Michael Scott Doran is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In this Foreign Affairs article, Professor Doran analyzes the political paradox that confronts the leaders of Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis, but its elite is bitterly divided on how to escape it. Crown Prince Abdullah leads a camp of liberal reformers seeking rapprochement with the West, while Prince Nayef, the interior minister, sides with an anti-American Wahhabi religious establishment that has much in common with al Qaeda. Abdullah cuts a higher profile abroad — but at home Nayef casts a longer and darker shadow.

In this Washington Post op-ed, Thomas Lippman, a former Washington Post correspondent in the Middle East, is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, frames the conflict in the following fashion:

Saudi forces will win their gun battles with the terrorists. The greater challenge before the House of Saud is to satisfy the aspirations of the majority — and maintain their security and economic ties with the United States — without further inciting the religious extremists whose rhetoric gives cover to the terrorists. The task is especially difficult because the royal family’s sole claim to legitimacy is its role as the upholder of Islam. To the extent that the regime embraces social progress that can be depicted as un-Islamic, and especially if it appears to do so at the behest of the United States, the backlash could elevate the violence of the past year into a full-scale insurrection.

Hat tip to Craig Newmark for the links to these insightful pieces.