Leading the Counter-Revolution

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SWP Research Paper
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
German Institute for International
and Security Affairs

Guido Steinberg

Leading the
Counter-Revolution
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring

RP 7
June 2014
Berlin

All rights reserved.
© Stiftung Wissenschaft
und Politik, 2014
SWP Research Papers are
peer reviewed by senior
researchers and the executive board of the Institute.
They express exclusively
the personal views of the
author(s).
SWP
Stiftung Wissenschaft
und Politik
German Institute
for International
and Security Affairs
Ludwigkirchplatz 3­4
10719 Berlin
Germany
Phone +49 30 880 07-0
Fax +49 30 880 07-100
www.swp-berlin.org
[email protected]
ISSN 1863-1053
Translation by Meredith Dale
(English version of
SWP-Studie 8/2014)

Table of Contents

5

Problems and Recommendations

7
7
10

Protests in Saudi Arabia
The Islamist and Liberal Oppositions
The Shiite Protest Movement

13

Iranian-Saudi Relations

15
15
15
16
17
19
21

A New Offensive Regional Policy
Solidarity of Monarchs and Autocrats
The Union of Gulf States
Jordan, Morocco and the GCC
With the Egyptian Army against the
Muslim Brotherhood
Counter-Revolution in Bahrain
Revolution in Syria

25

Conclusions and Recommendations

27

Abbreviations

Dr. Guido Steinberg is a Senior Associate in
SWP’s Middle East and Africa Division

Problems and Recommendations

Leading the Counter-Revolution
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has survived the revolutions in the Arab world largely unscathed and entrenched itself as the undisputed leader of both the
Gulf monarchies and the wealthy oil- and gas-producing states. Its example and the support it provides
shape the ways other still stable regimes deal with
protest movements. In this context, the Saudi ruling
family draws on significant historical and religious
legitimacy and uses its considerable oil revenues to
buy support.
It is, however, not only their relative stability that
distinguishes the Arab states of the Persian Gulf from
other countries in the region. Instead, in Saudi Arabia
and other Gulf states rulers’ fears of restiveness meld
with a conflict between Iran and its regional rivals that
stimulates growing confessional tensions. Saudi Arabia
and its allies see the Shiite protests in the Saudi Eastern Province and Bahrain not as movements against
authoritarian regimes, but in the first place as an Iranian attempt to topple legitimate governments with
the help of the Arab Shiites. Saudi Arabia has long
suspected Iran of seeking predominance in the Gulf
region and the Middle East, and has since 2005 pursued an increasingly resolute and sometimes aggressive regional policy vis-à-vis Tehran. Riyadh interprets
the unrest observed among Saudi and Bahraini Shiites
since 2011 first and foremost in that context.
The Arab Spring is therefore both a domestic and
a foreign policy issue in Saudi Arabia. At home the
Saudi leadership is pursuing a carrot-and-stick strategy.
In spring 2011 it quickly announced enormous direct
and indirect payments to the population, in order to
avert protests. At the same time, unambiguous threats
and a strengthened presence of security forces at
potential meeting places and in traditionally restive
areas sufficed to nip planned demonstrations in the
bud in March 2011. In the Shiite-populated east of
the country the government repeatedly ensured that
nascent protests were suppressed before they could
grow. Riyadh responded with particular hostility to
any cooperation between Shiite and liberal reformers.
Responding to the events of spring 2011, Saudi
Arabia also followed a twin-track regional policy.
Firstly, it attempted to stabilise the Jordanian and
Moroccan monarchies and backed the army in Egypt,
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Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

5

Problems and Recommendations

making it the most important proponent of the
authoritarian status quo (ante) in the region. Secondly, Riyadh countered Iranian hegemonic strivings
more vigorously than before. In March 2011 Saudi
Arabia led the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait
and Qatar to the aid of the Bahraini leadership when
protests by local Shiites threatened to spiral out of
control. Saudi Arabia is also acting assertively in Syria,
where especially since September 2013 it has been
supporting the opposition and rebel insurgents with
money and arms in order to hasten the fall of the Iranallied Assad regime.
Despite its sometimes aggressive foreign policy,
Saudi Arabia remains an important partner for Germany and Europe. But the relationship has become
less easy than it used to be. The question of where the
limits of cooperation lie will always have to be asked,
and debates will flare up over security-related matters
such as arms sales. Germany has an interest in Saudi
stability, so the construction of a border security system by Airbus Defence (formerly Cassidian) makes
sense from a political perspective, too, and should
continue to be supported by the German federal police
training mission. It is also understandable that Saudi
Arabia sees Iran as a threat and would like to strengthen its armed forces by purchasing warplanes such as
the Eurofighter Typhoon. On the other hand, arms
deals become questionable where there are grounds
to suspect that the supplied systems would be used
to suppress domestic opposition. The intervention in
Bahrain in March 2011 demonstrated all too clearly
the Saudi leadership’s willingness to take military
action against Shiite unrest both in neighbouring
Bahrain and in its own Eastern Province. It was therefore correct to refuse to supply the Boxer armoured
personnel carrier, because such vehicles are often
used to suppress unrest. Germany would have had to
reckon with seeing the personnel carriers used in the
Shiite areas, to the detriment of Berlin’s credibility in
the Arab world. In the conventional version ordered by
Riyadh, the Leopard tank is less problematic because it
is largely unsuited for internal deployment. But if the
Saudi leadership were to revive its earlier request for
the 2A7+ version developed specifically for counterinsurgency, Berlin should decline.
But German policies towards Saudi Arabia must be
about more than conducting trade and avoiding mistakes. The greatest threat to Germany’s interest in
long-term stability is the Saudi leadership’s mistaken
policies towards the Shiites. Riyadh’s regional policy
is governed by its fear that Iran might mobilise the
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Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

6

Shiites in the Arab world and ultimately even within
Saudi Arabia. That interpretation owes more to the
paranoia of the ruling family than any sober assessment of the situation on the ground. Iranian influence
on the Shiites in Saudi Arabia (and in Bahrain) is minimal and there is no evidence that Tehran could persuade them to rise against Riyadh. In fact it is Saudi
repression in the Eastern Province and in Bahrain that
threatens to drive the Shiites into the arms of Iran,
Hizbullah or Iraqi Shiite groups. Rather than coercion,
a political solution including full civil rights for the
Shiites in Saudi Arabia and in Bahrain is required.
That would also be an important precondition for
reducing confessional tensions – which have been
growing again since 2011 – across the entire region.
Although Germany’s influence here is very limited, it
has grown through the intensified contacts of recent
years. The German government should continue to
foster these ties and give them a political dimension.
Concretely, Berlin should always push for Saudi Arabia
to accept the Shiites’ demands for full equality and
an end to discrimination. For only through slow but
directed change can the Kingdom remain stable.

Protests in Saudi Arabia

The events in Tunisia and Egypt in February and
March 2011 also encouraged many Saudis to protest
against their own government. At the first sign of
unrest the government responded with detentions,
an increased presence of security forces, and warnings
to the population. At the same time King Abdallah
announced direct and indirect payments to the people,
intended to ameliorate the economic causes of dissatisfaction in the country. In February and March
2011 he promised to spend a total of $130 billion on
causes including tackling widespread unemployment
and housing shortages. 1 After this the west and centre
of the country remained largely calm, while the Shiites
living mostly in the east repeatedly took to the streets
nonetheless. Although the security forces always had
the situation under control, Riyadh remained concerned, as the protests in the east endured and parts
of the movement became increasingly militant and
uncompromising.

The Islamist and Liberal Oppositions
Sporadic protests in February 2011 led to calls for a
“day of rage” on 11 March, where Saudis were summoned to join demonstrations on the streets of the
capital Riyadh following the model of the Tunisians
and Egyptians. Anonymous activists set up a Facebook
group entitled “The people want to bring down the
regime” (al-shaʽb yurid isqat al-nizam), expressing
demands including an elected parliament, an independent judiciary and the release of all political
prisoners. 2 The day after the call was published, a
representative of the Interior Ministry went on staterun television to emphasise that all protests were
prohibited and that the security forces would prevent
any demonstrations. Another day later, the Council
of Senior Religious Scholars (Hay’at kibar al-ʽulama),
as the country’s supreme religious institution, announced that demonstrations or any other insurrec1 James Gavin, “Riyadh Spends to Curb Unrest”, Middle East
Economic Digest, (15–21 April 2011): 30–32 (30).
2 Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia. Repression in the Name
of Security (London, 2011), 43.

tion against the ruler were incompatible with Islam.
According to media reports the Saudi leadership
mobilised thousands of troops to prevent protests. 3
These measures were enough to keep the “day of rage”
from occurring. Just one demonstrator appeared at
the appointed place, where he was arrested shortly
after giving an interview to the BBC. 4 Only in the east
of the country were larger demonstrations reported
on and around 11 March.
Since early 2011 the government has repeatedly
taken action against Islamist and liberal critics. The
reasons behind the arrests and other measures were
not always clear. Open criticism of prominent princes
or the ruling family as a whole and overt challenges to
the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam predominant in
the country drew particularly harsh responses. While
this had been Saudi policy since the 1980s, the government appears to have interpreted the permitted bounds
of these two types of criticism somewhat more loosely
than in previous decades. That was probably largely
due to a change in threat perception: What the Saudi
leadership fears most, since the beginning of the Arab
Spring, is street protests by the youth. Those who refrained from calling demonstrations or directly criticising the ruling family could reckon with rather
more tolerance than just a few years ago. 5
Although this new line created a certain space for
expressions of alternate opinion, the government still
clamped down hard on liberal and Islamist intellectuals. Among the Islamists this primarily affected groups
and individuals strongly influenced by the Muslim
Brotherhood. The government’s position hardened
after it backed the Egyptian military coup against the
Brotherhood’s President Muhammad Mursi in July
2013. In Saudi Arabia this was also understood as a
message to the Islamists at home, who are not formally organised but have many supporters. In early
March 2014 the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry placed
the Muslim Brotherhood on a list of terrorist organisa-

3 Robert Fisk, “Saudis Mobilise Thousands of Troops to
Quell Growing Revolt”, Independent, 5 March 2011.
4 Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia (see note 2), 44f.
5 Interview with Saudi Arabian blogger, Kuwait, 4 March
2013.

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Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

7

Protests in Saudi Arabia

tions, even though no terrorist attacks have been attributed to it. 6
First affected was the group of Islamist intellectuals
who founded the Islamic Umma Party (Hizb al-Umma
al-Islami) on 9 February 2011. That was in itself a
provocation, given that political parties are banned
as un-Islamic in Saudi Arabia. The Umma Party has
existed since 2005 in Kuwait, where it originated in an
initiative by the Salafist activist Hakim al-Mutairi, who
is a leading theorist of a sub-group of the Kuwaiti
Salafist mainstream that blends Salafist thinking with
the political orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood. 7
In that respect the teachings of the Umma Party
resemble those of other parties in the Gulf that have
since the 1960s melded aspects of Saudi Wahhabism
with the ideas of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Mutairi, who seeks to reconcile Salafism with democratic principles, is sometimes described as a “liberal
Salafist”. 8 While this may sound very moderate in
theory, it is extremely threatening to regimes in the
Gulf. According to Mutairi, the Kuwaiti Umma Party
seeks to end the rule of the regimes in all Gulf states
by peaceful means, terminate the region’s fragmentation into smaller states (duwailat) and force the
Americans to withdraw from the region. 9 Although
the Kuwaiti Umma Party is only a splinter group, its
establishment in 2005 caused a great stir. Mutairi is
a well-known figure in the Gulf, and the Saudi leadership must have followed the developments in its
smaller neighbour with consternation. The political
scene in Kuwait is very liberal and pluralist by
regional standards, and is regarded as a nuisance, if
not indeed outright dangerous, in Saudi Arabia and
the UAE in particular.

