Will Western Asia Experience Unfolding Revolutions?
This argument is not a subjective
prediction. It is an assessment of the objective tendency of the present
contradictions without claiming that it is an “inevitable” outcome. Nothing is
stagnant and always bound to change. What could make the outcome “inevitable” is
the continuation of the negative developments in Saudi Arabia in particular, and
the Middle East in general. However, the existing conditions in the Middle East and
developments are not progressing in a positive direction for the Middle East,
which strengthens our argument.
The hubris and fantasy-based
thinking that led the US-West to believe it could extend Russia through Ukraine
has collapsed. The same hubris in the US-Israel miscalculations in the war
against Iran is not only collapsing but sowing the seeds for revolutions in the
entire region. The question is not whether the geopolitical architecture of
Western Asia will change. It is already changing. The question is how fast, and
who will be left standing when the dust settles. With their large population of
Shiites, their proximity to Iraq and Iran, the collapse of Bahrain and Kuwait
seems unavoidable. It is not “if” but “when,” according to most military
experts.
The latest developments in Yemen brought the question of the future of Saudi Arabia into the debates for those who can think dialectically and critically. The possible collapse of Saudi Arabia has become the topic of discussion. The collapse may take different shapes and forms with different power structures.
What is the possibility of the
collapse of Saudi Power?
The House of Saud is not a
conventional nation-state. It is a family monarchy that rules a tribal
confederation and a sectarian periphery through oil rent and coercion. That
model is now in crisis. The Yemen war has transformed an external security
problem into an internal fiscal and legitimacy crisis. The state's capacity to
mediate its contradictions is declining because it lacks the material means to
pay its clients or guarantee their security.
This is not a prophecy. It is an
assessment of the objective tendency of the present contradictions. The Saudi
state is not passive, but neither is it omnipotent. Its agency is constrained
by the very contradictions it must manage. When the rentier state can no longer
rent, it must rely on coercion alone. And coercion, in turn, requires means.
The question is not whether Saudi
Arabia is vulnerable. The question is whether the concrete conditions now
present will activate the historical fault lines that have always existed
beneath the surface of the kingdom. The evidence suggests they will.
I. The Historical-Tribal
Structure: A Family Monarchy Over a Tribal Confederation
Saudi Arabia is not a nation in
the European sense. It is a tribal confederation held together by a single
family, the Al Saud. According to historical records, the ruling House of Saud
descends from the Anizah tribe. The kingdom is composed of around 100 tribes,
many of which have deep-seated animosities toward the Saudi tribe.
The major tribes include:
- Qahtan: A large tribal confederation in the
southern and central regions.
- Shammar: A powerful northern tribe centered
around Ha'il, historically the fierce rivals of the Al Saud. The Al Saud
defeated and ousted the Shammar to seize Najd. This displacement left a
multi-generational legacy of resentment.
- Otaiba (Utaybah): A prominent tribe in the
central and western regions.
- Harb: A large tribe spread across the Hejaz
and Najd.
- Dawasir: A powerful southern tribe with
historical ties to the royal family.
- Howeitat: A tribe whose ancestral lands were
forcibly cleared for the NEOM mega-city project.
In traditional Arabian society,
tribes view each other through rigid hierarchical lenses based on lineage and
honor. Several prominent, ancient tribes historically viewed the Al Saud as
being from "inferior stock" or less prestigious lineages. Having an
absolute monarchy dictated exclusively by one family forces proud, independent
tribes into a permanent position of political subjugation.
As Alastair Crooke has detailed,
King Abdulaziz originally used the Ikhwan—a fierce, hyper-puritanical warrior
militia drawn heavily from tribes like the Otaiba and Mutayr—to conquer the
peninsula. However, once the King secured his borders and needed British
diplomatic backing, he violently turned on the Ikhwan, using British-supplied
machine guns to slaughter them at the Battle of Sabilla in 1929. Decades later,
this betrayal fueled the infamous 1979 Grand Mosque Seizure, led by Juhayman
al-Utaybi, a grandson of an Ikhwan warrior, which aimed to overthrow the Al
Saud.
