The new Saudi Crown Prince just threw shade at the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling him the “new Hitler.”

Saudi Arabia and Iran don’t like each other much. After all, Saudi Arabia is Sunni Muslim, and Iran is Shia. But now young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — or MBS — just cranked the animosity up a notch. Here’s what he said in a New York Times interview published Thursday:

“But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.”

That didn’t go over very well in Tehran. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called MBS’s comments “immature, misjudged, and worthless.”

Moreover, in the NYT article we also find that MBS kinda likes President Trump. Looks like we have a Middle East food fight brewing.

I’m no Middle East expert, but I’m seeing some really interesting news coming out of Saudi Arabia. We’ve all heard about the Prince’s decision to allow women to drive, starting in 2018. But now a royal Princess will head a Saudi sports federation — the first woman in that position.

Then there’s the real shocker — which went unreported by US media: a top Saudi scholar just issued a fatwa saying that Muslims are allowed to pray in churches and synagogues, as well as in Sufi and Shiite mosques.

Now you may find that ruling a bit of a head scratcher. After all, what devout Muslim would even want to pray in a church or — horrors! — a synagogue? Yet the scholar, al-Manea, said that Islam is a religion of ‘tolerance and mercy,’ not of  ‘violence, intolerance, or terrorism.’

That’s not exactly the sentiment we’ve seen coming from the likes of, say, Al-Queda, founded by that most notorious of Saudi nationals, Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, as the religion writers at GetReligion note, al-Manea’s pronouncement holds water only for those Muslims who revere him. Islam has no equivalent of a pope. Yet his fatwa is progressive for this nation, which is entrenched in ultra restrictive Wahhabi Islam.

So what’s happening in the Saudi kingdom? Could we be seeing the start of some true reforms at the hands of this millennial Prince? It’s anyone’s guess. After all, this is the same Crown Prince who ordered the arrests and beatings of other Saudi princes and elites just three weeks ago. So the kingdom continues to be a brutal place. But I’m old enough to remember when it seemed that the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain would never come down, either. At this point all we can do is cautiously watch and hope for the best.