6 The Muslim Brotherhood was the only non-militant organization on the list, alongside jihadist groups such as the
Syrian Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS).
7 The theorist of “scientific Salafism” is the scholar Abd
al-Rahman Abd al-Khaliq (born 1939), who expounded these
ideas in his main work The Path: Basics of the Method of the Ahl
al-Sunna wa-l- Jamaʽa in doctrine and practice (Al-Sirat: Usul manhaj ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamaʽa fi l-iʽtiqad wa-l-ʽamal) of 2000.
Interview with Hakim al-Mutairi and Sajid al-Abdali, Kuwait,
19 April 2007.
8 Stéphane Lacroix, “Comparing the Arab Revolts: Is Saudi
Arabia Immune?” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 4 (October 2011):
48–59 (50).
9 Mutairi said this in the presence of the author at a presentation of the goals of his party to young Saudi Muslim Brothers.
Interview with Hakim al-Mutairi and Sajid al-Abdali, Kuwait,
19 April 2007.

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Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

8

Experience with the Kuwaiti Umma Party also
shaped Riyadh’s approach to its Saudi Arabian offshoot. Although the two groups appear to cooperate
only informally, the Saudi Umma Party likewise
draws on the thinking of Hakim al-Mutairi, and made
this clear in its choice of name. Its founding document
calls for democratic reforms, including parliamentary
elections and a division of powers, but also the enforcement of Islamic values in domestic and foreign policy.
The founders were religious scholars, university professors and businessmen with Salafist leanings. 10 Despite its initially moderate demands, the Saudi ruling
family had to assume that the nine founding members
– like Mutairi and the Kuwaiti Umma Party – were
ultimately seeking to topple their regime, and their
response was correspondingly rapid and rigorous. The
founders were arrested within days, but released in
the course of 2011 after promising to refrain from political activities in future. Only the religious scholar
and lawyer Abd al-Aziz al-Wuhaibi refused to renounce
political activity, and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in September 2011. 11
Even Islamists who made less provocative demands
found themselves facing heightened state repression.
The case of Salman al-Auda (born 1956) was especially
prominent. He was one of the leaders of the Islamist
opposition after the Kuwait war of 1990/91 and spent
the years 1994–1999 in prison. After his release he
toned down his positions and became one of the country’s best-known scholars with his own television programmes and a professionally managed internet and
social network presence. 12 The regime stopped two of
his television programmes after he repeatedly spoke
approvingly of the revolutions in the region, and
he was also subjected to a travel ban in 2012. 13 These
measures did not, however, prevent Auda from publishing his thoughts on the Arab Spring in a book entitled “Questions on the revolution” (Masa’il al-thaura). 14
While the official response to Auda’s statements was
reserved, it sent a clear message to the Saudi Islamists.
10 The founding declaration and a list of founding members
were placed on the Party’s website, http://islamicommaparty.
com/Portals/Content/?info=TkRnNEpsTjFZbEJoWjJVbU1TWmhj
bUk9K3U=.jsp (accessed 5 September 2013). In spring 2014 the
website was no longer functional.
11 Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2012:
The State of the World’s Human Rights (London, 2012), 287f.
12 See Salman al-Auda’s website, http://www.islamtoday.net.
13 Monika Bolliger, “Islamische Kritik an der saudischen
Regierung”, Neuer Zürcher Zeitung, 17 April 2012.
14 Salman al-Auda, Masa’il al-thaura (Questions on the revolution) (Beirut, 2012).

The Islamist and Liberal Oppositions

Auda, namely, is regarded as a protagonist of a current
named Islamic Awakening (al-Sahwa al-Islamiya) that
arose in the 1960s and 1970s and, like the Umma Party,
combined aspects of Saudi Wahhabism with elements
of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood thinking. 15 This
current led the Islamist opposition during the 1990s,
which is one of the reasons for the Saudi regime’s
hostile attitude towards the Muslim Brotherhood as
a whole. Its disciplining of the popular Auda was an
unmistakable sign that the government rejected the
revolutions in the region, regarded the assumption
of power by the Muslim Brotherhood elsewhere as a
danger, and would not tolerate its activities in Saudi
Arabia (where it is banned anyway). When the government sharpened its stance towards the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, this was also understood as a message
to the Sahwa al-Islamiya. But as of early summer 2014
no more concrete action had been taken.
The liberal opposition also found itself facing
repression, although in its case this was nothing new.
However, the example of the reformers Muhammad
al-Qahtani and Abdallah al-Hamid in 2012 and 2013
drew great attention. Whereas Hamid has been one
of the country’s leading liberals since the 1990s, the
younger Qahtani had only become known to a broader
public in recent years. Qahtani drew attention for his
unusually strong criticism of the political system and
prominent members of the ruling family. While not
calling directly for the fall of the regime, he did predict that that would be the outcome unless it was
prepared to undergo fundamental reforms. He called
the powerful Interior Minister Naif bin Abd al-Aziz a
criminal on account of the mistreatment of thousands
of political prisoners and called on the king to sack
and prosecute him. 16 In 2009 Hamid and Qahtani were
among the founders of the Saudi Civil and Political
Rights Association (Jam‘iyat al-huquq al-madaniya wal-siyasiya fi al-Su‘udiya), which principally campaigned
for the release of political prisoners and political
reforms to expand participation and the rule of law.
In March 2013 both were sentenced to long terms of
imprisonment – Qahtani ten years and Hamid five –

15 For detail on this current see Stéphane Lacroix, Awakening
Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), passim.
Alongside Auda its most important figure is Safar al-Hawali
(born 1950).
16 Thomas Lippman, “Saudi Professor Faces Charges after
Fighting for Free Speech”, Al-Monitor, 29 June 2012.

by a special court originally set up for terrorism cases,
on charges including rebellion against the king. 17
Another case demonstrates how the government
responded especially testily to joint activities by liberal and Shiite oppositionists. Its ire was drawn by Muhammad Said Tayyib (born 1939), who has long been
one of the country’s best-known liberal reformers,
alongside Hamid, Matruk al-Falih and Ali al-Dumayni,
but less often the target of state persecution. In 2003
he was one of the most prominent signatories of the
“In Defence of the Fatherland” petition (Difaʽan ʽan
al-watan), calling for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. 18 The demand crossed one of the
regime’s red lines and it had some of the leaders
arrested, including Tayyib, who was however only
briefly detained. In December 2011 Tayyib presented
another petition together with liberal and Shiite
reformers, criticising the sentencing of sixteen liberal
intellectuals in Jeddah to long prison sentences and
condemning the brutality of the security forces against
Shiite protests in the east of the country. 19 Shortly
after publication of the document, the government
forced Tayyib to withdraw his signature and apologise
on state-run television. For several months he was
prohibited from leaving the country. This reaction
revealed what danger the government saw in the
Shiite street protests, such that it was unable to ignore
the demands of Tayyib and his collaborators for the
right to free speech, freedom of association and freedom of assembly. It also wanted to prevent at all costs
any alliance between the (Sunni) liberal and Shiite
oppositions. The petitioners’ open accusation that the
government was stoking confessional strife (ta’ifiya) by
permanently emphasising supposed Iranian influence
on Shiite demonstrators must have appeared an unbearable provocation to Riyadh, which places the blame
for growing religious polarisation firmly at the door of
Iran and the region’s Shiites.

17 Hamid also had to serve an older six-year sentence. Jürg
Bischoff, “Gefängnis für Dissidenten: Hohe Strafen in Saudiarabien”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 11 March 2013.
18 Difaʽan ʽan al-watan (In defence of the fatherland),
September 2003. The text can be found on Muhammad Said
Tayyib’s website: http://www.mstayeb.com/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=146:defa3aanwatan&
catid=20:isla7&Itemid=5.
19 Bayan haul muhakamat al-islahiyin bi-Jidda wa-ahdath al-Qatif
al-mu’sifa (Declaration on the prosecution of the reformers in
Jeddah and the sad events of Qatif), 5 December 2011, http://
www.mstayeb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=
article&id=259:bayan&catid=20:isla7&Itemid=5.

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Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

9

Protests in Saudi Arabia

The Shiite Protest Movement
In Saudi Arabia the Arab Spring was felt most acutely
among the Shiites of the Eastern Province. While
the west and centre of the country remained largely
calm, repeated demonstrations occurred in the Shiitepopulated regions and continued beyond 2011. The
Saudi leadership regards these protests as a threat
to the country’s stability, especially after the Shiites
in neighbouring Bahrain demonstrated against the
ruling House of Khalifa there. Riyadh fears that the
ongoing unrest since spring 2011 in allied Bahrain
could spread, regarding the situation as particularly
dangerous because it sees the Shiites in the Eastern
Province (and in Bahrain) as a potential fifth column
of Iran. Riyadh accuses Tehran of stirring up the Shiite
minorities in the Gulf states in order to destabilise
them. Since 2011 the trouble in the Eastern Province
has become chronic and many Shiite youths are
turning increasingly militant because they no longer
believe they can achieve equality by peaceful means.
This has produced a generation conflict with the older
representatives of the Shiite community, who made
their peace with the regime at the beginning of the
1990s but see their influence evaporating in the course
of today’s youth radicalisation.
The Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia has always suffered political, economic and cultural discrimination
and long rejected Saudi rule. Shiites represent up to
15 percent of the population, corresponding to a figure
of between two and three million. Most of them live in
the Eastern Province, where they represent about half
the population. Because this region is also home to the
oil industry and all the country’s major oil fields, the
“Shiite problem” acquires special strategic significance. The roots of anti-Shiite discrimination in Saudi
Arabia lie in the role of Wahhabism as a kind of state
religion and the deep influence of Wahhabi scholars
on the country’s religious and political culture. Wahhabism is a Sunni reform movement that refuses to
recognise Shiites as Muslims. 20 The conflict heated
up after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and has
remained on the boil since, despite a period of relaxation in the 1990s.
Only after relations with Iran worsened again from
2005 did the Saudi authorities return to a more repres20 Guido Steinberg, “The Wahhabiya and Shi’ism, from
1744/45 to 2008”, in The Sunna and Shi’a in History: Division and
Ecumenism in History, ed. Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 163–82.

