The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

A year after the murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, FRONTLINE investigates the rise of Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. In a two-hour documentary, Martin Smith — who has covered the Middle East for FRONTLINE for 20 years — examines the crown prince's vision for the future of Saudi Arabia, his handling of dissent and his ties to Khashoggi's killing.

“It happened under my watch,” Mohammed bin Salman told FRONTLINE’s Martin Smith. Still, he maintained that he had no knowledge of any plan.

FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith raises serious questions about how Khashoggi’s murder in October 2018 could have been, as the Saudis have insisted, a “rogue operation.”

In never-before-seen interview footage from years before his murder, Jamal Khashoggi praised the military campaign against Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen, launched by then-defense minister Mohammed bin Salman, while talking with FRONTLINE’s Martin Smith. “Look, for Saudi Arabia it is a 1939 moment,” Khashoggi said, comparing Iran to Nazi Germany.

In never-before-seen interview footage from shortly before he published his first Washington Post column criticizing Mohammed bin Salman, Jamal Khashoggi told FRONTLINE’s Martin Smith that he didn’t want to be a dissident — but that he also didn’t want to be silent. An excerpt from "The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia."