FG

To the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C.

I understand the concerns that led the Saudi government to intervene in Bahrain.  However, a recent incident involving your forces has been caught on video and is being widely circulated throughout the Gulf.  See:

//en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2011/mar/16/2951

I assume Saudi rulers are realists.  Before taking risky decisions, any realistic government should assume three things: first, that inflamatory events will occur.  Secondly, they can't be concealed and will be widely known (millions of individual can circumvent all censors via modern technology).  Thirdly, such news will have repercussions.

Hence, there is no doubt that the above video will reach almost every house in Bahrain and in your eastern provinces, whether Shia or Sunni.  Consider the likely effect on volative and frustrated young people.  Won't it accelerate sectarianism?  Will the end result be a Rwanda or Yugoslavia with the Shia playing the role of Bosnians?  Is there any way to allieviate such pressure before things go that far? 

As for Bahrain's ruler, isn't it likeley that his people will hold him accountable for any violence committed by foreigners whose intervention he sought?  In terms of popular "legitimacy," is he not in the same position as "puppet" Czech rulers in the fall of 1968 after Breshnev's forces intervened to prevent "contagion" from a Prague spring?

If the Khamenei regime runs true to form, that regime will exploit the incident to the maximum. If people are alienated enough, Al Quds can arm and train radicalized youths,  suggest a few "strategic targets"and assist in planning effective attacks.  Should that happen, might the Saudi kingdom return the favor?  An Iranian regime known for attacking minorities and stomping on its own reformers appears vulnerable. 

For histoical reasons you can easily discern, people everywhere are insisting on human rights and substantial--not merely symbolic--say in government.  That tendency will not stop.   As in England, monarchs or their equivalents (sheiks, Iran's Supreme Leader) can choose to yield gracefully and survive with ceremonial powers.  The latter is not a bad life and has fewer headaches. 

Their other option is a gamble--that force and intimidation will allow them to keep everything.   Unfortunately the more severe th repression and the longer it goes on, the more a blocked volcano builds underneath until an explosion occurs, a la Libya.   In that case any regime victory will be pyrrhic while a loss will be fatal (Khadaffi and sons can expect death if they remain and life in prison if they flee).  

Instead of eliminating demands for fairness and human rights, repression increases such demands.  It creates revulsion that drives new elements of the population into resistenc while it radicalizes those who once sought major reforms.  Any respect or trust a regime had vanishes.  

The "tipover point" occurs when a government, through its own actions, becomes so widely discredited or even hated that it can no longer save itself by agreeing to major reforms.   The time is long past when such things are acceptable.