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Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

10

sive approach. Riyadh feared that an increasingly
aggressive Iran could again seek to destabilise Saudi
Arabia, with the assistance of Saudi Shiites. Such
fears are only partially justified. Although it must be
assumed that Iranian intelligence services are present
in eastern Saudi Arabia and might even carry out
terrorist attacks, there is no longer any militant proIranian current among the Saudi Shiites. The policies
of the Saudi leadership are driven more by its prejudice-based mischaracterisation of the domestic Shiites
as Iran-loyal sectarians, and not by their actual political orientations. This has had fatal consequences,
because tightening repression generated huge bitterness among many Saudi Shiites. Resentment exploded
in February 2009, when Shiite pilgrims from the east
of the country clashed with Saudi security forces in
Medina. In the following weeks isolated incidents of
unrest were also reported from the Shiite-populated
east. 21
The situation in the Shiite areas was thus already
highly charged when news of the protests in other
Arab countries began circulating from January 2011.
After the government quickly reinforced its security
forces in the eastern regions, that spring saw only
isolated demonstrations by a few hundred Shiites.
Only briefly, immediately following the Saudi intervention in Bahrain on 14 March, did the numbers
swell to a few thousand. Alongside the heavy presence
of security forces, the government’s promise to improve their living conditions if the Shiites remained
quiescent was probably also a factor that kept the
Province a great deal calmer than neighbouring
Bahrain during the subsequent months. But dissatisfaction persisted after the security forces arrested
some of the leaders of the early protests. The detention
of the Shiite scholar Taufiq al-Amir at the end of February 2011 for demanding a constitutional monarchy
provoked particular resentment. The demand is rather
moderate, but one to which the Saudi government has
always reacted sensitively, especially when expressed
by a Shiite. 22 The next confrontation was more or less
inevitable.
Shiite youths clashed with police in early October
2011 in the Shiite town of Awamiya in Eastern Province, leaving eleven police injured by gunshots and
petrol bombs according to government reports. The
21 Toby Matthiesen, “The Shi’a of Saudi Arabia at a Crossroads”, Middle East Report Online, 6 May 2009, http://www.
merip.org/mero/mero050609 (accessed 23 November 2013).
22 “Saudi Arabian Authorities Release Arrested Shiite Cleric”,
arabianbusiness.com, 7 March 2011.

The Shiite Protest Movement

“events of Awamiya” marked the start of a series
of protests that escalated over the following three
months, especially after the first young Shiites were
shot dead on 20 November. Altogether twelve young
Saudi protestors were to die in 2011 and 2012. The
funerals of the young men turned into the largest
demonstrations seen in Eastern Province since 1979–
80. 23 The demonstrators demanded the release of the
political prisoners and an end to the discrimination
of the Shiites in Saudi Arabia. The events in neighbouring Bahrain were also widely referred to. The
Saudi Shiites called for the Saudi army to withdraw
from Bahrain and an end to the repression of the Bahraini Shiites. After demands to topple the powerful
governor of Eastern Province and even the House of
Saud as a whole, Riyadh cracked down hard. 24
The government accused Iran and the Lebanese
Hizbullah of being behind the protests and “undermining national security and stability”. 25 At the same
time it called on the Shiites to choose between loyalty
to Saudi Arabia, or to Iran and the leading Shiite
scholars there. If they chose the latter alternative, the
ruling family threatened, it would crush the opposition with an “iron fist”. 26 In January 2012 the Interior
Ministry published a list of twenty-three Shiite ringleaders for whom arrest warrants had been issued.
Some subsequently surrendered to the authorities,
but others went underground. In the following months
there were repeated incidents in connection with the
hunt for the fugitives, sometimes involving the use
of firearms. 27
Despite these countermeasures another wave of
demonstrations took place in July 2012. Thousands
of Shiites protested on the streets of the Shiite strongholds of Qatif and Awamiya, chanting anti-monarchy
slogans like “Down with Al Saud” and “Death to Al
Saud.” Two demonstrators died and about two dozen
were injured when the security forces used live ammunition. The protests were sparked by the detention
23 Toby Matthiesen, “A ‘Saudi Spring?’: The Shi’a Protest
Movement in the Eastern Province 2011–2012”, Middle East
Journal 66, no. 4 (autumn 2012): 628–59 (650).
24 Ibid.
25 “Saudi Arabia: Foreign Forces Support Unrest in Qatif,
Leaders Must Decide Where Their Loyalties Lie” (Arabic),
al-Hayat, 5 October 2013, 1, 6.
26 Ibid.; “Beginnings of a Shii Intifada in Saudi Arabia – and
Worries in the Gulf” (Arabic), al-Quds al-Arabi, 5 October 2011.
27 In March 2013 the security authorities also announced
that they had detained eighteen people for spying for Iran.
Nasir al-Haqbani, “Riyadh Confirms Spy Cell Worked for Iranian Intelligence Services” (Arabic), al-Hayat, 27 March 2013.

of the religious scholar Nimr Baqir al-Nimr (born
1960), who had since 2011 become a popular leader
of the Shiite anti-monarchy opposition. The Saudi
Interior Ministry claimed that Nimr and his supporters had resisted arrest on 8 July and attempted to flee
by car. During the chase through Awamiya the escape
car had collided with a police vehicle and Nimr had
been shot in the leg, it was asserted. According to the
official accounts, Nimr’s supporters had shot at the
police, who had only returned fire. Soon after the contested incident an image circulated on the internet
showing Nimr on the back seat of a car covered by a
bloodstained blanket. The protests re-erupted soon
afterwards.
Nimr had already been detained in 2004 and 2006,
but quickly released each time. Not until February
2009 did he become known to a broader public, when
he responded to the events in Medina by threatening
to establish a separate Shiite state in eastern Saudi
Arabia if the government continued discriminating
against the Shiites. 28 The speech spread like wildfire
on the internet and the security authorities began a
manhunt. Nimr succeeded in evading arrest during
the ensuing years and by February 2011 had become
an important figurehead of the Shiite opposition.
In his Friday sermons, widely circulated on video,
he sharply criticised the government and demanded
political and religious reforms. But in June 2012 he
overstepped the mark by calling for Shiites to celebrate the death of Crown Prince (and Interior Minister) Naif, whom he said bore the greatest blame for
the repression of the Shiites. 29
This sermon and the subsequent intense manhunt
were important reasons for his rapidly growing popularity. Nimr was in fact not one of the original leaders
of the Eastern Province Shiites, but more a marginal
figure who attracted attention above all for his exceptionally radical positions. His influence grew in the
course of the 2011 and 2012 protests, as he provoked
the established and moderate leaders of the Shiite
communities in the Eastern Province with unambiguous demands for an end to the reign of the House of
Saud. Many militant activists believed, like Nimr, that
the regime would not voluntarily end anti-Shiite discrimination. From July 2012 young Shiites increasing28 Matthiesen “The Shi’a of Saudi Arabia” (see note 21).
29 Toby Matthiesen, “Neu entfachte Unruhen im Osten
Saudiarabiens”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 23 July 2012. An abridged
version of Nimr’s sermon can be found on MEMRI TV, 27 June
2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSEG34wxgaY (accessed 9 July 2012).

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Protests in Saudi Arabia

ly emulated their counterparts in Bahrain, attacking
government buildings and police patrols with petrol
bombs. At night they frequently set up roadblocks of
burning car tyres. 30
By 2013 the Eastern Province was deep into a vicious
circle of repression. Ongoing youth protests amplified
the government’s fear of broader unrest that could
threaten the stability of the country. Older, established Shiite leaders like the traditional scholars and
younger Islamists like Hasan al-Saffar repeatedly
called on the youth to hold back, but their influence
declined noticeably after 2011. 31 The simple fact that
the protests frequently occurred simultaneously with
those in Bahrain and the Saudi Shiites plainly felt
solidarity with their brethren next door gave the issue
a regional policy edge. But it became especially significant because Riyadh suspected Iran of instigating the
protests, which it claimed represented an Iranian
attempt to destabilise the Arab Gulf states. This connection of domestic and regional threat perception
drove Saudi policy during the Arab Spring and has
had fatal consequences: Domestically it led the government to dismiss the Shiite opposition’s demands for
an end to discrimination, and to respond primarily
with repression. Its sometimes brutal methods may in
fact lead young protesters to look around for support
and find it provided by Iranian entities. At the same
time, relations with Iran deteriorated. For these reasons
bilateral tensions have escalated, with the relationship
looking increasingly like a regional “cold war”.

30 Matthiesen, “A ‘Saudi Spring?’” (see note 23), 656.
31 When Saffar and his group returned from exile in 1993,
they supplanted older Shiite scholars as discussion partners
for the government. Today they face a similar fate themselves.

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Iranian-Saudi Relations

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have worsened almost continuously since 2003, accelerating
since the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011. Saudi
Arabia and its allies saw the revolutions as dangerous
precedents and feared their impact on the stability of
the region’s monarchies. The Saudi government suspected that Iran might exploit instability in the Arab
states to expand its influence in the region, which
from Riyadh’s perspective had already increased greatly in recent years. The protests of the Shiites in Bahrain in particular were interpreted as a threat. Saudi
Arabia understands events in the region first and foremost through the lens of its conflict with Iran and has
since 2005 been responding more aggressively than
before to real and perceived Iranian “incursions”.
When the Arab Spring began, the Saudis felt that an
anti-Iranian line was even more important than before.
The trigger for a more active regional policy was
the accession of a Shiite-dominated, Iran-friendly
government in Baghdad in spring 2005. To this day
Riyadh rejects what it regards as an Iran-sponsored
Iraqi leadership under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki,
whom it regards as a fanatical sectarian. The second
main reason for the escalating conflict between Saudi
Arabia and Iran was the Iranian nuclear programme,
which Riyadh regards as an exclusively military affair.
The Saudi leadership finds itself sandwiched between
fear of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and becoming
a much greater threat to its neighbours, and worries
that the United States could be too conciliatory and
might accept Iranian regional supremacy in return for
concessions on its nuclear programme. That tough
dilemma shapes Saudi Arabian policy.
The Saudi fear of Iran escalated in parallel with the
revolutions of 2011. One reason for this lay in a covert
conflict between the United States and Israel on one
side and Iran on the other that also drew in the Saudis
and played a decisive role in their subsequently acting
so decisively in Bahrain, Egypt and Syria. Tehran
appears to have responded to the assassination of
Iranian scientists and the infiltration of the Stuxnet
computer virus by attacking Saudi Arabia, presumably because it lacked the necessary means to hit the
United States or Israel. Tehran launched its own cyberattack, against the Saudi oil company Aramco, while

terrorist cells controlled by Iran attacked Saudi diplomats. Altogether these incidents led to a further escalation and are likely to continue in the absence of a
resolution of the nuclear dispute acceptable to both
the Iranians and the Saudis.
The most serious cyber-attack experienced by the
Saudis occurred on 15 August 2012, when unidentified hackers crippled the computers of Saudi Aramco,
the world’s most influential oil company. This was
likely the Iranian response to the Stuxnet virus with
which the United States and Israel attacked Iran. Stuxnet first became known to a broader public in autumn
2010. It exploited several previously unknown security
flaws in Windows and other software to modify the
function of programmable logic controllers used in
power stations, industrial manufacturing systems
and heavy industry. The virus was able to take control
of infected systems without the Iranian operators
noticing. By this means, the US operators were able to
cause the centrifuges in the uranium enrichment plant
at Natanz to run at excessive speeds, causing irreparable damage and setting the Iranian enrichment
programme back by one or two years. 32 Even after problems occurred with the centrifuges, the Iranians failed
to realise that the cause was a cyber-attack. Only when
the virus appeared on computers outside Iran in spring
2010 did Western experts conclude that Natanz had
been its target. In June 2012 it was confirmed that
NSA and CIA specialists collaborated with Israeli
agencies to conduct the operation, codenamed “Olympic Games”. 33 Apparently lacking the ability to conduct a cyber-attack on American or Israeli targets, the
Iranians chose Aramco as an alternative.
Saudi Aramco is one of the world’s largest oil companies and the most important for the global oil
markets. 34 In August 2012 a virus, named “Shamoon”
32 Christopher Bronk and Eneken Tikk-Ringas, “The Cyber
Attack on Saudi Aramco”, Survival 55, no. 2 (April–May 2013):
81–96 (82).
33 The best description is found in David Sanger, Confront and
Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
(New York, 2012), 188–235.
34 Guido Steinberg, “Saudi-Arabien: Öl für Sicherheit”, in
Petrostaaten: Außenpolitik im Zeichen von Öl, ed. Enno Harks and
Friedemann Müller (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2007), 54–76.

