REWIND: Saudi Crown Prince invokes Hitler comparison to frame Iran’s ambitions as existential threat

MBS: Khamenei seeking to create ‘his own project’ in the Middle East, echoing Nazi expansion

⏪ FLASHBACK:

Reporter: “I’ve seen that you called Ayatollah Khamenei the new Hitler of the Middle East.”

Mohammed bin Salman: “Absolutely. He wants to expand. He wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much like Hitler did. Many countries didn’t realize how… pic.twitter.com/n9y7DDlxP0

— Yehuda Teitelbaum (@chalavyishmael) March 22, 2026

Reporter: “I’ve seen that you called Ayatollah Khamenei the new Hitler of the Middle East.” Mohammed bin Salman: “Absolutely. He wants to expand. He wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much like Hitler did. Many countries didn’t realize how dangerous Hitler was until it was too late. I don’t want to see that happen here.” Keep this in mind when you look at the current war, because even this comparison alone caused backlash at the time, which tells you how limited the space is for saying things like this openly. And even here, he’s only pointing to expansionism, not the other, more obvious parallel that everyone in the region understands but no Arab leader can say outright to his own population. Iran has spent decades funding militias, arming proxies, and destabilizing multiple countries across the Middle East, yet large parts of the Arab world are still fixated on Israel, while the governments themselves understand exactly where the real threat comes from and what it means when someone is finally willing to confront it directly.