This much, at least, can be said for Mohammed bin Salman, the putatively reformist crown prince of Saudi Arabia: He has made all the right enemies. Among those who would celebrate his end are the leaders of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and the entire clerical and military leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a bonus, there are members of his own family, the sprawling, sclerotic, self-dealing House of Saud, who would like to see him gone—or at the very least, warehoused at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, where the 32-year-old prince recently imprisoned many of his enemies and cousins during an anti-corruption sweep of the kingdom.

The well-protected Prince Mohammed does not seem particularly worried about mortal threats, however. He was jovial to the point of ebullience when I met him at his brother’s compound outside Washington (his brother, Prince Khalid bin Salman, is the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.). Prince Mohammed (who is known widely by his initials, MbS) seemed eager to download his heterodoxical, contentious views on a number of subjects—on women’s rights (he appears doubtful about the laws that force Saudi women to travel with male relatives); on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is, in the prince’s mind, worse than Hitler; and on Israel. He told me he recognizes the right of the Jewish people to have a nation-state of their own next to a Palestinian state; no Arab leader has ever acknowledged such a right.

Prince Mohammed, who is on a seemingly endless pilgrimage to the nodes of American power (he is in Hollywood this week) is an unfamiliar type for Middle East reporters accustomed to a certain style of Saudi leadership, which is to say, the functionally comatose model of authoritarian monarchism. Prince Mohammed’s father, the 82-year-old King Salman, is not overly infirm, but it is clear that his son is already in charge. And if the prince, his many handlers, and his partisans on Wall Street and in the White House (especially his fellow prince, Jared Kushner) are to be believed, he is in a genuine hurry to overturn the traditional Saudi order.

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PARIS — Mostafa Haji Mohamad, a medical worker, was just starting the morning shift at a cement factory in Syria when gunfire rattled across the desert. The air was stifling, and he and the other employees were on edge.

For months, they had worked to the percussion of distant fighting as the Islamic State waged fierce battles in the autumn of 2014 to seize territory in Syria’s rapidly escalating civil war. Their employer, one of the world’s largest cement makers, Lafarge, didn’t want to abandon the plant, but aimed to keep it running so it would be well positioned when the civil war ended. And the men, all local workers, had few other options for employment in a country where conflict was ravaging the economy.

Security managers urged the workers not to worry. Safety was a priority, they insisted. If the fighting got too close, Lafarge had an evacuation plan that included buses to get them out in case of danger.

As the men gathered that morning in a sweltering hall, Mr. Mohamad’s supervisor, the factory’s doctor, called with a frantic warning. ISIS had just taken the village closest the factory. “You’ve got to get out of there,” the supervisor said. “ISIS is coming!”

Mr. Mohamad and the rest of the employees ran outside. The evacuation buses were not there.

So they piled, one on top of the other, into two small cars and a delivery van. Mr. Mohamad jumped onto a rickety scooter and puttered nervously across the desert as explosions rang out.

They all got away. By nightfall, ISIS had captured the factory.

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