King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has demonstrated one lesson learned from the course of pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East: The world may cheer when autocrats resign, but it picks carefully which autocrats to punish for opening fire on their citizens.That cynical bit of realpolitik seems to have led the king to send troops last week over the causeway from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, where they backed up a violent crackdown on unarmed protesters by Bahrain’s own security forces.
The move had immediate consequences for Middle East politics, and for American policy: It transformed Bahrain into the latest proxy battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for regional dominance. And it called into question which model of stability and governance will prevail in the Middle East, and which Washington will help build: one based on consensus and hopes for democracy, or continued reliance on strongmen who intimidate opponents, sow fear and co-opt reformist forces while protecting American interests like ensuring access to oil and opposing Iran.
For Saudi Arabia, the issue in Bahrain is less whether Bahrain will attain popular rule than whether Iranian and Shiite influence will grow.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have sparred on many fronts since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 — a Shiite Muslim theocracy in Tehran versus a deeply conservative Sunni Muslim monarchy in Riyadh — in a struggle for supremacy in the world’s most oil-rich region. The animosity was evident in Saudi Arabia’s support for Iraq during its war with Iran, and it still shows in Iran’s backing for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Now, after a decade that seemed to tilt the regional balance toward Iran, Saudi Arabia decided that Bahrain was the place to put its thumb more heavily on the scale. It sent troops under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council to help crush pro-democracy demonstrations because most of the protesters were Shiites challenging a Sunni king.
“If the political opposition in Bahrain wins, Saudi loses in this regional context,” said Mustafa el-Labbad, director of Al Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “Saudi is regarding itself as the defender of Sunnis. And Iran is trying to defend Shiites in the region.”
The problem for the United States, however, is that Bahrain, at Saudi urging, chose to resolve its fears with force, rather than by addressing the protesters’ demands for democratic reform, as American officials had publicly encouraged.
And for that reason, the military deployment may now have a profound impact on the United States and its primary strategic interest in Bahrain, the Navy base it maintains there.
Because Washington did not ultimately support the protesters’ demands — as it came to do in Egypt and as it has now, very late in the game, come to back foreign intervention in Libya — many protesters believe that the Saudi troops were sent in with American complicity, or at least with an expectation of American acquiescence. So, among the protesters, who turned out by the tens of thousands, the crackdown may well yield animosity toward America and its Navy when events finally settle down.
One American expert in the Persian Gulf who advises policymakers in Washington said the Saudi king’s action was taken without regard for what might happen if it fails — if the violence leads only to more violence. The Saudi policy, he said, “is risky and could potentially draw us into conflicts we have not looked for.”
“What if the Bahrain venture fails, who will bail them out? It will have to be us.”
Saudi Arabia’s supporters acknowledge that this confrontation can escalate, but they tend to place the responsibility on Iran. “It can lead to that direct conflict if Iran were to interfere and use this as an excuse to interfere,” said Abdulaziz O. Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, which is based in Dubai. “I hope Iran can understand that any interference will not be acceptable.”There has been no evidence that Iran played a part in Bahrain’s uprising, which was led by young Bahrainis from the Shiite majority. Still, many protesters have said, it is reasonable to expect Shiites to be more receptive to Iran if they do gain power. There is little doubt, they also say, that a Shiite-led government would be less receptive to the Saudis.Even some of the Iranian regime’s harshest critics are saying the Saudi military venture in Bahrain will change the narrative of the region in Iran’s favor. Abbas Milani, an Iranian who went into exile after the 1979 revolution and is now director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, put it this way: “Iran, as the most brutal authoritarian regime in the region, will now have the chance to seem to stand with the democratic aspirations of the people, and against authoritarians clinging to power.”
The Saudi king’s decision to back King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa’s crackdown in Bahrain also underscored the challenge the United States often faces with its closest allies in the Middle East, where some interests align — like protecting the flow of oil — and others do not, like financing global terrorism. Saudi Arabia has moved aggressively to cut off radical Islamic terrorism within its own borders, but it has addressed the global phenomenon with far less conviction, many American experts have said.
One of those experts was Richard C. Holbrooke, the United States special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Shortly before his death last year, he was asked if heroin was the top source of funds for the Taliban. The answer was no. “It’s the gulf,” he said, meaning cash from sources in Saudi Arabia and another American ally, Kuwait.
One effect of the crackdown was to underscore President Obama’s failure to close the gap in expectations between his talk of democracy during his historic speech in Cairo in 2009 and his actions on the ground. The contortions needed to preserve the old model of stability while supporting aspirations for democracy were strikingly evident in a comment by Senator John Kerry, an ally of the president. “They are not looking for violence in the streets,” the senator said of the Saudi troops moving into Bahrain. “They would like to encourage the king and others to engage in reforms and a dialogue.”
Time quickly proved him wrong. The violence started the next day, and it was not only Iran that blamed Washington. “Where are the Americans, where are the Americans, why are they allowing this, they are killing us with heavy guns, where are the Americans?” shrieked Hussein Muhammad, 37, a bookstore owner and political activist, in a breathless phone call Wednesday from Manama.
When the tear gas cleared, the streets of Manama were littered with canisters that said, on their side, that they had been made in the United States.
While Washington has pressed for restraint, it has also continued to support the monarchy.
“My guess is that there are probably very significant parts of our government that were happy with this,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a professor at Princeton who was ambassador to Egypt under President Bill Clinton, and to Israel under President George W. Bush. “Although they are not able to say it, because other parts of our government see it as destabilizing. I think parts of our government are looking at the Iranian threat and the possibility of Bahrain being the first dominoes in the gulf to fall.”
Mr. Kurtzer pointed to an irony in that line of thought: the decision to support Bahrain’s king this time may undermine short-run interests the United States thought it was protecting. For 60 years, the United States has based the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. It operates openly, and its personnel have enjoyed largely unrestricted freedom of movement around the kingdom.
But last week, the Navy authorized family members and nonessential personnel to leave. The question now is: How safe will United States ships and personnel be surrounded by a population that may see Americans as complicit in the crackdown?
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