1. This takes either balls of steel or brains of jell-o. These people are not only powerful, some of them — like Miteb ibn Abdullah, head of the National Guard and son of the previous king, or al-Waleed bin Tilal, who controls the Kingdom Holding Company — have sizeable power bases of their own. It looks like at least one of the killings, of Abdul Aziz, youngest son of the prior king, wasn’t intended specifically as a hit, but was “killed while resisting arrest.” (The other one, of Mansour bin Mukrin, was a “helicopter crash” that lacked a certain subtlety)

So there’s a short window during which MBS is effectively holding them hostage to guarantee the obedience of their factions, but that’s not likely to last very long, and if he fucks up and any of them die, that card goes away immediately.

Given that he does not control the National Guard, this could go very badly very quickly.

2. As a result, MBS has to consolidate power pretty much completely in the next 24 hours, or very nasty things will happen to him. The good option is if he’s simply executed and we return to power-struggle-as-usual; the bad option would be if he partially consolidates power, and this turns into an all-out civil war.

3. The Sunni part of the Islamic world is basically propped up by a combination of Saudi money (generally distributed as part of the princelings’ complicated internal power struggles) and Egyptian influence. A civil war knocks the pillars out of that, and would largely leave the Sunni world in chaos. This eliminates pretty much any systematic opposition to Iran’s expansion of power into border regions, and means that places like Bahrain and Kuwait are likely to increasingly fall into their orbit.

4. Saudi Arabia produces about 12% of the world’s oil. Together with the countries in its immediate vicinity, who would likely be directly affected by a major war in their area, we’re looking at about 23%. (That doesn’t count Iraq or Iran, who are another 10%) If that much oil is no longer predictably in circulation, the value of oil from other sources suddenly goes up by a lot.

5. The world’s largest single producer of oil, at 13%, is Russia. NB also that Russian global influence tends to be very correlated to its ability to use oil and gas as negotiating leverage with recalcitrant countries, especially in Europe.

Also note that the value of a stake in Rosneft, the Russian state-owned exploration company, is correlated quite sharply with this. (So who has that 19.5% that was mysteriously sold last December again?)

6. None of this is to say that Prince Mushn — I mean Kushner came up with some kind of dastardly plot on his own. I would frankly find it shocking if he did.

7. It is getting towards the end of 2017, the time of year when people are likely to make statements about how glad they are that this damned year is over and they hope 2018 will be better.

Do. Not. Tempt. The Fucking. Fates.

Remember what you were saying around the end of last year? Now think about this year. Consider, also, that 2017 was the year that the chaos of Trumpism — the rule of the “American Yeltsin,” as I recently argued — started to spread across the US. 2018 is likely to be the year in which that power vacuum starts to really make itself felt around the world, in addition to continuing its spread through the US.

This smells like the very small beginning of a lot more trouble. 2018 is not going to be pretty; it will be the first full year of the post-American century.