Democratic change in the Middle East
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Democratic change in the Middle East is John Kiriakou's answer, given in 2015, to what ordinary people in the region would have to do to free themselves of both Western influence and Saudi political ambition. He prefaces it by refusing the premise of an easy answer, calling the question very important and really very difficult.

What he prescribes

Any real change, he says, is going to take decades, and it is going to have to be revolutionary, but revolutionary in a democratic way rather than a violent one. The precedent he points to is the beginning of a genuinely democratic uprising at the very start of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, and he holds that success elsewhere would mean following that Tunisian model, at least as it stood in its early days.

Where he expects none

He exempts the kingdom itself from his own prescription: honestly, he says, he does not think there is ever going to be any kind of real change, any revolutionary change, in Saudi Arabia.

Elsewhere, the obstacle he names is not the local government but the money behind it. Anybody participating in a popular uprising is going to have to fight against Saudi money and Saudi weapons.

The conclusion he does not want

Kiriakou marks the last step as one he would rather not take, framing it as a wish before he states it. He wishes he could say that there is a model, a real model, for transition to democracy in the Middle East that does not include blood spilled in the streets, "but I think such a model doesn't really exist." The only way to counter the effects of Saudi involvement in other countries of the region, on his reading, is by shedding blood.

He does not press the point when the interviewer calls it very unfortunate, and the conversation turns immediately to the one place he thinks has managed a transition, Kuwait.

See also

- Kuwait As A Sectarian Model
- The Saudi fear of an election
- Saudi Influence In Egypt
- The U.S.,Saudi relationship