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Iranian-Saudi Relations

after a word appearing in its source code, disabled
almost 30,000 of Aramco’s computers and also
affected the hardware of other energy firms including
RasGas of Qatar. It deleted most of the data from the
affected drives and displayed instead the image of a
burning American flag. Shamoon was significantly
less sophisticated than Stuxnet, infecting only computers used for internal communication and general
business, and not those that control production, pipelines and processing. The harm consequently remained
limited, even if Aramco did need almost two weeks to
repair all the damage. Although conclusive evidence
is lacking, the virus probably originated from within
the Iranian state, as the only entity possessing both a
strong motive and the considerable resources required
to pull off such an operation. 35 Tehran was primarily
retaliating for Stuxnet, but Saudi oil policy may also
have played a significant role. During the course of
2012, namely, Aramco had stepped up its production
in order to make up a shortfall caused by Iranian exports declining after the tightening of sanctions. Moreover, Saudi Arabia had approached important Iranian
customers in Asia to persuade them to buy their oil
from Aramco rather than Iran. 36
In its covert conflict with Saudi Arabia, Iran also
deployed more conventional methods that have been
part of the repertoire of the Iranian intelligence services since the 1980s. In this case, Tehran was responding to attacks on Iranian nuclear experts that are
generally attributed to the Israeli Mossad. Between
January 2007 and January 2012 five Iranian scientists,
all of whom were working for the Iranian nuclear
programme, were killed by unknown assailants. 37 The
Iranians struck back in 2011 by attacking Israeli and
Saudi diplomats. In May a member of the Saudi embassy in Karachi was shot dead in his car. In October
Saudi media reported that the life of the ambassador
in Cairo, Ahmad Qattan, had been saved in hospital
after a poisoning. But the highpoint of the campaign
was a failed assassination attempt of which Washington informed the public in October 2011. The target
was Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
According to the US Department of Justice, Mansour Arbabsiar, an Iranian-born second-hand car
35 Nicole Perlroth, “In Cyberattack on Saudi Firm, U.S. Sees
Iran Firing Back”, New York Times, 23 October 2012.
36 Samuel Ciszuk, “Oil Strike: Saudi Arabia Wields its Energy
Weapon”, Jane’s Intelligence Review, January 2013, 56f.
37 Dieter Bednarz et al., “Die rote Linie”, Spiegel, 2012, no. 10,
81–90 (87).

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dealer living in Texas, had been asked to carry out
the plot by two officers from the Quds Brigade of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard he met during a trip to
Iran. One of the two, a high-ranking officer not named
in the indictment, is reported to have been a cousin
of Arbabsiar’s. The plan was for Arbabsiar to pay members of a Mexican drug cartel $1.5 million to murder
Jubeir by placing a bomb in a restaurant he regularly
frequented in Washington’s Georgetown district.
Arbabsiar did indeed travel to Mexico, but the drug
smuggler he met with was a DEA source and he was
subsequently arrested in the United States. 38 The case
provoked great astonishment, with many observers
reluctant to believe that the powerful Quds Brigade
would rely on the services of a drug cartel and such an
obviously incompetent figure as Arbabsiar to conduct
an attack in Washington. The Quds Brigade commanded by Qasem Soleimani is, after all, known as a
particularly important and effective military, intelligence and political instrument of Iranian policy in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon. Yet Washington
appears to have no doubts as to its version of events,
and Arbabsiar pleaded guilty. All that remains obscure
is whether the top state leadership was in the know,
or militant circles within the Revolutionary Guard
acted on their own initiative. Despite the uncertainty
of the facts, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia
grew after the assassination attempt became known.
One clear sign of this was that the Saudi leadership,
in the person of Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, broke
with custom to explicitly blame Iran. 39

38 On the sequence of events see Peter Finn, “Iranian Militant Linked to Murder Plot”, Washington Post, 15 October 2011.
A detailed description can be found in the Complaint United
States vs. Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, Southern
District of New York, 11 October 2011), http://www.justice.
gov/opa/documents/us-v-arbabsiar-shakuri-complaint.pdf.
39 Ahmad Ghallab, “Saud al-Faisal: Iranian Attack on our
Diplomats Is Nothing New” (Arabic), al-Hayat, 25 November
2011.

A New Offensive Regional Policy

Still shying away from direct conflict with Iran, the
Saudi leadership has since 2005 instead moved to
block real or perceived gains in Iranian influence in
the region. Since relations deteriorated further after
2011, the Saudis have been pursuing three fundamental objectives: Firstly, working to bolster allied monarchies in the region and limit the growing influence
of the Muslim Brotherhood in the transformation
states. The Saudi leadership has pursued this policy
increasingly aggressively, openly approving the
July 2013 military coup against Egyptian President
Muhammad Mursi and in March 2014 declaring the
Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Secondly, Riyadh intervened militarily when protests by the
Shiite majority in neighbouring Bahrain threatened
the stability of the regime of the House of Khalifa.
Bahrain’s dependency on Saudi Arabia grew to such
an extent between 2011 and 2013 that it has become
unclear whether it is actually still an independent
state. Thirdly, from 2012 Saudi Arabia supported insurgent groups in Syria, so as to contribute to the
fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Here too, Saudi
policy appears to have become steadily more aggressive. In all three cases, Tehran sharply criticised the
Saudi moves. In the case of Syria the risk of escalation
is especially great because Saudi Arabia is directly confronting an important Iranian ally.

Solidarity of Monarchs and Autocrats
The Union of Gulf States
At the first sign that the protests in North Africa might
spread to the Gulf states, the Saudi government announced support for its financially weaker partners in
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Aid totalling $20
billion was promised to Bahrain and Oman, prompting ministers from the GCC states to speak of a “Marshall Plan” for the region. 40 In both countries the Saudi
40 James Gavin, “Taking the GCC Vision Forward”, Middle East
Economic Digest, supplement GCC Anniversary 2011 (London,
December 2011), http://www.meed.com/supplements/2011/
gcc-anniversary/taking-the-gcc-vision-forward/3098601.article
(accessed 21 January 2014).

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financial assistance made it easier for the governments to keep the protests in check. The government
of Oman was especially successful. Although, as the
second-largest GCC state, Oman sees itself as a rival of
Saudi Arabia and therefore probably had reservations
about accepting the aid, it would have otherwise had
difficulty conducting such an effective policy of carrot
and stick from spring 2011.
In January 2011 there were initially rather small
demonstrations in the Omani capital of Muscat, largely demanding social and economic improvements
such as pay increases and action to counteract rising
living costs and tackle widespread corruption. But in
February the protests spread to the port city of Sohar,
the country’s commercial hub. After the security
forces brutally suppressed them and killed a number
of demonstrators, the demonstrations expanded to
other cities. The government now made far-reaching
concessions, announcing new public-sector jobs and
increased pay and social benefits. In March it also dismissed a number of particularly unpopular ministers
for corruption and expanded the powers of the elected
lower chamber. 41 At the same time the security forces
and courts took what was by Omani standards a hard
line against the protesters. 42 In this way the government succeeded in restoring its control of the situation.
Since the 1980s Oman had frequently played an
obstructive role in the GCC, maintaining much better
relations with Iran than other members and frequently also impeding deeper integration among the six
GCC states. After the events of spring 2011, the Saudi
King Abdallah appeared to see an opportunity to
exploit Oman’s dependency on aid from its allies to
deepen integration. In December 2011 Abdallah proposed that the member-states of the GCC should join
together more closely in a political and economic
union. Although the pro-Saudi press celebrated this
project as a visionary move and an important response
to Iranian “interference” in the Gulf states, it was
actually an embarrassing blunder by the king, who

41 Peter Salisbury, “Mixed Messages on Reform”, Middle East
Economic Digest, 5–11 October 2012, 34f. (34).
42 Ibid.

A New Offensive Regional Policy

had probably not even consulted with his ministers. 43
It was clear to any observer that the GCC had previously failed to cooperate successfully on politically less
controversial projects such as a common currency. 44
Only the Bahraini leadership responded positively and
supported the idea of a closer union over the subsequent months. The reason for this was that Bahrain,
like Saudi Arabia, perceived a direct Iranian threat to
its security and after the Saudi invasion in March
2011 had become increasingly dependent on its larger
neighbour. Resistance to a Gulf union was led by Oman,
which saw it above all as an attempt by the Saudis to
further entrench their dominance of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Although at least the UAE and Qatar
probably shared similar reservations, they held back
with criticism. At the May 2012 GCC heads of state
summit a partial union of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
was still on the table, but shortly thereafter Oman
abandoned its delaying tactics and in June 2012 Foreign Minister Yussuf bin Alawi bin Abdallah declared
without further ado that there would be no political
union of the Gulf states. 45 When Saudi politicians
again raised the idea in December 2013, Alawi reiterated Oman’s rejection, triggering strong words on
the Saudi side. 46 Traditional Omani resistance to Saudi
dominance in the GCC probably played a role, but
Muscat could also no longer ignore the Iranian position. The official Iranian press opposed plans for a
union of Gulf states and also railed against the lesser
variant of closer cooperation between Saudi Arabia
and Bahrain. 47

43 For an example of such an obsequious piece, see “The
Federal Gulf Countries?!”, an-Nahar (Beirut), 21 December
2011.
44 The failure of the shared currency (originally to have been
introduced in 2010) stemmed from Kuwaiti and Omani resistance and a conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates
about the seat of the future central bank. A customs union
was approved in 2004 but never implemented. Matthew
Martin, “Plans for GCC Union Flounder”, Middle East Economic
Digest, 3 July 2012: 32f. (32).
45 Ibid.
46 Raghida Dargham, “Cooperation Council Fears IranianOmani Disruption” (Arabic), al-Hayat, 9 December 2014.
47 See for example “The Deadly Concern of Those Residing
along the Persian Gulf Coasts of the Arab Spring: Bahrain to
Be Integrated with Saudi Arabia”, Mardom Salari, 15 May 2012,
quoted from BBC Monitoring Middle East, Persian Gulf States’
Conflicts Can Create “Instability” in the Region – Iran Paper, 17 May
2012.

