Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Photo: Bandar Algaloud / Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court / Handout via Reuters.

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that was published on Monday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — currently in the midst of a two-week visit to the US — acknowledged Israel’s right to exist.

“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation,” the 32-year-old Saudi royal said. “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

Asked about antisemitism in his country, Prince Mohammed stated, “Our country doesn’t have a problem with Jews. Our Prophet Muhammad married a Jewish woman. Not just a friend — he married her. Our prophet, his neighbors were Jewish. You will find a lot of Jews in Saudi Arabia coming from America, coming from Europe. There are no problems between Christians and Muslims and Jews. We have problems like you would find anywhere in the world, among some people. But the normal sort of problems.”

Israel, the crown prince noted, “is a big economy compared to their size and it’s a growing economy, and of course there are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and countries like Egypt and Jordan.”

Prince Mohammed — commonly known as MBS in the West — had strong words for Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying the head of the Tehran regime “makes Hitler look good.”

“Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader is trying to do,” Prince Mohammed explained. “Hitler tried to conquer Europe. This is bad…But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world. He believes he owns the world. They are both evil guys. He is the Hitler of the Middle East. In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened. We don’t want to see what happened in Europe happen in the Middle East. We want to stop this through political moves, economic moves, intelligence moves. We want to avoid war.”

Last week, Prince Mohammed met in New York City with around a half-dozen representatives of major American Jewish groups.