The recent changes in Saudi leadership were not a surprise to Iran. “We all knew this was coming. It was only a matter of time,” a senior Iranian official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.
In fact, last October, long before the appointment of Mohammed bin Salman as Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince, Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani told a gathering in Tehran, "Mohammed bin Salman, the second crown prince, is in a hurry and wants to set aside the first one [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef], and might even kill his own father to replace him.” The Iranian major general recalled a conversation that allegedly took place between Mohammed and a Syrian official in Russia sometime in 2016, quoting the Syrian official as saying that the Saudi royal “asked about [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, how he is, how his family is.”
