An audience with four US presidents, dinner with Rupert Murdoch, and the opportunity to pitch business ventures to American moguls such as Oprah Winfrey and Tim Cook.

These are but some of the high-profile meetings on a leaked itinerary of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s whirlwind three-week, seven-city trip to the US, as the heir to the Saudi throne endeavors to sell an image of an evolving regime in an effort to pique interest in political and economic investment in Riyadh.

A lunch menu for Donald Trump’s working lunch with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office at the White House on 20 March. Photograph: UPI / Barcroft Images

The marathon sprint has already seen Bin Salman receive a warm welcome from Donald Trump at the White House. The leaked schedule – including sumac-crusted halibut with Trump and coffee at Starbucks with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg – sheds light on the crown prince’s ambitions beyond Washington, with sights set on leaders spanning the tech titans of Silicon Valley to Hollywood’s rich and famous. As well as Trump, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and George HW Bush were all thought to be meeting with him.

The 32-year-old prince was appointed as heir to the Saudi throne by his father, King Salman, in June last year, and has since been regarded as the country’s de facto leader. He has fashioned himself as a reformer, vowing to modernize Saudi Arabia’s staunchly conservative regime.

Among his pledges are to break down some of the strict social rules that have earned Saudi Arabia the reputation of one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. Under Bin Salman’s stated vision, a 35-year ban on cinemas has been overturned and women have been told they will soon be allowed to drive.

And while skeptics argue the softer veneer is a smokescreen, aimed at masking Saudi Arabia’s continued human rights violations and aggressive posturing in the Middle East, the crown prince’s public relations campaign appears to be paying dividends in the US.

Mohammed bin Salman meets former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at a coffee shop in New York. Photograph: Bandar Al-Jaloud/AFP/Getty Images

“Generally speaking, there is a lot of interest and openness towards what Mohammed bin Salman is doing, in the sense that he’s succeeded in pushing this narrative of a new Saudi Arabia,” said Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution.

“Americans have a soft spot for these simplistic messages of modernization, this idea that the backward Arabs are finally getting their act together … There’s always going to be an audience for it regardless of its authenticity.”

Indeed, Bin Salman’s charm offensive comes against the backdrop of heightened scrutiny over Saudi Arabia’s projection of power in an increasingly fragmented Middle East.

US support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, which has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and the deaths of thousands of civilians, has been called into question and prompted a rare vote last week on reining in the president’s war powers. The Senate ultimately rejected a bipartisan attempt to limit American support for Saudi Arabia’s operations in Yemen on the same day Bin Salman sat down at the White House with Donald Trump.

Trump had boasted before the meeting that the US-Saudi relationship was “probably the strongest it’s ever been”.

Mohammed bin Salman is shown a quadruped robot during his visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Photograph: Bandar Al-Jaloud/AFP/Getty Images

“Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation and they’re going to give the United States some of that wealth, hopefully, in the form of jobs, in the form of the purchase of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world,” Trump added.

During the meeting, the two leaders also discussed their mutual opposition to the 2015 Iran nuclear accord. Trump has moved to decertify the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and is widely expected to reinstate sanctions on Tehran by a deadline of 12 May.

National security veterans have urged the president not to terminate the deal, but recent changes to Trump’s foreign policy team have elevated vocal Iran hawks to prominent positions.

Mike Pompeo, who until now has served as the director of the CIA, is poised to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state; and John Bolton, a former ambassador to the UN who argued in favor of bombing Iran, will serve as Trump’s new national security adviser following the departure of HR McMaster. Tillerson and McMaster were said to be more sympathetic to preserving the agreement, which lifted certain international sanctions on Iran after its leaders agreed to roll back the country’s nuclear program.

During his visit, Bin Salman has reiterated Saudi Arabia’s fierce opposition to the JCPOA and issued a sharp warning that the failure to reimpose sanctions on Tehran could escalate into military conflict in the region.

Mohammed bin Salman and the US Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, attend the Saudi-US Partnership Gala event in Washington. Photograph: Bandar Al-Jaloud/AFP/Getty Images

“If we don’t succeed in what we are trying to do, we will likely have war with Iran in 10-15 years,” Bin Salman told the Wall Street Journal this week.

In the interview, the crown prince also promised to lift more of the rigid societal restrictions that he said have prompted the country’s own people to seek opportunity outside its borders.

“We can’t drag people to live in Saudi Arabia in an environment that is not competitive,” he said.

“The environment in Saudi Arabia is pushing even Saudis outside Saudi Arabia. That is one reason we want social reforms.”

Despite the lifting of some barriers, rigid rules remain in place that require women to obtain a male guardian’s approval to acquire a passport, travel overseas or get married.

In a rare rebuke of the Saudi kingdom, a United Nations panel of independent experts reported that more than 60 well-known activists, including journalists, clerics and academics, had been detained since last September.

“This is an authoritarian regime that is becoming even more authoritarian, that has less and less tolerance for the most minimal dissent,” said Hamid.

Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud is welcomed by the US secretary of defense, James Mattis, during his official visit to Washington. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Bin Salman has nonetheless solidified a close rapport with the Trump administration, particularly through the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has regularly traveled to Riyadh over the past 10 months. With Kushner by his side, the crown prince has sought to further strengthen the political and business ties forged amid Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia last year, which marked the first time the country was chosen for a US president’s maiden foreign trip.

And although Bin Salman was warned by regional advisers ahead of his trip to Washington to draw some distance between himself and Trump, because of the US president’s volatility and unpredictable nature, the mutual admiration between the two was on full display as they sat down in the Oval Office last week.

After lavishing praise on the state of US-Saudi relations, Trump turned to the young successor and said: “You’re beyond the crown prince.”