Saudi Arabia: unrest, failed coup and doubts over the official story

Saudi Arabia: unrest, failed coup and doubts over the official story

Refineries burning, missiles over the west coast and a historic ally looking the other way. That is how the story now circulating about Saudi Arabia begins: a country where, according to the messages being shared, the common people have risen up and the House of Al Saud is starting to wobble. The trigger being pointed to is the attacks from Yemen, which would have multiplied internal discontent to a point the kingdom could no longer hide. The question hanging over any conversation about the Gulf is no longer whether oil goes up or down, but how long the throne can hold out.

An alleged military coup against Bin Salman

The most repeated message points to a full-blown attempted coup. According to that version, Saudi intelligence would have arrested Prince Mubarak bin Nawaf Al-Diyasi Al Saud along with several officers and affiliates after an alleged assassination attempt on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The coup, always according to that account, would have had Houthi backing and would have failed. It is worth stressing the source: this is a transcript attributed to a Saudi citizen, with no independent confirmation. The same caution applies to the videos circulating about protests in the south of the country, near the Yemeni border, demanding an end to Al Saud family rule.

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Shia, Sunni and a border on fire

The religious backdrop appears as soon as you scratch the surface. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shia population concentrated near the border with Yemen and in the east of the country, and that is the terrain where Iran has been moving pieces for years. The Shia-Sunni standoff is nothing new: it goes back more than fifteen hundred years of history and explains why every bout of unrest in the region is read in geopolitical terms before local ones. Those trinc the matter closely point out that what matters is not so much the revolt itself as which outside backing stands behind each spark.

The Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-Turkey axis, under strain

Attention is also shifting to Pakistan, where protests over Imran Khan's release and against any aid to Saudi Arabia keep growing. In parallel, unverified claims are circulating: that Turkey cancelled a joint defence agreement with Riyadh over a payment dispute worth 50 billion dollars, and that the United States halted arms sales, including the F-35 contract. None of those figures or ruptures has been confirmed by official sources. What is clear is the nervousness: a military axis presumed solid that, on paper, depended on American protection in a high-intensity scenario.

Petrodollars that don't buy victories

The most repeated irony is economic. With all the money it extracts from oil, the kingdom has not been able to subdue the Houthis. That contrast between financial muscle and military results is what feeds doubts about the regime's real solidity. And it opens the uncomfortable question: if the throne falls or falls apart, who fills the gap in one of the most strategic maritime chokepoints on the planet? A new carve-up between the Anglo-Saxons, the Chinese and the Russians? A cosmetic change that alters something so nothing really changes? As of this discussion, none of those questions has an answer.

The unsettling fact is not the failed coup or the protest videos. It is that, with the world's largest pool of liquidity in its hands, the kingdom still depends on whether Washington looks — or stops looking.