Yet, the arrests served a different function for Mohammed bin Salman. He appears bent on instilling a new sense of purpose in his people, a national cohesion no longer driven by religious ideology but by nationalism. The Saudi-led war in Yemen and the diplomatic standoff with Qatar have helped feed that swelling patriotic pride. (Opening new movie theaters and allowing concerts certainly won’t do it.) Such nationalism thrives when there’s an external enemy—real or perceived.

In the days since the arrests, the outraged reactions from the rest of the world have subsided somewhat. Already, the headlines are shifting back to the kingdom’s moves towards social change. Princess Hayfa, the daughter of the late King Abdullah, graces the cover of this month’s Vogue Arabia. Loosely veiled and dressed in white, she poses seductively behind the wheel of a red convertible. Ahead of the end of the driving ban, Saudi Arabia also just passed a groundbreaking law criminalizing sexual harassment. More glowing press coverage is sure to follow.

Mohammed bin Salman also has little to fear from the West. The Trump administration is largely unconcerned with human rights. Even the Europeans are unlikely to mount much of a protest—they’re too busy assessing the fallout of Trump’s exit from the nuclear deal and imposition of additional sanctions on Tehran. European nations, especially France and Britain, will no doubt look to Saudi Arabia for new business opportunities.

Soon after the arrests, a government-affiliated news site tweeted a picture of a poster with the headline “No room for traitors among us,” followed with a one-line explanation: Those arrested had conspired with foreign entities to undermine Saudi Arabia’s creed and religion and stoke public opposition. The faces of those arrested were stamped with the word traitor, in red. Several newspapers parroted the accusations and published similar graphics, but offered no details or evidence—this was trial by media. Rarely, if ever, has the word traitor been bandied about so publicly in Saudi Arabia, a country more accustomed to judging people by religious, rather than nationalistic, standards.

Inside and outside the kingdom, Saudis speculated that the smear campaign received the government’s official blessings—an ominous sign for the detainees. Their loyalty to the country is now in question, and the word traitor is a hard stain to lose. Neither the rich Saudis rounded up in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel last year, nor the hardline clerics arrested during the same period, received such branding.

What caught my attention was a hashtag that began trending on Twitter in the hours after news of the arrests became public, promoted by hundreds if not thousands of users in Saudi Arabia, a country with over 5 million very active Twitter users: umala’ al safarat—or “agents of the embassies,” in Arabic. The phrase echoed an epithet used by Hezbollah, the Shia militant group in Lebanon: shia al safarat, or “Shia of the embassies.” Hezbollah uses the term to discredit, undermine, or, on some occasions, sanction violent mobs against progressive, usually secular Shias, who refuse to submit to the group’s politics and worldview. The implication is that these Shias cavort with Westerners and undermine the resistance against imperial designs. It’s a bizarre twist when Saudis adopt—knowingly or by happenstance—an epithet favored by Iran’s ally in Lebanon.