The Obama administration initially sought to nudge the ruling family to negotiate with the moderate opposition. But the White House was silent on the Saudi intervention, and until the president's speech, no senior official had publicly criticized the regime in recent months. The administration seemed to have acknowledged that the Saudis had carried the day. But the silence brought with it the inevitable implication that the president was unwilling to take on either the Saudis or an ally who hosts the Fifth Fleet -- a telling sign of the limits of Obama's commitment to democratic reform in the Middle East.
Obama's speech ended that silence, and sent a signal that the White House did not, in fact, accept the status quo. One member of the team that visited Manama last week told me the delegation urged the king and his ministers to release prisoners, restore civil liberties, and "put the burden on the opposition" by re-opening discussions over political reform. "We found them fairly receptive to our message," said this official -- but he acknowledged that Bahraini officials offered no explicit promise to do anything. In fact, he said, the Bahrainis tried to parry every criticism by insisting that they had acted within the confines of the law. The Americans rejoined that "the appearance was not good." It doesn't sound like they were reading anyone the riot act.
And maybe they were in no position to do so. As another, less hopeful administration official says, "We have leverage, but we don't have leverage." Tougher public criticism probably won't change the ruling family's calculus. Neither the Saudis nor the Emiratis, who share the Saudi fear of Iranian ambitions, have shown any give, and you can't threaten to move the Fifth Fleet unless you can find an equally hospitable and well-situated place to anchor it. "This is in some ways the hardest of all the puzzles," he says. "The stakes are really high, and it is a flashpoint."
White House officials are hoping that the king will use the June 1 expiration of the emergency laws imposed on March 15 as an opportunity to start undoing the damage. Those hopes are probably vain. In an e-mail message, Khalil Almarzooq, deputy leader of the parliamentary bloc of al-Wefaq, Bahrain's leading political society (actual parties are banned), said that while he and his colleagues welcomed both the speech and the visit, security forces continued to raid schools and arrest teachers, attack medical personnel, and fire government employees suspected of engaging in protests. The government-controlled press continues to accuse U.S. diplomats of serving as Iranian dupes. "The visit and the speech," Almarzooq wrote, "had no input to change the regime attitudes toward the continued [human rights] violations nor to approaching the political issues with commitment to real reform through a meaningful dialogue."
Arab autocrats have long since mastered the art of showing just enough commitment to reform to mollify the Americans. When push comes to shove, they know that the United States will back down -- as President George W. Bush did when, at the very height of his campaign of democracy promotion in the Middle East, he chose not to respond after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak blatantly rigged parliamentary elections in 2005. But that cynical game has come to an end because Arab publics suddenly stood up for themselves. With the Arab world in ferment, the United States can no longer afford to stand by its autocratic allies. That was the central message of Obama's speech last week (at least the part that wasn't about Israel). Reformers in the Middle East heard that message, and welcomed it. And they're going to hold Obama to his promise. In Bahrain, they're going to find out whether he meant what he said.
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