The Hejaz, the western coast,
possessed a cosmopolitan, urban, and diverse tribal culture. When the Najdi Al
Saud conquered it, they imposed strict socio-religious norms and moved the
centers of wealth and commerce to Riyadh. Hijazi tribes have long harbored
resentment over this perceived cultural erasure and economic sidelining.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, the state's relationship with tribes has shifted dramatically,
replacing traditional consensus-building with forced compliance. The forced
evictions of the Howeitat tribe for NEOM are a prominent example. Up to 20,000
people of the Huwaitat tribe have been threatened with expulsion from thirteen
communities since 2020. Members of the tribe have been arrested after
peacefully opposing displacement from their ancestral lands. The crown prince
has aggressively pushed a top-down "Saudi First" nationalism to
supersede tribal identities. But the underlying tribal friction remains an
internal fault line.
II. The Rentier Contradiction:
Oil Wealth and the Patronage Network
The Kingdom's greatest
vulnerability is its reliance on oil. The rentier state model rests on a
transactional reality: the royal family provides wealth and security, and the
tribes provide loyalty. That transaction is now failing.
On September 11, 2026, drone
attacks originating from Iraqi territory struck pumping stations along the
East-West Pipeline, forcing Riyadh to shut it down as a precautionary measure.
The pipeline is Saudi Arabia's primary alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.
Repairs are estimated to take three to five weeks—assuming no further attacks.
Saudi oil activity has already fallen 24.7 percent year-on-year, leaving real
GDP 4.8 percent lower, the deepest contraction since the pandemic.
The kingdom entered 2026
expecting nearly $58 billion in financing needs. On August 31, 2026, the
National Debt Management Center contacted banks to arrange a loan of at least
$8 billion. Saudi Arabia needs $96 per barrel to balance its budget and $113 per
barrel to fully fund Vision 2030. The IMF estimates the fiscal break-even oil
price at roughly $96 per barrel for 2026. Oil prices have remained well below
that threshold.
Crown Prince MBS's Vision 2030
diversification plan is entirely dependent on sustained, high-volume oil
revenues to fund mega-projects. When oil exports plummet, the state's financial
cushion shrinks rapidly. The state is already looking to borrow money. There is
a risk that Washington could freeze or seize Saudi assets, though this remains
a speculative scenario rather than a documented policy.
The Saudi government maintains
tribal loyalty through a vast patronage network—including government jobs,
stipends to tribal sheikhs, and heavy placement within the Saudi National
Guard. The National Guard is not a neutral institution. It is described as a
force "forged out of those tribal elements loyal to the House of
Saud" and tasked with protecting the royal family from internal dangers
such as a coup d'état. It recruits primarily from tribal and rural communities,
and tribal leaders are "carefully chosen for their loyalty to the
regime." This is the patronage system in military form. If the state can
no longer pay, the loyalty of the Guard becomes contingent.
If the economic collapse deepens
to the point where the state can no longer pay salaries or support tribal
regions, the primary incentive for loyalty disappears. The House of Saud relies
heavily on its vast internal security apparatus to crush dissent before it
spreads. If the conflict with Ansar Allah or wider regional escalations
completely exhaust and fracture the military and National Guard, the state will
inevitably lose the physical capacity to police its vast desert interior.
..III. The Tribes Are
Interest-Driven, Not Permanently Fragmented
It is true that the tribes are
not a unified subject. But Arab tribal history is not a story of permanent
fragmentation. Tribes form alliances, confederations, and coalitions when it
serves their material and political interests. The Al Saud themselves came to
power through such alliances. The Ikhwan was a tribal coalition. The 1979
seizure was a tribal-religious coalition.
Tribes unite when the center can
no longer divide them. The Al Saud's historical method was to play tribes
against each other, buy off sheikhs, and integrate tribal elites into the
state. If the center loses the capacity to pay and protect, that method collapses.
Then the common interest—removing the family monopoly on power and wealth—can
override rivalries.
Tribal grievances, such as the
forced evictions of the Howeitat, are currently localized. But if other
powerful tribes perceive that the House of Saud is collapsing, they may move to
reclaim autonomy over their historic lands. Most tribal leaders are more likely
to leverage the state's weakness to demand greater concessions and local power
rather than launch an outright civil war—until the conditions for rising ripen.
And those conditions are ripening.
IV. The Southern Borderlands:
Asir, Jazan, and Najran
As far as Ansar Allah is
concerned, Saudi Arabia occupies three regions of Yemen whose populations are
Houthis and other Yemeni tribes. These regions are located in the southwest of
Saudi Arabia, northwest of Yemen: Asir, Jazan, and Najran. They were historically
part of "Greater Yemen." They were annexed following the brief 1934
Saudi-Yemeni War, formalized under the Treaty of Taif. However, none of the
governments of Yemen recognized this annexation.
