For decades, there were sporadic protests among Shiites in the eastern provinces, over economic and political grievances. Nimr was arrested in 2012, after a round of protests spawned by the Arab Spring. He was beheaded on Saturday for “breaking allegiance with the ruler,” instigating unrest, and “undermining the kingdom’s security.”
.. In an unusually candid statement on Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he was “deeply dismayed” by Nimr’s execution, and questioned “trials that raised serious concerns over the nature of the charges and the fairness of the process.” The European Union called into question “freedom of expression and the respect of basic civil and political rights” in Saudi Arabia. Jubeir rebuffed criticism of the executions. “We should be applauded for this, not criticized,” he said Monday, in an interview with Reuters.
Young prince in a hurry
Asked whether the kingdom’s actions were stoking regional tensions, he said that things were already so bad they could scarcely get any worse. “We try as hard as we can not to escalate anything further,” he says; and he certainly does not expect war. But for his entourage, Saudi Arabia has no choice but to stop Iran from trying to carve out a new Persian empire.
..The Al Sauds have survived by making three compacts: with the Wahhabis to burnish their Islamic credentials as the custodians of the holy places of Mecca and Medina; with the population by providing munificence in exchange for acquiescence to absolutist rule; and with America to defend Saudi Arabia in exchange for stability in oil markets.
But all three of these covenants are fraying.
.. What he lacks in experience and foreign travel, he compensates for with confidence, focus and a battery of consultants’ reports. He reels off numbers and policies with ease, pausing only to take a call from John Kerry, America’s secretary of state. He speaks in the first person, as if he were already king even though he is only second in line.
.. Even after initial budget cuts last year, Saudi Arabia recorded a whopping budget deficit of 15% of GDP. Its pile of foreign reserves has fallen by $100 billion, to $650 billion.
.. This month Saudis accustomed to leaving on the air-conditioner when going on holiday will receive dearer electricity and water bills. Within five years, the plan is that Saudis should be paying market prices, probably with compensation in the form of direct payments for poorer citizens.
.. Prince Muhammad is adamant that there will be no income or wealth taxes, but he plans to balance the budget in five years.
.. The government is to sell land to developers, such as the 4m square metres it owns around Mecca, the most expensive real estate in the world. The prince sees huge promise in developing Islamic tourism to the holy sites; he hopes to boost the 18m annual visitors to 35m-45m in five years.
.. Media reports of Prince Muhammad’s lavish parties in the Maldives and the crown prince’s house-hunting for a Sardinian villa worth half a billion euros are fodder for social media, of which Saudis are keen users.
.. preachers who used to pronounce against corruption stick strictly to their anodyne scripts; and stand-up comedians have stopped poking fun at royals. Tellingly, more people have been executed in King Salman’s first year in office than in any of the previous 20.
.. The prince says that he supports women working, not least to reduce the fertility rate: “A large portion of my productive factors are unutilised,” he says. “I have population growth reaching very scary figures.”
U.S. Can Afford to Side With Iran Over Saudis
The rapidly escalating conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, sparked by the execution of a Saudi Shiite activist, may seem like the natural outgrowth of a decade’s Sunni-Shiite tensions. But more than denominational differences, what’s driving the open conflict is the Saudis’ deepening fear that the U.S. is shifting its loyalties in the Persian Gulf region from its traditional Saudi ally to a gradually moderating Iran.
.. Executing al-Nimr was thus probably intended to demonstrate that the Saudis can go it alone, making security-related decisions without worrying what their neighbors or the U.S. think.
.. Here the Saudis overplayed their hand. The Iranians reacted cleverly. First, the government stirred up public sentiment by condemning the execution. Then, it allowed angry protesters to storm the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. Finally, the Iranian government shut down the protest, made arrests and issued public statements disclaiming responsibility for what had happened.
.. Secretary of State John Kerry let it be known that he was talking to his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. In the past, a U.S. secretary of state would’ve reached out solely to the Saudi foreign minister, not least because there were no official diplomatic ties to Iran. Meanwhile, a former deputy CIA director, Michael Morell, publicly praised the Iranians for their handling of the situation in Tehran. This was downright astonishing, given Americans’ historical associations with embassy occupation there.
These reactions show that Saudi worries about American abandonment are to a degree justified.
.. The painful truth for the Saudis is that the U.S. and Iran are plausible strategic allies, whose once close relationship was disrupted by the Islamic Revolution. The U.S. preference for Saudi Arabia in the Gulf was the result of Iranian intransigence and ideology, not any inherent strategic advantage possessed by the kingdom.
.. Any president will need to try and produce wins on Islamic State and Iraq — and those can’t be achieved without Iran.
Saudi Arabia’s Barbaric Executions
America’s longstanding alliance with the House of Saud is no reason for the Obama administration to do anything less than clearly condemn this foolhardy and dangerous course with a more robust response than its call Monday for both sides to exercise restraint.
.. Saudi Arabia’s income has sharply declined as a result of the prolonged drop in oil prices — caused, in part, by the regime’s insistence on maintaining production levels — and the government has announced cutbacks in the lavish welfare spending that Saudis have long taken for granted. The executions provided both a sectarian crisis to deflect anger over the cutbacks and a graphic warning of what can befall critics.