Saudis act to shore up 'club of kings'

Saudi Arabia is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East in a bid to contain the tide of change, shield fellow monarchs from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to calm turbulent republics.

From Yemen, where it is trying to ease out the president, to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, which it has invited to join a union of Gulf monarchies, and Egypt, where it dispensed $4 billion (2.4bn) in aid this month to shore up the ruling military council, Saudi Arabia is scrambling to forestall more radical change and block Iran's influence.

The kingdom is emphasising the relative stability of monarchies, part of an effort to block any dramatic shift from the authoritarian model, which would generate uncomfortable questions about the glacial pace of political and social change at home.

Saudi Arabia's proposal to include Jordan and Morocco in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council - which authorised the Saudis to send in troops to block a largely Shi'ite Muslim rebellion in the Sunni Muslim monarchy of Bahrain - is intended to create a kind of "club of kings". The idea is to signal to Shi'ite Iran that the Sunni Arab monarchs will defend their interests, analysts said.

"We're sending a message that monarchies are not where this is happening," said Prince Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, a businessman and high-profile member of the habitually reticent royal family, referring to the unrest. "We are not trying to get our way by force, but to safeguard our interests."

The range of the Saudi intervention is extraordinary as the unrest pushes Riyadh's hand to forge what some commentators brand a "counter-revolution".

"I am sure that the Saudis do not like this revolutionary wave - they were really scared," said Khalid Dakhil, a Saudi political analyst. "But they are realistic here."

The Arab Spring began to unravel an alliance of so-called moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which were willing to work closely with the United States and promote peace with Israel. American support for the Arab uprisings also strained relations, prompting Saudi Arabia to split from Washington on some issues while questioning its longstanding reliance on the US to protect its interests.

The strained Saudi posture toward Washington was outlined in a recent opinion piece by a Saudi writer in the Washington Post that suggested Riyadh was ready to go it alone because the US had become an "unreliable partner". But that seems at least partly a display of Saudi pique, since the oil-for-protection exchange that has defined relations between the two for the past six decades is unlikely to be replaced soon.Saudi Arabia is negotiating to buy $60bn (36bn) in advanced American weapons, and President Obama, in his recent speech demanding that Middle Eastern autocrats bow to popular demands for democracy, noticeably did not mention Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is taking each uprising in turn. In Bahrain, it sent troops to crush a rebellion by Shi'ites because it feared the creation of a kind of Shi'ite Cuba only 20 miles from some of its main oil fields, one sympathetic to, if not allied with, Iran. It has deployed diplomacy in other uprisings - and remained on the fence in others. It is also spending money, pledging 12bn to help stabilise Bahrain and Oman.

In Yemen, Saudi Arabia joined the coalition seeking to ease out President Ali Abdullah Saleh because it thinks the opposition might prove a more reliable, less unruly southern neighbour. But Arab diplomats noted that even the smallest Saudi gestures provided Saleh with excuses to stay, since he interpreted them as support.

On Syria, an initial statement of support by King Abdullah for President Bashar al-Assad has been followed by silence, along with occasional calls at Friday Prayer for God to support the protesters. The ruling Saudi family dislikes Assad - resenting his ties with Iran and seeing Syria's hand in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, a Saudi ally. But they fear his overthrow will unleash sectarian violence without guaranteeing that Iranian influence will be diminished.

In Libya, after helping push through an Arab League request for international intervention, Saudi Arabia sat out and left its neighbours, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to join the military coalition supporting the rebels. It has kept its distance publicly from Tunisia as well, although it gave refuge to its ousted president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

There are also suspicions that the kingdom is secretly funding extremist groups to hold back changes. Saudi officials deny that, although they concede private money may flow.

In 1952, after toppling the Egyptian king, Gamal Abdel Nasser worked to destabilise all monarchies. Saudi Arabia was locked in confrontation with Egypt then, and is determined not to relive that period. Mohammad al-Qahtani, a political activist in Riyadh, said: "We are back to the 1950s and early 1960s when the Saudis led the opposition to the revolutions, the revolutions of Arabism."