One such occasion came July 31, 1987 when — for reasons that to this day are not entirely clear — a riot occurred. Saudi security forces crushed the demonstrators, but in the ensuing stampede over 400 people lost their lives and over 600 were wounded.

A few days later, I encountered a clandestine leftist Saudi activist and asked what had happened. “We had nothing to do with it,” he said. “But the rulers are terrified. It showed that they no longer had complete control.”

Today, the kingdom’s rulers must look back on those days with envy. As the Saudi royals look out from their palaces in Riyadh, they see trouble everywhere. And they don’t have to look very far.