This excerpt from a cogent piece of analysis from CFR fellow Ray Takeyh is illuminating:
Saudi rulers have made a major mistake in casting the crisis in Bahrain as a sectarian conflict in which Iran’s Shia proxies are battling a benign Sunni ruling class for sake of Persian aggrandizement. The rebelling in Bahrain, as indeed throughout the region, is about a disenfranchised and impoverished majority seeking political representation and economic justice. The proper path for Bahrain’s al-Khalifa dynasty is to renegotiate its national compact and appreciate that as the Middle East finally joins the twenty-first century it has limited options beyond a constitutional monarchy.
Bribes and violence, we’ve noticed recently, can only go so far. The structural factors here — ageing Saudi leaders and religious schisms — seem too great to promise quiet without reform for very long.
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