These regions are inhabited by
tribes with deep cross-border, linguistic, and cultural ties to Yemen. Najran
is the ancestral home of the Yam tribe, who are predominantly Ismaili Shia—a
group that has faced systemic marginalization by the Sunni-Wahhabi religious
establishment in Riyadh. Other border areas harbor Zaydi Shia populations
identical to the Houthi heartland.
The border pressure is not
theoretical. Houthi attacks have hit civilian and economic sites in Abha,
Khamis Mushait, Jazan, and Najran, injuring 73 people. Yemeni forces have
targeted gatherings in Asir province with domestically manufactured missiles.
The Houthis have also claimed attacks on military bases in Sharurah and Najran.
This is precisely the kind of sustained disruption that forces Riyadh to divert
military resources away from the Eastern Province and the interior.
There is a crucial distinction
between "occupying Saudi Arabia" and "liberating" occupied
areas. Ansar Allah has not framed its objectives as conquering Saudi Arabia. It
has framed them as ending the siege, ending the war, and reclaiming what it
considers Yemeni territory. If Ansar Allah makes the return of those regions
part of a war-ending agreement, that is a political demand, not a military
occupation.
Dialectically, this matters
because it changes the character of any Ansar Allah move into those areas. It
would not be an invasion of Saudi Arabia; it would be a reclamation of
territory with cross-border tribal and sectarian ties. Local tribes—Yam, Zaydi,
Ismaili—might welcome it or at least not resist it. That would be a massive
legitimacy blow to the House of Saud, which claims to be the guardian of the
peninsula.
If the Saudi central government
is perceived as collapsing, Ansar Allah's long-standing ideological ambition to
reclaim Asir, Jazan, and Najran would act as a massive catalyst. Local tribes,
already aggrieved by Riyadh, may choose to welcome or align with Yemeni forces
rather than defend a failing House of Saud.
V. The Eastern Province: Oil
Wealth and Sectarian Marginalization
The Kingdom's massive oil wealth
is heavily concentrated in the Eastern Province—Al-Ahsa and Qatif regions. This
population has faced intense socioeconomic and religious discrimination for
decades. Despite living directly on top of the wealth that funds the entire
kingdom, Shia towns have historically been marginalized, underfunded, and
subject to brutal security crackdowns, most notably during the Arab Spring
unrest.
This makes the Eastern Province
an important strategic vulnerability. If Riyadh's military overextends and
fails to secure the state against Ansar Allah and regional pressures, the Shia
population in the east—historically sympathetic to regional Shia movements—could
rise to seize or disrupt the oil infrastructure, completely decapitating Saudi
Arabia's single-line economy.
The patience of the Eastern
Province is not infinite. In September 2026, about 100 members of the Shiite
minority staged a protest in the eastern region. The Interior Ministry warned
that demonstrations "won't be tolerated." Police raids continue in
the Shia-dominated Qatif region. Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province has seen bouts
of unrest since 2011, and the current crackdown suggests the state is aware
that its coercive capacity is being tested.
The Shia of the Eastern Province
have a long history of resistance: the 1979 Intifada, the 2011–2013 protests,
the sustained crackdowns. They hate being under Sunni-Wahhabi authority. They
have immense patience, but patience is not passivity. It is a strategic waiting
for the right moment.
The dialectical point is that
patience can turn to action when the state's coercive capacity cracks. If the
Saudi military is overextended on the southern border, if the National Guard is
fractured, if the oil infrastructure is disrupted, then the Shia in Qatif and
Al-Ahsa may see a historic window. They do not need to be "triggered"
by an external force. They need the state to lose its ability to repress them.
That is the concrete condition.
VI. The Multi-Front Vise: When
the Center Cannot Hold
When analysts talk about a
"when, not if" scenario, they look at these exact two fronts acting
in unison. A persistent refusal to compromise by the Saudi ruler could easily
create a multi-front vise: Ansar Allah pressures the southwestern border (Asir,
Jazan, Najran), forcing the Saudi military to shift its resources, while
internal unrest or sabotage paralyzes the Eastern Province oil fields.
Under such an intense pincer, the
"Saudi First" nationalist illusion shatters, allowing the original
tribal and sectarian boundaries to re-emerge and fracture the state.
