Saudi Arabia is changing, full stop. Mohammad bin Salman is pushing through a sweeping reform agenda, with the explicitly stated aim of returning Saudi Arabia to a moderate Islamic state. We've already seen substantial change. The powers of the religious police have been greatly curtailed, women are allowed to drive, the state-owned petroleum company is being partly privatised and there are major plans for economic modernisation.
Whether this reform agenda actually comes to pass is yet to be seen, but I think we should applaud both the rhetoric and the efforts made so far.
Saudi Arabia is bombing and starving Yemenis as we speak. It has been destabilizing Syria by funding jihadis. It is still publicly beheading people for sorcery, witchcraft, apostasy, and sex outside marriage.
Women are NOT allowed to drive until at least a year from now, for "reasons". This was just a PR bone thrown to the West before starting the war on Lebanon.
Technically they've said that women will be allowed to drive at some time in future, possibly June 2018. As of today women are still not allowed to drive.
The reform agenda only reaches as far as the door to the throne room. Assuming perfect execution of western reforms we'll still be left with an enormously wealthy, powerful, and ruthless autocratic regime actively trying to spread their power far beyond their borders.
Unless they become a constitutional monarchy with severely limited powers I am going to hold my applause.
For a country like Saudi, if you want to make a large scale sudden changes which turns everything upside-down (even if those were good intentions), you will end up with something like Afganistan or Iraq.
The pace of change (however slow for our standard), is quite unthinkable for the locals. I think it will take a couple of decades, at least, to see if anything good came out of this.
Whether this reform agenda actually comes to pass is yet to be seen, but I think we should applaud both the rhetoric and the efforts made so far.