A Glimpse of a Crown Prince’s Dream? Saudi Arabia Invades Iran in CGI

Seated in an animated command and control room in Riyadh, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia directs an invasion of Iran. In scene after scene, he orders a succession of superior weapons systems to pulverize the enemy. Finally, his forces corner the trembling figure of Qasem Soleimani, the revered commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, and the people of Tehran acclaim their Saudi liberator.

The animation, which first appeared on the internet in December and has been viewed more than 1.2 million times, offers a vivid portrait of Saudi Arabia’s increasingly aggressive stance toward its regional rival since the assent to power of the 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman — MBS, for short — the king’s favorite son and chief adviser.

Is it serious or a satire? The video appeared on YouTube and social media accounts under the name of a group calling itself Saudi Strike Force; the group declined to answer electronic messages to its social media accounts asking about its identity. An official at the Saudi Embassy in Washington said the kingdom’s government had no connection with the video. Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor who recently published a column explaining the challenges Prince Mohammed faces in the kingdom, suggested in an email that the Iranians themselves might have made the cartoon “to make the Saudis look silly.”

Other experienced observers said the animation showed an insider’s familiarity with the visual details of Saudi Arabian and Iranian weapons. The video was released almost simultaneously in Arabic and English, with subtitles in Farsi, Hebrew, Mandarin, Russian, Turkish and other languages, so its animators probably also had the help of a team of linguists.

And Saudi news organizations under the control of the Royal Court — including the Saudi newspapers Al Riyadh and Sabq — immediately hailed the video as a depiction of the “reality” of the kingdom’s armed forces. The newspapers would not have promoted the video without authorization from the crown prince himself.

“This represents how he sees himself, or what he would like to be,” said Bruce Riedel, the author of a new book about Saudi Arabia who worked for three decades at the CIA. “It suggests that at least some part of Mohammed bin Salman lives in a fantasy world, and if he really believes these things then we are on a course that could be extremely destructive.”

Other scholars suggested that one of the prince’s courtiers might have commissioned the video to flatter him.

Prince Mohammed is a longtime fan of animation and video games. His personal foundation set up a venture, Manga Productions, to produce Japanese-style animation about Saudi Arabia and its culture. And the crown prince has named as a top adviser to the royal court a contemporary, Saud al-Qahtani, head of the state-run Center for Studies and Information Affairs, who wages social media battles against regional rivals and defends Saudi Arabia against online attacks.

Al-Qahtani “lives in a virtual world” where he “leads a troll army,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who until a few years ago was a senior journalist for the official Saudi media.

“They are creating a virtual world where Saudi Arabia is a superpower and M.B.S. is the most popular leader,” Khashoggi said. “Of course, all this has his approval.”

The video appears to show an accurate reflection of the vast Saudi arsenal, with two exceptions. The tanks labeled in the video as Abrams M1s, the most advanced American model, look more like the outdated Patton M-60s. And Saudi Arabia does not have the ships needed to transport them to Iran, said Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

“The Saudis have a very limited amphibious capability,” Barrie said. “They do not have the platforms for a large-scale amphibious operation.”