The most important factor for the
ruling Saud tribe is that they are fighting this economic and infrastructure
war essentially alone. Its ultimate security guarantor, Washington, has
explicitly ruled out direct military re-engagement in Yemen. The U.S. has
chosen to hold its own direct, Oman-brokered talks with Houthi officials rather
than militarily defending Saudi oil lanes. Riyadh attempted to build a fallback
security umbrella via the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Pakistan and
Turkey. However, neither power has shown any appetite to put boots on the
ground or engage Ansar Allah, leaving the Saudis alone.
Ansar Allah does not need to
cross the border to destabilize the kingdom; they only need to sustain a state
of continuous disruption. With the East-West Pipeline crippled and the Bab
el-Mandeb strait effectively blockaded to Saudi shipping, the financial
bleeding will compound daily. If exports remain suppressed, the fiscal reserves
keeping the state stable will deplete on a visible, short-term trajectory.
Tribal uprisings rarely happen
purely out of ideological hatred. They happen when the central government loses
its capacity to enforce security and, most importantly, distribute wealth among
the tribes. Saudi Arabia's internal stability relies on a transactional
reality: the royal family provides wealth and security, and the tribes provide
loyalty. When that transaction fails, the loyalty fails with it.
VII. The Gulf Periphery:
Bahrain and Kuwait
While Bahrain has long been seen
as the most fragile link, the strategic victories of Ansar Allah in Yemen have
effectively bypassed Bahrain, moving the primary target directly to the Saudi
Arabian heartland.
The data confirms Bahrain's
fragility. ACLED records show that demonstrations centered on Shiite issues
accounted for almost 40 percent of all demonstrations in Bahrain from March to
August 2026. Since May 2026, the government has intensified its siege and
violent crackdown on the Shia community. More than 200 people have been
arrested since the war began, most of them Shia Muslims. Bahrain "may
struggle to recover from the impact of the war without a fresh bailout from its
richer neighbors."
Historically, Saudi Arabia acted
as the regional policeman that crushed uprisings in neighboring states. If the
Saudi oil infrastructure in the Eastern Province is neutralized or seized by
internal unrest, the financial and military network holding the smaller Gulf
monarchies together instantly disintegrates.
The economic contraction is
regional, not isolated. Goldman Sachs forecasts that every Gulf economy will
shrink this year by between 2 and 5 percent. A prolonged conflict could cause
Kuwait to contract by 14 percent. The World Bank projects Kuwait's economy to
shrink 6.4 percent. These are not peripheral states with independent
trajectories. They are integrated into the same security and economic
architecture as Saudi Arabia.
Instead of an uprising starting
in Bahrain and spreading outward, the developments in Yemen suggest the reverse
pipeline: the collapse of the center—Saudi Arabia—will trigger the automatic
collapse of the periphery—Bahrain and parts of the Gulf coast. If Riyadh is
forced to completely pull back its security umbrella due to domestic
exhaustion, the long-repressed populations in both the Saudi Eastern Province
and Bahrain will see a historic, ripe window of opportunity to rise
simultaneously.
Kuwait, too, is integrated into
the same security architecture. Its ruling family depends on Saudi and American
protection. If that architecture fractures, Kuwait's own sectarian and tribal
contradictions become active.
Conclusion: The Objective
Tendency of the Present Contradictions
The Saudi state is a historically
specific resolution of the contradiction between a family monarchy and a
tribal-sectarian periphery. That resolution was mediated through oil rent,
which purchased loyalty and funded coercion. The Yemen war has transformed an
external security problem into an internal fiscal and legitimacy crisis. The
state's capacity to mediate the contradiction is therefore declining.
Under conditions of sustained oil
revenue loss, military overextension, and a visible defeat or disruption on the
southwestern border, the contradiction may resolve into fragmentation rather
than reform. The most likely flashpoints are the southwestern borderlands and
the Eastern Province. The collapse of the Saudi center would likely pull
Bahrain and Kuwait into the same crisis, because they are integrated into the
same security and economic architecture.
This is not a prophecy. It is an
assessment of the objective tendency of the present contradictions. The hubris
and fantasy-based thinking that led the US-West to believe it could extend
Russia through Ukraine has collapsed. The same hubris in the US-Israel
miscalculations in the war against Iran is not only collapsing but sowing the
seeds for revolutions in the entire region.
The question is not whether the
geopolitical architecture of Western Asia will change. It is already changing.
The question is how fast, and who will be left standing when the dust settles.
September 17, 2026
