above $2 trillion, because it will be huge.”
Speaking late on Wednesday, surrounded by a handful of advisers, Prince Mohammed said the IPO was “100 percent” in the nation’s interest.
“Everyone heard about the rumors of Saudi Arabia canceling the IPO of Aramco, delaying that, and that this is delaying Vision 2030,” he said. “This is not right.”
Prince Mohammed said the IPO’s delay had its origin in mid-2017, when it became clear that Aramco needed a push into petrochemicals. He said it would had been unfair to go ahead with the listing only to surprise investors soon after with a big deal in chemicals.
The IPO project was first announced in 2016 as the cornerstone of the prince’s Vision 2030 plan to modernize the Saudi economy. Officials repeatedly said the deal was “on track, on time” for the second half of 2018, but earlier this year they said it would be delayed into 2019. Soon after, Aramco put the IPO on hold and instead started talks to buy a majority stake in local petrochemical giant Sabic, a deal potentially worth $70 billion.
“Everyone heard about the rumors of Saudi Arabia canceling the IPO of Aramco, delaying that, and that this is delaying Vision 2030,” he said. “This is not right.”