Dear Saudi Friends

I recently re-read part of an interview that your Crown Prince gave to the Atlantic while he was doing his tour in the US. I am really fond of your Crown Prince, I think he is amazingly brave and selfless, and those are a great quality for a leader. But to be honest, I think that interview was not great. It made me feel your Crown Prince needs help with his communication with the West. As I said before, I am writing here because I want to be your Crown Prince's communication advisor. If you know him, please tell him. Something in that interview caught my attention in particular. The journalist who was obviously quite familiar with the Middle East, asked His Highness about how Saudi Arabia at some point in history funded radical groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that they are now fighting. His Highness didn’t deny it and said “If we went back in time, we would do the same thing. We would use these people again. Because we were confronting a bigger danger—getting ri...

I should have published this piece much sooner, it’s been on my mind since the spring, but I feel the topic is sensitive and I suppose, as a French blogger writing for Saudis, I had this idea that you need to make sure you can walk before you start to run. Anyway, here you go. This piece is about what my years in advertising have taught me about President Trump’s relationship to Saudi Arabia . I have worked in communication and advertising for almost a decade. People sometimes think I was a creative because I am a good writer, but no. I was what you call a account person, what people sometimes call a suit, one of the rather serious ones. My job was to serve clients. I actually started my career in management consulting. And after transitioning to communication and advertising, there is one thing I learnt after a while. There are two ways to serve a client: either you give a client what he wants, or you give a client what he needs. You would think clients know what t...

Dear Saudi friends, Over the last few weeks, something has come back to my ears and since I was failing to understand it, it has left me wondering where this was coming from. It’s this thing about how some Saudis call Iran a Nazi regime. The Crown Prince has referred to it in an interview with The Atlantic, saying the Iranian leader makes Hitler look good. Maybe the Crown Prince started it, in this interview, but I have seen it again since, the Iranian regime being referred to as Nazi. When that interview came out, honestly, it was like my worst nightmare. I am very fond of your Crown Prince, I would love to work for him as a communication advisor but the headline really made me wonder. I really wondered why he said that. And then I read the interview and I thought it was even worse. I like your Crown Prince, I support his reforms, but I thought it was wrong to compare the Iranian leader to Hitler. I am European and I don’t think people should refer to Hitler ligh...

Dear Saudi friends, A few months ago, I decided to go back to Twitter. I don’t really like Twitter, I am more a Facebook kinda girl but I was curious about you and your conversations, and I was told those conversations are happening on Twitter. So I went back to Twitter. I started following officials, ministers and embassies, I also started following a few regular Saudis. I started reading conversations. Honestly, I must have pressed “translate” a thousand times at least by now. I can tell you the translation from Arabic is pretty bad, but I am grateful it’s there. I learnt a lot about you. I felt you were a country that was proud of its past, of its traditions, but with the new vision the Crown Prince has been promoting, I feel you also are a country that looks quite eagerly to the future. But then, there was this thing. It came up a lot in conversations, and honestly, it surprised me. It came up when there were those rumors that the Crown Prince was dead. ...