Anxiety in the House of Saud

And though the Kingdom is indeed relatively stable, not all is entirely well on that front either. Recent clashes between Ethiopian guest workers and Saudi police have led to fatalities, mass arrests and the expulsion of some 20,000 foreign workers; measures that have only exacerbated the turmoil and extended it beyond the Ethiopian community. The Ethiopians are among the nine million migrants who stream annually into Saudi Arabia, fleeing poverty at home and seeking employment abroad. Many do menial jobs most Saudis won't deign to do, and their remittances amount to lifelines for their families back home. Typically looked down upon, there has been a steady stream of news about the mistreatment and discrimination suffered by these migrant workers. The simmering unrest involving Ethiopians therefore points to a larger, more systemic problem that the Kingdom has thus far failed to address.

But the Saudis face a much bigger challenge, and it's one that can't be solved by deportation. Several Persian Gulf Sunni sheikdoms, Saudi Arabia included, have restive Shiite minorities that feel disenfranchised and discriminated against. Bahrain's monarchy -- which presides over a Shia majority of 70 percent -- might have suffered the fate of regimes like Libya and Egypt had it not been for the March 2011 Saudi military intervention that quelled massive Shia protests.

Saudi Arabia's unhappy Shia minority constitutes 12-15 percent of the population and is concentrated in the Eastern Province (home to the Kingdom's main oil fields), where it accounts for about a third of the inhabitants. After the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, thousands of Saudi Shiites protested, many were arrested and at least 20 were shot. In addition to clashes between Sunnis and Shias this year, clashes and protests also erupted in 2009, 2012 and 2013.

The Saudi regime's anxiety over Shia unrest has an external aspect as well: due to its obsessive fear of Iran -- against which it is waging a complex battle to shape the Middle East -- Riyadh regards its Shia minority as something of a fifth column. While this assessment is a gross oversimplification, and may even amount to a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more the rivalry with Iran heats up, the more the Saudi rulers cling to it and act accordingly, alienating the Shia and aggravating the problem. As the Saudi regime sees it, Iran's support for Bashar al-Assad's Alawite regime and Tehran's alliance with Nouri al-Maliki's Shia-dominated state in Iraq is not just about influence in the Arab world; it's also a high-stakes struggle involving stability at home and in the Kingdom's immediate neighborhood.

On top of all this, the Saudi rulers are losing confidence in the United States, their strategic guardian in the region. As they see it, the Obama administration has: 1) all but abandoned the anti-Assad opposition, unlike Saudi Arabia, which is funneling arms and money to Assad's foes; 2) failed to back Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in his hour of need; 3) been at best ambivalent toward the military-dominated, but nominally civilian, regime that took power following the coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsi, which the Saudis have backed with $5 billion in aid; and 4) failed to understand that the Brotherhood is a subversive organization.

These too are oversimplifications -- the notion that the United States could have stopped the revolutionary waves of the Arab Spring had it wanted to is silly -- but that's beside the point: it's the Saudi government's view and helps explains its anxiety. Some top Saudi leaders -- including current intelligence chief and former ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar bin Sultan -- have even advocated reducing the Kingdom's dependence on the U.S. and seeking alternative alignments. Here's the problem: the United States is irreplaceable when it comes to providing the kind of protection the House of Saud seeks and has long depended on, which also means that Washington's capacity to create anxiety in Saudi ruling circles is unrivalled.

For Saudi Arabia, the old cliches appears to ring true: money can't buy everything, and in Riyadh's case, it certainly can't secure long-term happiness.