...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
on Saturday sacked two top aides to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
...
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia as of 2016....after conceding that critic Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its Istanbul consulate.
Deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and royal court media advisor Saud al-Qahtani were both part of Prince Mohammed's inner circle. Their ouster came alongside the arrests of 18 Saudi suspects and the dismissal of other intelligence officials.
Here are the profiles of the top aides:
AHMAD AL-ASSIRI
Assiri, said to be in his 60s, was a high-ranking advisor close to the royal court and often sat in during Prince Mohammed's closed-door meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries.
Prior to his promotion as the deputy head of general intelligence in 2017, Assiri served as the front man for the Saudi-led military alliance in Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...which has been battling Houthis since March 2015.
Fluent in French, English and Arabic, the hard-charging official had developed a reputation for hassling journalists whose reports were not to his liking.
The Saudi daily al-Hayat once described the major general, who trained at the renowned French military school Saint-Cyr, as the "best known Saudi pilot in the world".
Last year Britannia apologised after an anti-war activist attempted to make a citizen's arrest of Assiri, over Saudi Arabia's role in the Yemen conflict, and threw an egg at him during a London visit.
Before his sacking on Saturday, the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
reported earlier this week that Saudi Arabia would assign blame for Khashoggi's disappearance on Assiri to help deflect blame from the powerful crown prince.
SAUD AL-QAHTANI
A key counsellor to Prince Mohammed, Qahtani was a media advisor in the royal court.
He organised interviews with the prince for foreign journalists and also served as the head of the "Centre for Studies and Media Affairs", a unit operating inside the royal court.
Saudi sources say Qahtani, said to be 40-years-old, steered online propaganda campaigns against the kingdom's adversaries such as Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...and Iran on social media.
With 1.3 million Twitter followers, the firebrand
...
firebrandsare noted more for audio volume and the quantity of spittle generated than for any actual logic in their arguments...
official was known for aggressively targeting dissenters and rivals on the platform.
Writing for the Washington Post earlier this year, Khashoggi alleged Qahtani maintained a "blacklist" for writers critical of the kingdom and was known to intimidate them.
In an off-record interview to Newsweek magazine prior to his death -- which was published on Saturday -- Khashoggi described Qahtani and another Saudi top official Turki al-Sheikh as "thuggish".
"People fear them. You challenge them, you might end up in prison, and that has happened," he was quoted as saying.
He called Qahtani the "most important man in media", saying he controlled the government's PR activities.
A known loyalist to Saudi rulers, he tweeted last year: "I don't do anything from my own head without an order. I am an employee and executer to my king and my crown prince."