Saudi government feels threatened by protests
Saudi Arabia was yesterday drafting up to 10,000 security personnel into its north-eastern Shia Muslim provinces, clogging the highways into Dammam and other cities with busloads of troops in fear of next week's "day of rage" by what is now called the "Hunayn Revolution".
The government has banned all protests and is sending in the troops to enforce it (at least in the Shia parts of the country). It has even threatened to intervene in neighboring Bahrain if they can't put the protesters down there.
The situation is complex in Saudi Arabia though. It seems there are really two different groups of protesters in Saudi Arabia. The Shia minority wants to overthrow the government, but the larger group of Sunni majority protesters just want less corruption and more freedom.
I don't think this is likely to lead to the collapse of the House of Saud, unless the government gets clumsy and heavy handed in trying to crush the protests. It could happen though, particularly if the government goes through with it's threat to intervene in Bahrain.
Bahrain is having it's own set of protests. The threat to the ruling house there is more dangerous though because the population is actually Shia majority, even though the Sunni dominate the government.
Jay