| Description |
Many analysts and scholars have repeatedly argued that the Saudi regime is vulnerable to the possibility of revolution and that it will ultimately experience the same fate as the Shah's regime in 1979. It has become commonplace to compare contemporary Saudi Arabia with Iran in 1979. In this view, the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia, like the Pahlavis, is doomed to overthrow at the hands of radical Muslims, thereby creating another anti-Western, fundamentalist Islamic nation. In fact, almost all of these parallels gloss over a wealth of critical differences. Many of these comparisons are superficial and lack a rigorous, detail-oriented academic analysis. Undoubtedly, Iran and Saudi Arabia share some common features and have faced similar social and economic challenges. But unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia has not experienced a revolution. Why is that the case? What lessons may key decisionmakers in the Saudi regime have learned from the Iranian case, which has enabled them to avoid revolutionary turmoil? What makes the Iranian Revolution so unique so as to make its replication rare or highly improbable amongst other oil-rich rentier states of the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia? The key argument of my dissertation is that the crucial causes of the Iranian Revolution are absent in Saudi Arabia. Permissive causes, namely the social, economic and political grievances, are quite similar in both cases. But grievances alone do not necessarily lead to revolution. The active elements that were instrumental in the Iranian case, such as a multiclass coalition, ulama-bazaari (clerical-business) alliance, charismatic leadership, and the inconsistent and socialeconomically destructive policies of the rulers are absent in the Saudi case. |
