THE VANCOUVER SUN: As Libya collapses into anarchy and demands for political reform continue to flare across the Middle East, the pictures of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah returning home carried a message of foreboding.The 86-year-old absolute monarch looked bemused and disconnected as he cut short a three-month absence for medical treatment in the United States and convalescence in Morocco to return to the Saudi capital Riyadh.
His concession to the clamour for reform in the countries encircling Saudi Arabia like Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen was to announce an additional $35 billion for the country's already bloated patronage system, funded from its possession of 20 per cent of the world's oil reserves.
So far Saudi Arabia has not suffered the protests on the streets demanding an end to monarchic or presidential despotism that are washing over the Middle East and North Africa.
But Saudi Arabia, for many the spiritual hub of the Muslim world, is facing serious challenges to its regional authority at a time when it is in the midst of a succession struggle that threatens to distort its responses.
Saudi Arabia's regional rival Iran has capitalized significantly on the uncertainty and chaos in the region.
Tehran, champion of the Shiite sect of Islam in its 1,400-year tussle with the Sunnis led by Saudi Arabia, has already benefited from the U.S. putting the Shiite majority in power in Iraq and destroying the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
To that has been added Tehran's ever closer ties with Syria and its terrorist acolytes; Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
The new regime in Egypt is unlikely to be as opposed to Hamas as was deposed president Hosni Mubarak, and several of the Gulf States are leaning toward Tehran after seeing the uprising against their Sunni overlords by the Shiite majority in Bahrain.
In Saudi Arabia, about two million of the 26 million population are Shiites and they live primarily in the oil-producing east of the country. >>> Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun | Thursday, February 24, 2011
