Saudi Arabia’s King makes major cabinet reshuffle

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.

AlJazeera says that Thursday’s shake-up is the first since the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October by a Saudi hit squad.

The death sparked outrage internationally and jeopardised Riyadh’s relations with its western allies.

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

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”.

“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 Khashoggi on October 2.