Would Iran Control Persian Gulf Entrances With Revolution in Bahrain?

When the Saudi royal family sent 150 armored personnel carriers to reinforce the Bahraini royal government-a Sunni government like that of the Saudi, I was reminded of the long shadow cast by the radical Shia government of Revolutionary Iran in middle eastern affairs. If the civil uprising in Bahrain by Shia militants led to an abdication and takeover to Shia rule, would Americans observe formation of a democratic government in Bahrain by people speaking a language that has no words for democracy in it?

For domestic U.S. news consumption we learn that uprising in the Middle East by organizers using Twitter and Facebook invariable would create a democratic government if successful. If sectarian rule is democratic with complete repression of the opposite Islamic mosques and people from government perhaps that is so. Nevertheless there are many questions to ponder on the issue of political stability in the strategically important tiny nation of Bahrain.

How did a Sunni ruling class form historically in Bahrain, and where did the Shia come from that live in Bahrain today-were they illegal aliens arriving after the British created the nation following world war one?

If Shiist government takes over will Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq be there spiritual guide, or will it be the Supreme Guide Khomeinehi of Iran? If a Shia government takes over will Iran home-port naval warships there to control both sides of the entrance to the Persian Gulf? Will Iran deploy missiles to Bahrain able to hit all Saudi oil production facilities from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf? Will Iran sponsor the creation of the Hezbollah political party in Bahrain as it supports Hezbollah in the Lebanon? Americans have no answers to most of these simple questions reaching mundane political discussion.

Saudi Arabia is the wealthiest of Arab nations. The oil of the nation is half gone already, and one must wonder about the prosperity of a Saudi Arabia with a democratic government locked in civil, political turmoil and economic management something more like that of the United States; would it begin running deficits too and accelerate the wasting of its natural oil wealth before returning to the desert status of Yemen? Perhaps a slow evolution to a constitutional monarchy is in Saudi Arabia’s future. The effort to continuously grow national prosperity I that nation may perhaps suffer with too much restive political agitation if not pluralistic terrorist actions in support of takedown of the government. Such leveraged underpinning would not necessarily be followed by construction of a democratic government. We might think to ask who the people are, where they are from, what additional interests are present and so forth in regarding the opposition constituency in Twitter-Facebook inspired ‘instant’ uprisings seeking to borrow U.S. political and military power.