PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY: Well, there is certainly the potential for the royal family to be destabilised. They've never faced a threat quite like this, that's to say one that challenges their own legitimacy so widely. And for that reason alone the threat is really very serious.
It's been made more serious by the fact that for a very long time the royal family refused to admit that it even existed. And then the final touch is that the royal family itself, in a sense, created the threat by its partnership with the United States in organising an Islamic resistance in Afghanistan at the beginning of the 1980s.

MARK DAVIS: Well, this is part of America's dilemma, I guess, whether to support this Government, as unpalatable as it is, or to leave it to its own devices. Which way do you think the Administration will swing?

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: The United States has no choice at all but to support this Government. After all, the Saudi royal family has guaranteed, ever since the end of the Second World War, the flow of oil to the US. It's collaborated faithfully inside OPEC to guarantee that oil should flow and that prices should be controlled and it would be quite mad for them now to abandon the royal family in the hope of something better further down the line. There's no guarantee that what would replace the royal family would be more prepared to collaborate with the United States. Instead, there's every likelihood they would be less prepared to do so.

MARK DAVIS: It also seems that the Saudi Government has been collaborating with terrorists in virtually every corner of the globe. I mean, this is unsustainable, isn't it? Is the Saudi Government and its royal family part of the problem or part of the solution?

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: It's partly part of the problem. That's to say that the royal family - or rather the Saudi state - because of its connections with the Wahabi movement, has certainly propagated an extremist form of Islam very widely throughout the world. But that was not done because it wished to violently cause the change of government. It was done as part of what it saw as its responsibility to spread Islam.
But to suggest that the royal family in some way has wanted to foster terrorism I think is quite false. It's the last thing they wanted to do. It's just simply that what it actually did do in the end indirectly contributed towards the growth of terrorism, particularly after its collaboration with the US and Afghanistan.

MARK DAVIS: I wonder how indirectly, though, in that they directly supported the Taliban, from all reports. They've supported Hamas. They've supported very violent movements in South-East Asia. Are the chickens now coming home to roost now that the terror groups are attacking the Saudi Government itself?

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: Well, the chickens certainly are coming home to roost but I don't think, again, that the support was given with that purpose in mind. The support for the Taliban was not confined just to Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates, for example, did too and even the US in the 1990s did collaborate with the Taliban in the hope of being able to pass oil pipelines and gas pipelines through Afghanistan to Pakistan. So that was not so surprising.
Support for Hamas - well, many people in the Muslim world don't consider Hamas to be a terrorist group. They consider its struggle to be quite legitimate. The Saudis therefore were not an exception in that respect. Support in South-East Asia - yes, indeed, but that support was for what the Saudis called a dawah, the idea of the spreading and the Islamic call.
The Saudi Government certainly did support movements that have turned out to be violent, but it didn't anticipate that they would do so, nor did it anticipate that that violence would be turned against itself.

MARK DAVIS: So this perhaps might be more an issue of complacency than complicity, you'd suggest, but there's been an undeniable flow of Saudi money through some pretty dubious charities?

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: That's certainly true. I would agree with you. They were complacent. They weren't the only ones who were complacent, by the way. Most Western states were too. So I don't think the Saudis really in some way were responsible for the terrorism they now face. They simply collaborated and connived, as did many other states, including those in the West, in the growth of something they didn't fully understand.

MARK DAVIS: But are we assuming that this funding has now stopped, that it's an historical problem? The Council on Foreign Relations, in its most recent report, accuses Saudi Arabia of continuing to export radical extremism and says it's a core tenet of its foreign policy to export the global propagation of Wahabism and encouraging violence against Muslims and non-Muslims.

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: I would agree with part of that. It's certainly true that the agenda of the Saudi state is to export the ideas of Wahabism. But Wahabism is not the problem. The problem is a slightly different one. It's the problem of an ideology that maybe was derived from Wahabism, but is directly related to the idea of violence and to the overthrow of established governments. And that's Salafi Jihadism.
And I think one has to accept not the view necessarily of the Council on Foreign Relations, but that of the US Government, that is quite prepared to collaborate now with Saudi Arabia, despite what was said last year and the year before in Washington, because it recognises that Saudi Arabia is an essential component in its own structure of guaranteeing oil prices and the constant flow of oil.

MARK DAVIS: Well, suggestions have been made that elements within the security and intelligence structure are actively supporting al-Qa'ida or like organisations. Is it likely, in your opinion, that al-Qa'ida has penetrated these types of organisations, indeed, penetrated the multiple layers of the royal family itself?

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: Well, of course, don't forget al-Qa'ida, in part, originates inside the Saudi elite. Osama bin Laden himself was part of that elite. So penetration of the elite is not surprising. Secondly, large parts of the elite are disaffected with the royal family. They believe that the family has betrayed its fundamental obligations to guarantee the protection of the sacred sites of Islam and to ensure that non-believers don't actually contaminate them.
So on those grounds alone the elite certainly was penetrated. The evidence is at present that yes, indeed, parts of the National Guard, parts of the police, may well have been suborned by al-Qa'ida. Indeed, the current leader of al-Qa'ida inside Saudi Arabia is himself a sergeant originally inside the defence forces. But whether that really goes down to the core of the security forces or not is not clear.
The evidence is that they've managed to control the current outbreak of violence rather more successfully, perhaps, than many people thought they would. Whether they can maintain that control or not is the real question.

MARK DAVIS: Well if it does degenerate, I guess the key question for the world is whether the government is worth saving?

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: Well, quite frankly, if you don't have continuity inside Saudi Arabia, you better anticipate radically increased oil prices and that would have a dramatic effect on all our economies. And therefore, in a sense, continuity is essential. The question is how can you best guarantee it. You can't intervene directly. That would be a disaster. You can only hope and encourage the Saudi Government to carry out the changes that it must carry out and support it in so far as you can, whether you like it or not. I think those are the policies that most states will choose.

MARK DAVIS: All right. We'll have to leave it there. But thanks again very much for your time, George Joffe.

PROFESSOR GEORGE JOFFE: You're welcome.