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Jordan, Morocco and the GCC
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies also worked to support
the surviving Arab monarchies in Jordan and Morocco,
which had both experienced only weak protests, and
to tie both closer to them. They were initially given
the prospect of joining the GCC, although the offer
was quickly downgraded to a “strategic partnership”.
With the original proposal, Saudi Arabia and its partners were probably mainly concerned to reassure both
monarchies of their solidarity shortly after the start
of the Arab Spring, but also to send a message to the
protest movements.
At the GCC summit in Riyadh in May 2011, Secretary-General Abd al-Latif al-Zayani announced that the
organisation would make both states an offer of membership and instructed the foreign ministers to work
out the details. Representatives of Jordan and Morocco
did indeed appear at the meeting of foreign ministers
on 11 September 2011 in Jeddah. In December the GCC
announced that it would fund development projects
to the tune of $5 billion in each country, with Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE each contributing
$1.25 billion in each case. 48
Again, the announcement met with widespread
scepticism because strong resistance was to be expected both within the GCC and within the Saudi
government. This was first of all connected with differences in economic structure between the Gulf
states and both Jordan and Morocco, which are economically much weaker than their Gulf partners. Both
would quickly have become an economic burden on
the Gulf states. Moreover, Morocco is geographically
much too far from the Arabian Peninsula to be taken
seriously as an accession candidate. In the case of
Jordan, the Gulf states would be accepting a country
where the Muslim Brotherhood is strongly represented and Palestinians comprise up to 70 percent
of the population. Many Gulf politicians regard the
activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinians as a potential danger that they would prefer
not to see imported into their own countries.
Accordingly, it became apparent in the course of
2012 that neither Jordan nor Morocco had any perspective of joining the GCC. Instead the December
2011 promises of $5 billion in aid for each served as
48 The five billion dollars were to be paid out over the
course of five years. “KSA to Finance Morocco Projects Worth
$1.25 bn”, Arab News, 18 October 2012; “Saudi Arabia to Provide Jordan with $487 mln for Development Projects”, Jordan
News Agency (Petra), 28 November 2012.

Solidarity of Monarchs and Autocrats

compensation for the subsequent failure to pursue
accession. Instead there was increasing talk of a “strategic partnership” with the GCC. 49 Nonetheless, Jordan,
which had suffered greatly from the economic repercussions of the Arab Spring, profited from Saudi
Arabia’s enhanced interest in the stability of its smaller neighbour. Rising energy costs caused by the loss
of cheap gas imports from Egypt were especially problematic. Saudi Arabia helped in July 2011 by lifting
the longstanding closure of its markets to fruit and
vegetables from Jordan and in October 2011 agreeing
to intensify cooperation between the two countries’
customs authorities to ease cross-border trade and
travel. 50 From 2012 growing assistance was provided
to care for Syrian refugees in Jordan, financed partly
by the Saudi government and partly by public donations. 51 Since 2012 both states have also been working
together to support the Syrian insurgency. 52

With the Egyptian Army against the
Muslim Brotherhood
While Saudi Arabia’s support for Bahrain, Oman,
Jordan and Morocco was about preventing revolution
spreading to the monarchies, in Egypt it worked to
restore the army and parts of the old regime to power.
Regarding the generals as the only possible guarantors
of stability, the Saudis supported the Egyptian military coup in July 2013. But it had taken more than two
years before Riyadh was able to decide to come down
so decisively on the side of the counter-revolution. In
the end, the most important reason was that it saw
the stability of the state endangered by the policies of
President Muhammad Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood and a growing polarisation of Egyptian society.
Saudi Arabia also wished to end the reign of the Islamists out of fear of ideological competition. Ultimately,
Riyadh worried that Tehran could exploit unrest in
Egypt to expand its influence there. In the preceding

49 “Asharq Al-Awsat Talks to Moroccan Foreign Minister
Dr. Saad Eddine El Othmani”, Asharq Al-Awsat (English edition), 28 February 2012.
50 Dominic Dudley, “A Watered-down GCC Membership for
Jordan”, Middle East Economic Digest, 2011, no. 49 (9–15 December), http://www.meed.com/sectors/economy/government/
a-watered-down-gcc-membership-for-jordan/3118489.article
(accessed 21 January 2014).
51 “Jordanian Ambassador to Riyadh Talks Syrian Refugee
Crisis”, ash-Sharq al-Awsat (English edition), 1 August 2013.
52 See “Revolution in Syria” in this study, pp. 21ff.

years the Saudi leadership had put great effort into
building a regional alliance of pro-American “moderate” regimes against “extremist” Iran, together with
Egypt and Jordan. When threatened with the loss of
Egypt as the most important pillar of that coalition,
Riyadh believed it had to act.
As soon as protests broke out in Egypt in January
2011, the Saudi leadership reassured Egyptian President Husni Mubarak of its support. Riyadh was correspondingly dismayed when he was driven out of
office on 11 February 2011. All too clear, it appeared
to the leading princes, were the parallels to the fall
of the Shah of Iran in 1979. They were particularly
aggravated by the indifference of the Obama Administration, which made no efforts to save its old ally from
his fate. It was the realisation that the United States
had little interest in the survival of authoritarian
regimes in the Arab world that persuaded the Saudi
Arabian leadership to pursue a more active regional
policy from 2011, and also a more independent policy
of its own towards Egypt. At the time there were
rumours that the Saudis had offered Mubarak refuge,
but nothing official was said in public. That role was
taken by the UAE, although the offer was never taken
up. 53
The Saudi response to Mubarak’s fall was initially
cautious, but Riyadh approved the provisional takeover by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
(SCAF) under Field Marshal Muhammad Husain Tantawi on 11 February. In May 2011 the Saudis agreed
to support the new Egypt with an initial $4 billion in
economic aid. 54 Behind the scenes the Saudi government maintained close contacts with the Egyptian
military leadership and hoped to prevent the Muslim
Brotherhood from faring too well in the parliamentary elections, which were held between November
2011 and January 2012. The Saudi position towards
Egypt hardened when the Islamists gained about 50
percent of the vote, all the more so after Muhammad
Mursi won the June 2012 presidential election as the
Brotherhood’s candidate. The reason for the Saudi
rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood lies primarily in
the fear that it represents a competing – more modern,
53 “Aufatmen am Golf”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 July
2013.
54 Marcel Nasr, “Positive Effects of Unconditional Saudi
Assistance for Egypt Surpass American Contribution” (Arabic), al-Hayat, 31 May 2011. It was a year before the first of
the promised four billion dollars was paid out. Kareem Fahim
and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Saudi Arabia Seeks Union of Monarchies in Region”, New York Times, 15 May 2012.

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A New Offensive Regional Policy

republican and frequently also revolutionary – interpretation of political Islam. As soon as the Tunisian
Nahda Party won the November 2011 elections there,
implying that the Muslim Brotherhood and ideologically related groups would play an important role in
the transformation states, the Saudis started worrying
that from Egypt the Brotherhood could become as
great a threat as Gamal Abd al-Nasir had been in the
1950s and 1960s. Back then, Nasser’s call for pan-Arab
nationalism, socialism and the fall of the region’s
monarchies caused great problems for the Saudi
regime. It ended in a proper “Arab cold war” conducted largely as a proxy conflict in Yemen. 55 Because
Islamists influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood had
dominated a strong opposition movement in Saudi
Arabia in the early 1990s too, the House of Saud must
regard the assumption of power by a transnationally
organised revolutionary movement in a country as
important as Egypt as a danger to the internal stability
of its kingdom. 56 As a consequence, after the coup the
Egyptian military regime first banned the Muslim
Brotherhood and then in December 2013 declared it
a terrorist organisation, Saudi Arabia followed suit in
March 2014. Aside the wish to demonstrate solidarity,
the ruling family also possessed domestic political
motives. The fear of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
and of Saudi Islamists influenced by them probably
prompted Riyadh to undertake this very far-reaching
and factually incorrect categorisation. In reality, the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has not carried out a
terrorist attack since the 1950s.
Saudi Arabia’s hostile stance was highly problematic for the Muslim Brotherhood, which was reliant
on economic aid from the Gulf states and remittances
from the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian migrant
labourers there. President Mursi was therefore at pains
to declare in his inaugural speech that Egypt had no
intention to “export the revolution”, and visited Riyadh
shortly after his election in July 2012. In an obvious
attempt to placate the Saudis, he said that the security
of the Gulf was a “red line”. 57 However, his initiative
was in vain. This was partly because of his line on Iran,
55 Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and
His Rivals 1958–1970, 3rd edition, (London: Oxford University
Press, 1971), passim.
56 On the domestic political dimension see also “Protests in
Saudi Arabia” in this study, pp. 7ff.
57 Heba Saleh and Camilla Hall, “Morsi Eager to Ease Saudi
Fears”, Financial Times, 12 July 2012; “Saudi Pundits Welcome
Egyptian President’s Visit to Riyadh”, al-Jazeera, 11 July 2012,
quoted from BBC Monitoring Middle East, 12 July 2012.

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which convinced the Saudis that Egypt under the
Muslim Brotherhood would abandon Mubarak’s antiIranian policy. In August 2012, shortly after assuming
office, Mursi visited Tehran; the return trip to Cairo
by his counterpart Ahmadinejad followed in February
2013. But particular friction was created by an ultimately fruitless Egyptian initiative in the Syria conflict. Mursi used the August 2012 summit of the
Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Mecca to
invite the Iranian leadership to join a quartet with
Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to search for a diplomatic solution to the civil war in Syria. Saudi Foreign
Minister Saud al-Faisal excused himself from the first
ministerial meeting in mid-September on reasons of
health, but no excuse was offered for his absence
from the second meeting in early October. 58 While the
Saudi leadership appears to have initially hesitated
somewhat, the view prevailed that neither the Muslim
Brother Mursi nor the Iranian leadership should be
granted the prestige associated with the quartet. In
the following weeks Mursi had to bury the idea of a
meeting of four.
The decisive factor for the Saudi decision to support the coup against President Mursi and the Muslim
Brotherhood, however, was the domestic political
escalation in Egypt itself. In the course of the first half
of 2013 opposition protests against Mursi’s government grew while the economic situation deteriorated
to a point where the country faced bankruptcy. It is
to this day unclear whether the Egyptian military
discussed its 3 July coup against President Mursi in
advance with the Saudi leadership, or sought Saudi
support. In any case King Abdallah welcomed the coup,
immediately sending an effusive congratulatory telegram to Egyptian Army Chief Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. 59
Barely a week later Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait
announced a total of $12 billion in budgetary aid, central bank support and oil products to help Egypt in
the upcoming months. 60 In this way they hoped to

58 Michael Theodoulou, “Quartet’s Chances for Syria Peace
May Be Bleak”, The National, 19 September 2012; “Les Saoudiens absents d’une nouvelle réunion sur la Syrie”, Reuters,
3 October 2012.
59 Ellen Knickmeyer, “Saudis Gain amid Islamist Setbacks”,
Wall Street Journal, 8 July 2013.
60 Saudi Arabia promised five, the UAE three and Kuwait
four billion US dollars. Robert F. Worth, “Egypt Is Arena for
Influence of Arab Rivals”, New York Times, 11 July 2013. Of the
Saudi five billion dollars, two billion were earmarked as cash
deposits for the central bank, two billion to be supplied in
the form of oil products and one billion paid out as direct

Counter-Revolution in Bahrain

avoid the new transitional government immediately
suffering payment difficulties, and replaced Qatar as
Egypt’s biggest donor.
The coup in Egypt also had welcome side-effects from
the Saudi perspective, as it considerably narrowed
Qatar’s regional influence. Since 2011 Qatar had not
only stood by the protest movements, but also supplied assistance above all to the Muslim Brotherhood
and similar Islamist groups. Qatar’s influence had
grown accordingly after those groups came to power
in Tunisia and Egypt. Although relations between
Riyadh and Doha improved tangibly – following long
years of tension – after 2008 in the face of the Iranian
threat, they began competing for regional influence
again in 2011. The coup decided the question in Saudi
Arabia’s favour, yet Riyadh was not satisfied to leave
matters there. During the subsequent months the
Saudi government stepped up its pressure on Doha to
renounce support for the Muslim Brotherhood. When
the Qatari leadership refused, Saudi Arabia, the UAE
and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Doha at
the beginning of March 2014. Rumours flew about
the imminent possibility of further measures, such as
blocking Qatar Airways from Saudi airspace or even
the closure of the border between Saudi Arabia and
Qatar. The measure plunged the GCC into a dangerous
new crisis, with Oman and Kuwait declining to recall
their own ambassadors. If the conflict continues or escalates it could threaten the existence of the regional
organisation.

