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Is
the Saudi Monarchy on Its Last Legs?
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Excerpt of article originally published under the title
"Saudi Arabia Stews in Policy Hell."
Last week's mass executions in Saudi Arabia suggest panic at the
highest level of the monarchy. The action is without precedent, even by
the grim standards of Saudi repression. In 1980 Riyadh killed 63
jihadists who had attacked the Grand Mosque of Mecca, but that was fresh
after the event. Most of the 47 prisoners shot and beheaded on Jan. 2 had
sat in Saudi jails for a decade. The decision to kill the prominent Shia
cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the most prominent spokesman for restive Saudi Shia
Muslims in Eastern Province, betrays fear of subversion with Iranian
sponsorship.
Why kill them all now? It is very hard to evaluate the scale of
internal threats to the Saudi monarchy, but the broader context for its
concern is clear: Saudi Arabia finds itself isolated, abandoned by its
longstanding American ally, at odds with China, and pressured by Russia's
sudden preeminence in the region. The Saudi-backed Army of Conquest in
Syria seems to be crumbling under Russian attack. The Saudi intervention
in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi rebels has gone poorly. And its
Turkish ally-of-convenience is consumed by a low-level civil war. Nothing
has gone right for Riyadh.
| The royal family's capacity to buy
popular support is eroding just as its regional security policy has
fallen apart. |
Worst of all, the collapse of Saudi oil revenues threatens to exhaust
the kingdom's $700 billion in financial reserves within five years,
according to an October estimate by the International Monetary Fund (as I
discussed here).
The House of Saud relies on subsidies to buy the loyalty of the vast
majority of its subjects, and its reduced spending power is the biggest
threat to its rule. Last week Riyadh cut subsidies for water, electricity
and gasoline. The timing of the executions may be more than coincidence:
the royal family's capacity to buy popular support is eroding just as its
regional security policy has fallen apart.
For decades, Riyadh has presented itself as an ally of the West and a
force for stability in the region, while providing financial support for
Wahhabi fundamentalism around the world.
Saudi Arabia's proxies in Syria are in trouble. Early in 2015, the
Army of Conquest (Jaish al-Fateh), a coalition of al-Qaida and other
Sunni Islamists backed by the Saudis, Turks and Qataris, had driven the
Syrian army out of several key positions in Northwest Syria, threatening
the Assad regime's core Alawite heartland. The coalition began
breaking up in November, however, and the Syrian Army recently retook
several villages it had lost to the Army of Conquest. One of the Army
of Conquest's constituent militias, Failaq al-Sham, announced Jan. 3 that
it was leaving the coalition to defend Aleppo against regime forces
reinforced by Russia.
|
The West may not be able to keep
the House of Saud in power whether it wants to or not. |
Everything seems to have gone wrong at once for Riyadh. The only
consolation the monarchy has under the circumstances is that its nemesis
Iran also is suffering from the collapse of oil revenues and the attrition
of war. Iran began withdrawing
its Revolutionary Guard forces from Syria in December, largely due to
high casualties. The high cost of maintaining the war effort as Iran's
finances implode also may have been a factor. Iran's Lebanese Shia proxy,
Hezbollah, has suffered extremely high casualties, virtually neutralizing
its whole first echelon of combat troops. And Russia has shown no interest
in interfering with Israeli air strikes against Hezbollah.
The oil price collapse turns the competition between Saudi Arabia and
Iran into a race to the bottom. But the monarchy's panicked response to
its many setbacks of the past several months raises a difficult question.
In the past, the West did what it could to prop up the Saudi royal
family as a pillar of stability in the region, despite the Saudis'
support for jihadi terrorism. Soon the West may not be able to keep the
House of Saud in power whether it wants to or not.
David P. Goldman is a senior
fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and the Wax Family Fellow
at the Middle East Forum.
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