The politician, writer, economist, and urban planning consultant Antoni Vives has lived for six and a half years in Saudi Arabia, at the service of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), designing and promoting the construction of the linear city Neom, in the desert at the northern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, on the Red Sea coast; a unique commitment to sustainable modernity, conceived for architects and engineers as well as botanists. Civilization and nature: 170 km long, on paper it is designed to run on renewable energies and intended for 9 million inhabitants who will not need to use cars, with all personal and collective services within 5 minutes. It is the largest open-air construction project in the world. Will they succeed?

Of all the Persian Gulf monarchies that have suffered attacks from Iran since Washington initiated the war, Saudi Arabia is in the most confusing position, immersed in a genuine strategic dilemma. Among other reasons, because it is the largest and most powerful country in the region, the one with the oldest and closest ties to the United States, but the one which, along with Oman, has suffered least from the wrath of the ayatollah regime. At least, until now. Therefore, contradictory news has been published about how and when Riyadh would like the war to end, and what its future security strategy might be, given the failure of the current one.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) smiles a lot. He's a sophisticated, Machiavellian Trump. He can be charming, he can be bloodthirsty. Cunning. The international community accused him of ordering the dismemberment of the correspondent of the Washington PostJamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen, was also accused of spying on and blackmailing Western leaders and politicians. For a time, he was isolated. But Saudi Arabia has too much economic and geostrategic relevance: it has oil, it's an enemy of Iran, there were the failed Abraham Accords to normalize relations between the Arab world and Israel, there are the military bases... Joe Biden already went to Riyadh to rehabilitate him.

In the middle of some high tensions and after that Washington to withdraw military aid to Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the first meeting of a week that could be key to ceasefire negotiations. On Tuesday, a Ukrainian delegation is scheduled to meet with US representatives in the city of Jeddah after the Ukrainian's shaky visit to the White House. Zelensky arrives with the intention of proposing to the United States a partial truce, at sea and in the air, as he had previously said. He made progress last week in a public statement addressed to Washington.