Counter-Revolution in Bahrain
Saudi Arabia acted most decisively in relation to
neighbouring Bahrain, where it intervened militarily
after protests threatened to spiral out of control and
endanger the rule of the House of Khalifa, which is
closely allied with Saudi Arabia. In Bahrain the Arab
Spring demonstrations were only one of many waves
of a protest movement largely rooted in the country’s
Shiite majority that began long beforehand. Even
before 2011, Saudi Arabia had been leaning on the
Bahraini leadership to refrain from taking reforms too
far, and sought in the first place to hinder the emergence of a constitutional monarchy there.
The intervention, prompted by a call for help from
the GCC by the Bahraini government, underlines
financial aid. Michael Peel, Camilla Hall and Heba Saleh,
“Saudis and UAE Pledge $8bn”, Financial Times, 10 July 2013.

Riyadh’s willingness to take great risks in order to protect the Khalifas and prevent any political emancipation of the Shiites in Bahrain. The sometimes enraged
attacks by Iranian politicians and media made it clear
that Tehran regarded the intervention as a provocation. This was especially dangerous because the clashes
in Bahrain did not end with the suppression of the
demonstrations. Instead, the Shiite youth have succeeded in maintaining their protests in the face of
sometimes draconian counter-measures. The outcome
was festering unrest that could not seriously threaten
the country’s stability, but threw up the question of
an alternative solution to the crisis. At the same time,
financial assistance, military invasion and political
support made Manama increasingly dependent on
Riyadh, turning Bahrain into a de facto Saudi Arabian
protectorate. The Bahraini government therefore
regarded the union of Gulf states proposed in May
2011 more as a renewed promise of protection than
any infringement of its already largely theoretical
sovereignty.
The cause of the unrest in Bahrain lies in the political and socio-economic disadvantage that the Sunni
rulers impose on the Shiite majority of 50 to 70 percent of the roughly 550,000 citizens. 61 As in Saudi
Arabia, the conflict sharpened after the 1979 Islamic
Revolution in Iran, because the Bahraini government
suddenly saw its domestic Shiites as a potential fifth
column of the new Islamic Republic of Iran, and
stepped up its repression. This policy repeatedly led
to episodes of unrest and a series of protests that ran
from 1994 to 1998 and became known as the “Bahraini Intifada”. The government violently dispersed
demonstrations, detained thousands and deported the
leader of the protests. Only after the accession of Emir
Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (born 1950) in 1999 did the
regime make concessions to the opposition, releasing
political prisoners, permitting exiles to return and
raising the prospect of democratic reforms. But enthusiasm for the announcements, which were codified
in a “national charter” approved by referendum, was
already waning by 2002 when it became clear that the
Khalifas had no intention of sharing power and ending
the discrimination against the Shiites, as many Bah-

61 The figures are highly contested and government representatives often assert that the Sunnis are in the majority. In
any case the proportion of Sunnis has increased over the past
three decades.

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A New Offensive Regional Policy

rainis had hoped. 62 In the following years unrest
flared up at intervals and escalated again in August
and September 2010, when the government detained
about 160 Shiites in the run-up to parliamentary elections, including about two dozen opposition leaders. 63
In this atmosphere, the February 2011 protests in
North Africa, Syria and Yemen also encouraged Bahrainis to rise up against the policies of their ruling
family. The demonstrations began on 14 February and
within a few days concentrated on the Pearl Roundabout close to central Manama. 64 Although many Sunnis initially participated, the dominance of the Shiite
opposition quickly ensured that they drifted away.
Before dawn on 17 February the government had the
roundabout cleared by force; four demonstrators died
and clashes with the security forces ensued during the
following days. 65 Although the ruling family briefly
changed its tactic and on 13 March offered an openended dialogue, the situation escalated. 66 After the
demonstrators returned to Pearl Roundabout from 20
February, some raised more far-reaching demands for
the fall of the ruling family and the end of the monarchy. When they also blockaded the nearby financial
quarter of Manama and threatened to march on the
royal palace, the ruling family called for assistance
from Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Saudi and UAE troops
entered on 14 March, moving into prepared positions
in the capital Manama and securing key strategic
points, ministries and other government buildings.
This freed domestic security forces and squads of
regime loyalists to break up the protest camp on Pearl
Roundabout, again killing several demonstrators. At
62 International Crisis Group (ICG), Popular Protests in North
Africa and the Middle East (III): The Bahrain Revolt, Middle East/
North Africa Report 105 (Brussels, 6 April 2011), 4.
63 Simeon Kerr, “Bahrain Faces Unrest Ahead of October
Elections”, Financial Times, 3 September 2010; Thanassis
Cambanis, “Security Crackdown in Bahrain Hints of End
to Reforms”, New York Times, 27 August 2010.
64 In the middle of the roundabout was a large statue comprising six upward-pointing stylised dhow sails holding a
huge pearl. The pearl and the sails symbolised the long history of pearl-diving and trading in Bahrain, while the number
six stood for the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The monument was erected in 1982 to mark the organisation’s third summit meeting, and destroyed after the March
2011 crackdown.
65 An impressive if one-sided account can be found in the
documentary “Shouting in the Dark” on aljazeera.net, http://
www.aljazeera.com/programmes/2011/08/20118414454779
8162.html.
66 Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, Report
(Manama, November 2011), 165.

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the same time a wave of arrests began. Seven Shiite
leaders were later sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. 67
The Bahraini conflict remains unresolved. One
reason for this is the radicalisation of the conflicting
parties. The most important opposition group,
al-Wifaq, has lost control of the militant Shiite youth.
Since March 2011 there have been almost nightly
clashes between demonstrators and security forces
in the Shiite villages surrounding Manama, during
which numerous young demonstrators and (much
more rarely) police have been killed. Increasingly
frequently demonstrators throw petrol bombs, and
a number of bombings with improvised explosive
devices have been carried out. 68 The violent protests
are principally sustained by several thousand young
militants who have rejected the established political
organisations, which they regard as too conciliatory.
They operate under the label “February 14 movement”
but are only weakly connected to one another through
social networks such as Twitter.
In the ruling family and its supporters a shift can
also be observed towards uncompromising repression
of the opposition. This current is led by the king’s
uncle, Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman (born 1935),
who has led the country’s government since 1971 and
was already regarded as a proponent of an authoritarian security state under the father of the current
king. 69 Other important protagonists are Sheikh Khalid
bin Ahmad bin Salman Al Khalifa, Minister of the Royal
Court, and his brother Khalifa bin Ahmad, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, who are known
in the country simply as “the Khalids” (al-Khawalid). 70
They are all especially hated by the Shiite opposition,
and the demand for the prime minister’s resignation
was one of the top priorities of the demonstrators in
2011. 71
The present King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa appears
unable to face down these conservative hardliners.
Since succeeding to the throne in 1999 as a reformer

67 Interviews in Manama, 7–11 December 2012.
68 Inga Rogg, “Eskalation in Bahrain, Polizist durch einen
Sprengsatz getötet”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20 October 2012.
69 Joseph A. Kéchichian, Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies: A Reference Guide (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner,
2008), 76f., 91f.
70 Justin Gengler, “Gulf Apart: Bahrain Faces Political and
Sectarian Divide”, Jane’s Intelligence Review, (January 2012):
32–37 (33).
71 Interview with Shiite opposition figures, Manama,
10 December 2012.

Revolution in Syria

who wished to pursue a less repressive line than his
father, he has been regarded as more open to dialogue
and compromise than his relatives. But his reform
initiatives ended at the latest with the unrest of 2011,
and he is now either too weak or too indecisive to support the reformers in the ruling family. Crown Prince
Salman bin Hamad (born 1969) is regarded as the most
moderate member of the dynasty, but has lost ground
to the hardliners.
Perhaps the most important reason for the strength
of the hardliners is their closeness to the Saudi government. The prime minister maintained a close personal
friendship with the Saudi Interior Minister (1977–2012)
and crown prince (2011–2012) Naif bin Abd al-Aziz,
until his death in 2012. The Saudi leadership and the
Bahraini hardliners both see the protests as an Iranian
plot to topple a legitimate government with the aid
of the Bahraini Shiites, and interpret any attempt to
come to an understanding with the Shiite opposition
as a dangerous sign of weakness. 72 The Saudi leadership is said to have been insisting for years that it
would not accept a constitutional monarchy in Bahrain, as demanded by al-Wifaq and also desired by
some of the reformers. But there is no convincing
evidence of any Iranian role in the protests. In the
absence of local allies, Tehran instead appears to
restrict itself to sharply criticising the Bahraini and
Saudi leaderships for their policies towards the Shiites
and the intervention in Bahrain. But the accusations
by the Bahraini and Saudi governments and the verbal
attacks from Tehran have made many regime-loyal
Sunnis today much more strongly anti-Iranian and
anti-Shiite than was the case before 2011. 73 For this
reason the conflict in Bahrain is increasingly assuming a confessional dimension.
At the same time Bahrain has become so thoroughly dependent on Saudi Arabia that it is questionable
whether it can still be regarded as a sovereign state at
72 The chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Defence
and National Security in the Bahraini Consultative Council
(Majlis ash-Shura), Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, said something similar on 1 April 2013 in a speech at the Bahrain International Symposium of Bahrain University attended by the
author. The events in Bahrain in 2011 had nothing to do with
the Arab Spring, he said, and were instead a coup attempt
supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese Hizbullah with the objective of establishing an Iranianstyle Islamic Republic.
73 Justin Gengler, “Bahrain’s Sunni Awakening”, Middle East
Research and Information Project (MERIP), (Washington, D.C.,
17 January 2012), http://www.merip.org/mero/mero011712
(accessed 5 November 2012).

all. No longer possessing meaningful oil reserves of its
own, Bahrain is highly dependent on Saudi Arabia,
which funds about half of its budget through direct
and indirect support. 74 That dependency has been
increased since 2011 by the economic repercussions
of the unrest, as tourists stayed away and the financial
centre of Manama, which was long one of the most
important in the Gulf region, suffered. The Shiite youth
have responded in their own way to the close ties
between the two countries. It is conspicuous that unrest and protests often occur in parallel in Bahrain
and the Saudi Eastern Province. These are often demonstrations of solidarity, for example by the Saudi
Shiites shortly after the intervention in Bahrain. But
religious, cultural and kinship contacts between the
Shiite communities have always been close, and might
suggest a certain degree of coordination of activities.
In any case there is great concern in Riyadh about
intensified cooperation between the Bahraini and
Saudi Shiites.
Growing Saudi influence also impacts on domestic
political debates in Bahrain. After the death of Saudi
Interior Minister Naif bin Abd al-Aziz, who had long
been the Saudi leader responsible for Bahrain, many
oppositionists hoped that his successor, his son Muhammad bin Naif, would be a moderating influence
on the Bahraini leadership. Their expectations were
raised in late 2012 and early 2013 when a Saudi delegation did actually seek discussions with al-Wifaq,
and the Bahraini government made a new offer of
dialogue in January. 75 But as the subsequent months
were to show, however, the Bahraini and Saudi governments were in fact sticking to their guns.

