Page 99 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

Saudi Arabia and Iran: Outside Pressures 75

career, lie recognised the value of an alliance with Britain and
showed a marked interest in maintaining its friendship. This was
based on pragmatic considerations, for one of his greatest assets
was his ability to perceive the limitations of his own power, especially
in the face of British opposition. It was not accidental that Yemen, I
the only neighbouring state not under some form of British protection,
was also the only neighbouring state with which the Wahhabi
forces clashed. Furthermore, it was after 1928, when the Ikhwan !
began attacks on Iraq and Kuwait, thus jeopardising his relations
with Britain, that he decided to suppress them.0 Consequently,
the British authorities had remarkably little to complain of as regards
Saudi encroachments on their sphere of influence in the Gulf region.
The presence of I bn Sa‘ud, however, remained powerful throughout
the period under study, and it would be wrong to assume that,
despite the very few official complaints to the king, the British
authorities in the Gulf were unaware of his influence, direct and
indirect, on the shaykhdoms of the Trucial Coast. This awareness
prompted an aloofness in the British attitude towards him, and
one that he was unable to comprehend. As Philby says, ‘He could
not understand that his own insistence on the incontestable fact
of his absolute independence, both in the domestic and in the
foreign fields, constituted a barrier which British sympathy could
not surmount.’7 The fact of his great power in the peninsula,
and his determination to uphold his rights as an independent ruler,
made his status problematic in terms of imperial concerns; it also
created certain apprehensions regarding the ability to check or
control any advances he might make. The fear of his penetration
into British spheres of influence was based on historical precedent
and shared alike by the British authorities and by the various
rulers of the Gulf states, for whom I bn Sa‘ud’s existing power
was a constant reminder that the Wahhabis had once before been
able to seize and control part of the Trucial Coast. There was
too a recognition, reiterated many times in official British correspon­
dence, that Ibn Sa‘ud was the natural successor to Britain on
the Arab side of the Gulf; the fact that the shaykhdoms had
the same language, religion and social order as Saudi Arabia streng­
thened the likelihood that, were it not for the British presence,
Wahhabi rule would have embraced them as well. Although a
full-scale invasion was never actually feared, the presence of Ibn
Sa‘ud was constantly felt: in all major discussions of policy regarding
the Gulf region in general and the Trucial Coast in particular,
great emphasis was placed on how the king could be expected
to be affected by any decision taken.
It was not only the historic precedent that prompted the British
authorities to fear Wahhabi encroachment on the Trucial Coast.