Revolution in Syria
Since 2012 Saudi Arabia has also become the most
important supporter of the Syrian insurgents after
Turkey and Qatar. However, Riyadh long held back in
the hope of establishing cooperation with the United
States. But Washington was unable to decide to support the rebel groups in any meaningful way, especially as they became increasingly Islamist. The Saudi
74 Saudi Arabia shares the 300,000 barrels per day produced
by the Abu Safa offshore field equally with Bahrain and supplies the Bahraini refinery at Sitra at heavily subsidised prices.
Kenneth Katzman, Bahrain: Reform, Security, and U.S. Policy, CRS
Report for Congress (Washington, D.C., 6 January 2014), 34.
75 Interview with Bahraini intellectual, Manama, 31 March
2013.

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A New Offensive Regional Policy

hesitancy may also stem from fears concerning the Iranian reaction to their funding and arming the rebels.
Not until November 2012 were there significant
indications that Saudi Arabia was working with the
United States to gradually expand their support for
insurgents in southern Syria, via Jordan. The United
States appears to have repeatedly prevaricated and
obstructed, leaving the Saudis increasingly dissatisfied
and impatient. The turning point was the Syrian army’s
chemical attack on the eastern outskirts of Damascus
on 21 August 2013, in which about 1,400 civilians
died. When Washington first announced a military
strike but then changed its mind, Riyadh apparently
began increasing its support to selected rebel groups
even without US participation.
The Saudi government was initially rather uncertain in its stance towards the peaceful protests that
began in Syria in February 2011. Relations with
Damascus had been miserable since the assassination
of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, a
close ally of the Saudis. Although they blame Syria for
the attack, that did not prevent the Saudis from cooperating with the Syrians after 2008 to prevent an
escalation of the situation in Lebanon. 76 Until spring
2011 King Abdallah and some of the leading princes
maintained hopes of one day separating Syria from
its alliance with Tehran and thus reducing Iranian
influence in the Middle East. In general terms, too, the
ruling family tended towards preserving the authoritarian status quo and was altogether suspicious of
the protest movements. Only when Bashar al-Assad
ignored King Abdallah’s warnings to act less brutally
towards the demonstrations and the violence spiralled
in summer 2011, did the Saudi leadership position
itself against Assad. In a widely noted speech in early
August King Abdallah criticised the violence of the
Syrian regime, demanded Assad “stop the killing
machine” (iqaf alat al-qatl) and called for reforms. 77 In
the same month Riyadh recalled its ambassador from
Damascus. Under pressure from the Saudis, the Arab
League also suspended Syria’s membership in November 2011 and imposed additional sanctions. 78

76 Guido Steinberg, Saudi-Arabien als Partner deutscher Nahostpolitik, SWP-Studie 35/2008 (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und
Politik, December 2008), 26, 28.
77 For extensive excerpts from the speech see “Guardian
of Holy Sites in ‘Historic’ Speech: Kingdom Rejects Developments in Syria” (Arabic), al-Hayat, 8 August 2011.
78 David Ignatius, “Saudi Arabia’s Burst of Confidence”,
Washington Post, 20 November 2011.

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Although important behind the scenes, in public
Saudi Arabia was overshadowed by Qatar, which held
the rotating presidency of the Arab League in 2011
and chose to back the Syrian opposition. The rivalry
between the two Gulf states shaped the development
of the Syrian exile opposition in the subsequent period,
where its frequent power struggles also reflected
Saudi-Qatari competition. Initially the Qataris gained
the upper hand and installed many of their allies in
the leadership of the Syrian National Council established in August 2011 and the National Coalition
(al-I’tilaf al-Watani) founded in November 2012. 79 Qatar
cultivated representatives of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, whereas the Saudis backed its secularist rivals.
After months of bickering the National Coalition chose
Saudi ally Ahmad Jarba (born 1969) as its leader. 80
Despite the infighting, Saudi Arabia provided diplomatic support to the National Coalition jointly with
Qatar and appears to have somewhat expanded its
assistance after Jarba’s election. In March 2013 the
alliance consequently took Syria’s place at the Arab
League summit in Doha.
Saudi and Qatari support for the insurgents inside
Syria followed a similar trajectory. By early 2012 at the
latest, Qatar and Turkey were funding and arming
the rebels. Ankara and Doha agreed that their support
should prioritise groups associated with the Muslim
Brotherhood, but also supported Salafists and jihadists. In the meantime Riyadh was waiting for Washington to decide to support the insurgents meaningfully. 81 Through 2012 there were only isolated reports
of Saudi Arabia providing Syrian deserters with money
to purchase small arms and ammunition.
One particular appointment demonstrated that
Riyadh was itching to pursue a more resolute line.
In July 2012 King Abdallah chose Prince Bandar bin
Sultan Al Saud (born 1949) as the new head of the
General Intelligence Directorate (Ri’asat al-Istikhbarat
al-‘Amma, GID). Many observers were astonished
because Prince Bandar had long ceased to play a significant role in Riyadh politics. He had been secretary79 Its full name is the “National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces” (al-I’tilaf al-Watani li-Quwa
al-Thaura wa-l-Muʽarada al-Suriya).
80 With Muhammad Tayfur, the Muslim Brotherhood also
supplied one of the two deputies. “Syrische Nationale Koalition
hat neuen Präsidenten”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 July
2013.
81 Adam Entous, Nour Malas and Margaret Coker, “Bandar
the Deal Maker: A Veteran Saudi Power Player Works to Build
Support to Topple Assad”, Wall Street Journal, 26 August 2013.

Revolution in Syria

general of the new National Security Council since
its institution in October 2005, but appeared unable
to make political headway against the interior and
defence ministries. 82 Bandar’s appointment represented a statement in two respects, because he is
regarded as equally pro-American and anti-Iranian.
As Saudi ambassador to Washington from 1983 to
2005 he became a close confidant of the pro-American
King Fahd, for whom he managed the crucial relationship with the US Administration. During his long tenure as ambassador he became well-liked in Washington, well-connected in the US political scene and close
to individual (Republican) politicians. He had also
always argued for a hard line against Iran. With his
appointment (in addition to his role in the National
Security Council) as head of the GID, which was
responsible for supporting the insurgents in Syria,
Riyadh appeared to have decided to launch a proxy
war against Iran. 83 In the work of supporting the
Syrian rebels, Bandar was assisted by his younger
brother Salman bin Sultan (born 1976), who took
charge of relations with the Syrian opposition. Despite
being very young for the post in Saudi terms, Salman
was unexpectedly promoted to deputy defence minister in August 2013. 84 This was an important indication
of the growing importance of Bandar and his circle in
Riyadh politics.
After Bandar took charge at the GID, Riyadh
stepped up its pressure on Jordan, whose government
publicly called for a peaceful resolution but was working behind the scenes with the United States and
Saudi Arabia. The Saudi foreign minister is reported
to have leaned on the Jordanian leadership, which
initially refused to take an open stance against the
Assad regime. 85 From summer 2012 onwards there
were sporadic reports in the US press that Washington
had decided to train and arm insurgents. 86 In fact the
United States had already been training fighters at a
base in Jordan since 2012. But there appear to have
been frequent disagreements between the Americans
and Saudis, because Prince Bandar pressed for more
decisive action. He also proposed an approach known
as the “southern strategy” aiming to assist insurgents
82 For details on Bandar and the National Security Council
see Steinberg, Saudi-Arabien (see note 76), 8f.
83 Entous, Malas and Coker, “Bandar” (see note 81).
84 Ibid.
85 Interview with GCC diplomat, Manama, 7 December 2013.
86 See, for example, Karen DeYoung and Anne Gearan, “U.S.
Closer to Widening Nonlethal Assistance to Syrian Rebels”,
Washington Post, 11 April 2013.

independent of the Muslim Brotherhood and the
jihadists from bases in Jordan to counterbalance the
groups in northern Syria supported by Qatar and
Turkey. 87 Washington in particular refused repeated
Saudi demands to supply shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. 88 In the course of 2013 the Americans
are reported to have repeatedly suspended “southern
strategy” measures. 89 In the face of US resistance,
Saudi efforts remained largely ineffective.
From spring 2013 the Saudi leadership became
increasingly impatient and now publicly demanded
more determined support for the insurgents. Their
dissatisfaction spiked in September 2013, after the
regime’s 21 August chemical attack on the eastern
outskirts of Damascus in which 1,400 civilians died.
Washington announced military retaliation, but
backed down after agreeing with Russia and Syria
that all Syrian chemical weapons would be destroyed.
The Saudis viewed the cancellation of the US strike
as a grave error that the Syrians and Iranians would
interpret as a sign of weakness. 90 Riyadh had not only
been quick to welcome the controversial decision to
launch attacks, but had also tried – unsuccessfully – to
have a resolution backing military action adopted by
the Arab League. 91
The Saudis seem to have made their decision to
start assisting selected rebel groups in September 2013,
initially without the support or assistance of the United
States. Reports soon began appearing about deliveries
of light arms and even anti-tank weapons, although
the Saudis continued to heed the American request
to deny persistent rebel requests for anti-aircraft
missiles. 92 There was also talk of Saudi Arabia planning to train up to 50,000 Syrian fighters and infiltrate them into the country via Jordan to fight the
Assad regime (and the jihadist groups Jabhat al-Nusra
and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). While Saudi politicians repeatedly insisted that they were supporting
only the Free Syrian Army, there were persistent reports
87 Entous, Malas and Coker, “Bandar” (see note 81)
88 Kevin Sullivan, “Saudis Line Up against Syrian Regime”,
Washington Post, 8 October 2012.
89 Interview with GCC diplomat, Doha, 29 October 2013.
90 Loveday Morris, “Persian Gulf Ties at Risk as Russia Plan
Is Mulled”, Washington Post, 12 September 2013.
91 Karen DeYoung, “Kerry: Saudis Support the Strike”,
Washington Post, 9 September 2013; Mayy el Sheikh, “Arab
League Endorses International Action”, New York Times, 2
September 2013.
92 Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, “Syrian Rebels Say Saudi
Arabia Is Stepping Up Weapons Deliveries”, New York Times,
13 September 2013.

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A New Offensive Regional Policy

that the Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam), founded in September 2013 by the Salafist activist Zahran Alloush,
was to be a second pillar of this strategy. 93 In November 2013 the Army of Islam, operating above all in the
Damascus area, joined forces with other Islamist and
Salafist (but not jihadist) groups to form the Islamic
Front (al-Jabha al-Islamiya). 94 The Saudis were suspected of being behind this alliance, too. In early 2014,
however, it still remained unclear whether the Army
of Islam could really become a militant force to be
reckoned with, nor to what extent this organisation
and the Islamic Front would in fact become an instrument of Saudi policy. 95 Units of the Islamic Front did
participate in operations in January 2014 aiming to
drive out the former al-Qaeda affiliate Islamic State
in Iraq and Syria. Although the strongest group within
the Islamic Front, the Free Men of Syria (Ahrar ashSham), are regarded as a Qatari and Turkish client,
Saudi politicians assert that this occurred at their
bidding. The Saudis are still seeking to integrate their
allies into the Free Syrian Army Supreme Military
Council and chain of command, and to gain them
political representation through the National Coalition. These moves are, however, unlikely to succeed,
and a military alternative to the jihadists that is
strong enough to lead a successful fight against the
Assad regime is unlikely to emerge.

93 For detail on these plans see Yezid Sayigh, Unifying Syria’s
Rebels: Saudi Arabia Joins the Fray (Carnegie Middle East Center,
28 October 2013), http://carnegie-mec.org/2013/10/28/unifyingsyria-s-rebels-saudi-arabia-joins-fray/greh (accessed 22 January
2013).
94 On their structure see Aaron Y. Zelin, Rebels Consolidating
Strength in Syria: The Islamic Front, Policy Watch 2177 (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute, 3 December 2013), http://
www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/rebelsconsolidating-strength-in-syria-the-islamic-front (accessed
22 January 2013).
95 In their first major confrontation with regime forces in
the Qalamun mountains north of Damascus in early December 2013, the Army of Islam forces appear to have retreated
very quickly. Yamin Husain, “The Defeat of Nabak: Army of
Islam under Suspicion” (Arabic), al-Hayat, 10 December 2013.

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Conclusions and Recommendations

The Syrian example illustrates best how aggressive
Saudi regional policy has become since the advent of
the Arab Spring. Riyadh’s plan to support non-jihadist
Syrian insurgents to counterbalance the rise of the
jihadists in 2012 and 2013 is still in its infancy, but
merely proposing to topple an authoritarian Arab
regime in itself represents a revolution for what was
just a few years ago still a very cautious Saudi regional
policy.
In fact it is far from certain that Saudi Arabia will
be able to continue its new Syria policy. Firstly, Riyadh
can only support Syrian rebel forces if one of Syria’s
immediate neighbours is prepared to cooperate. In
summer 2012 Saudi Arabia consciously decided to
work with Jordan, but King Abdallah of Jordan fears
the vengeance of the Assad regime. It is therefore possible that the Jordanian government could force Saudi
Arabia to suspend its aid at any moment. Secondly,
Saudi Arabia would no longer support the rebels if a
diplomatic solution were achieved. As unlikely at that
might appear in the coming years, the situation on
the ground changes so rapidly and frequently that
longer-term predictions would be futile. But the longer
the conflict continues, the more likely it is that the
Saudis will expand their support and turn the conflict
into a proxy war with Iran. In that context the strategy
reportedly pursued since September 2013 of supporting non-jihadist Salafist groups alongside the Free
Syrian Army is extremely dangerous. For it will be
hard for the Saudis to retain effective control over the
strengthened groups and prevent them from committing acts of violence against religious and ethnic minorities. Such atrocities would in turn exacerbate the
conflict. Additionally, some of the groups thought to
be supported by the Saudis are cooperating tactically
with the jihadists of the Nusra Front and thousands of
Saudi volunteers have joined jihadist organisations
in Syria. There is some evidence that the Saudi leadership has been taking this problem more seriously
since winter 2013/14. The most important hint came
in early 2014, when Prince Bandar lost responsibility
for the Syria file to his cousin, Interior Minister

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Muhammad bin Naif. 96 The latter made a name for
himself as an energetic fighter against al-Qaeda in
Saudi Arabia and Yemen and is not expected to support jihadist groups.
But in relations with the United States the Syria
question is only one of several issues that have heightened tensions since 2001. The starting point was the
widespread view in Saudi Arabia that the United States
is not only inactive in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
but also one-sidedly pro-Israeli. Ill-feeling grew when
the Bush Administration toppled Saddam Hussein in
Iraq against the explicit advice of the Saudi leadership.
But the most important aspect is US policy towards
the Iranian nuclear programme and Iran’s advances in
the Arab world. Following the interim agreement on
the Iranian nuclear programme in November 2013
Saudi criticism of the Obama Administration assumed
a sometimes shrill tone. Prince Bandar for example
threatened that Saudi Arabia would turn away from
the United States. 97 But such threats appear increasingly impotent given that Riyadh has been attempting
for more than a decade to assert its own interests vis-àvis Washington – mostly in vain. The Saudis lack any
convincing alternative to the United States, because
no other state is willing and able to guarantee their
security. Cutting ties with the United States would
leave the Kingdom vulnerable and unprotected.
The Saudi leadership’s stormy reaction to American
willingness to seek a solution with Iran confirms that
this is where it sees the biggest problem for its regional
policies. Riyadh fears the Iranian nuclear programme
not primarily because Tehran might one day order the
use of nuclear weapon, but more out of concern that
Iran could exploit an atomic shield to support militant
groups in neighbouring countries with impunity and
thus destabilise the Gulf region. That is why stopping
the Iranian nuclear programme, which Riyadh rightly
regards as primarily military in motivation, is an important concern. Behind the scenes, representatives of
the ruling family have also repeatedly underlined that
96 Rudolph Chimelli, “Still abserviert: Riads legendärer
Geheimdienstchef Prinz Bandar entmachtet”, Süddeutsche
Zeitung, 21 February 2014.
97 Sayigh, Unifying Syria’s Rebels (see note 93).

Conclusions and Recommendations

they are in favour of a military strike against the Iranian nuclear programme and would lend support.
Because they view Iran’s striving for predominance in
the Gulf region and the Middle East as a whole with
great wariness, quite independently of its efforts to
build nuclear bombs, they cannot welcome any possible agreement between the United States and Iran
over the nuclear programme. Instead, a US-Iranian
rapprochement threatens to erode Saudi Arabia’s role
as the most important US ally in the Gulf region. In
Saudi eyes such a reconciliation could quickly lead to
an agreement permitting Iran to establish regional
hegemony in exchange for concessions on its nuclear
programme. So what from the European and German
perspective would be a complete success – an agreement that made it impossible for Iran to produce
nuclear bombs with any speed – would from the Saudi
perspective do nothing to eliminate the underlying
problem. So if the talks with Iran turn out to be successful, a second similarly challenging diplomatic task
would follow, namely to calm the cold war that has
already begun between Saudi Arabia and Iran and
thus reduce its considerable escalation potential.
That conflict also affects German foreign policy.
Even if Germany imports only a very small proportion
of its oil and gas from the Gulf, the region’s significance for the global energy markets will tend to increase in the coming years. That applies especially to
Saudi Arabia, which possesses about one third of the
world’s known oil reserves. These reserves also give
the Persian Gulf enormous geopolitical significance in
the longer run. Since Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s
visits in October 2003 and February 2005, all German
governments have continuously expanded relations
with the Arab Gulf states. Although the contacts are
today largely determined by commercial interests,
Germany has become an increasingly important partner over this period and the security dimension in
particular is considerably more prominent than just a
few years ago. The best evidence of this is that Airbus
Defence is supplying the technology for securing the
entire length of Saudi Arabia’s external borders. The
German government has been supporting the project
since 2009 by sending federal police to train their
Saudi colleagues to operate the new systems.
Against this background a debate has emerged in
Germany about relations with Saudi Arabia, flaring up
at irregular intervals over news about arms sales. Each
time, it becomes obvious that the Kingdom is an exceptionally tricky partner for Germany and that there
are convincing arguments both for a deepening of
SWP Berlin
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

26

relations and for a distancing. The fundamental
insight that Germany, as one of the world’s strongest
economies, has a deep interest in constructive cooperation with the world’s largest oil supplier speaks
for close relations. Since the 1970s Saudi Arabia has
shown itself to be a dependable energy partner for the
West, supplying the global economy with oil at acceptable prices. In recent decades Riyadh has pursued a
moderate price policy and often utilised its spare production capacity to make up for shortfalls arising
through production and export problems in other oilproducing states. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict too,
Riyadh has promoted solutions that come very close to
the European proposals, while its regional policy has
long given preference to diplomatic solutions.
It is their authoritarian domestic policy, characterised by countless human rights violations, that speaks
against the Saudis, and the political system that grants
Wahhabi religious scholars enormous influence over
society, justice and education. The consequence is
restrictions not only on the religious rights of Christians and Jews, but in the first place on those of nonWahhabi Muslims. In practice this affects principally
the up to 15 percent Shiites in the Kingdom, who are
not recognised as Muslims but treated as heretics. The
Wahhabi slant of Saudi politics also affects Germany
directly, because Riyadh promotes the export of Wahhabi teachings by supporting religious NGOs like the
Muslim World League and its affiliated charities. This
policy contributes decisively to the global dissemination of Salafism, which is a domestic as well as foreign
policy problem for Germany and Europe. 98
Since 2005 Saudi Arabia has been showing an aggressive face in regional politics. Its sometimes justified
but often paranoid fear of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Iran and the Shiites in the Arab world, and the countermeasures it adopts, have the effect of worsening
confessional tensions. In particular its support for the
Egyptian military coup and the subsequent brutal
suppression of protests demonstrates that the Saudi
leadership easily mistakes subjugation for stability. Its
policy on Bahrain also encourages the regime there to
reject urgently needed political reforms and keeps the
unrest alive. Although Saudi Arabia can claim to be
pursuing a clear line in Syria and focuses its support
on the Free Syrian army, reports about help for Sala98 Guido Steinberg, Wer sind die Salafisten? Zum Umgang mit
einer schnell wachsenden und sich politisierenden Bewegung, SWPAktuell 28/2012 (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik,
May 2012).

Conclusions and Recommendations

fist groups like the Army of Islam are worrisome. The
ideological boundaries between them and the jihadists are fluid and – if the reports are accurate – the
Saudi policy threatens to deliver multi-confessional
and multi-ethnic Syria to Sunni fanatics. Worse still,
this policy is likely to exacerbate the future terrorist
threat to the Arab world and Europe emanating from
Syrian groups.

Abbreviations
BBC
CRS
GCC
GID
ICG
MEMRI
MERIP
SCAF
UAE

British Broadcasting Corporation
Congressional Research Service
Gulf Cooperation Council
General Intelligence Directorate
International Crisis Group
Middle East Media Research Institute
Middle East Research and Information Project
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
United Arab Emirates

SWP Berlin
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring
June 2014

27

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