RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East to contain the tide of change, shield other monarchies from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders.

From Egypt, where the Saudis dispensed $4 billion in aid last month to shore up the ruling military council, to Yemen, where it is trying to ease out the president, to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, which it has invited to join a union of Persian Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia is scrambling to forestall more change and block Iran’s influence. The kingdom is aggressively emphasizing the relative stability of monarchies, part of an effort to avert any drastic shift from the authoritarian model.

Saudi Arabia’s proposal to include Jordan and Morocco in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council - which authorized the Saudis to send in troops to quell a largely Shiite Muslim rebellion in the Sunni Muslim monarchy of Bahrain - is intended to create a kind of “Club of Kings.” The idea is to signal to Shiite Iran that the Sunni Arab monarchs will defend their interests, analysts said.

“We’re sending a message that monarchies are not where this is happening,” Prince Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, a businessman and member of the royal family, told the editorial board of The New York Times last month, referring to the unrest.

“I am sure that the Saudis do not like this revolutionary wave - they were really scared,” said Khalid Dakhil, a Saudi political
analyst and columnist. “But they are realistic here.”

The range of the Saudi intervention is extraordinary as the unrest pushes Riyadh’s hand to forge what some commentators, in Egypt and elsewhere, brand a “counterrevolution.”

In Egypt, where the revolution has already toppled a close Saudi ally in Hosni Mubarak, the Saudis are dispensing aid and mending ties in part to help head off a good showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in the coming parliamentary elections. The Saudis worry that an empowered Muslim Brotherhood could damage Saudi legitimacy by presenting a model of Islamic law different from the Wahhabi tradition of an absolute monarch. Saudi officials are also concerned that Egypt’s foreign policy is shifting, with its outreach to Hamas and plans to restore ties with Iran.

The Arab Spring began to unravel an alliance of so-called moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which were willing to work closely with the United States and promote peace with Israel. American support for the Arab uprisings also strained relations.

Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi analyst, wrote a recent opinion article in The Washington Post that suggested Riyadh was ready to go it alone because the United States had become an “unreliable partner.” But that seems at least partly a display of Saudi pique, since the oil-for-military aid arrangement that has defined relations between the two for the past six decades is unlikely to change soon. Saudi Arabia is taking each uprising in turn, without relying on a single blueprint. In Bahrain, it sent troops to crush a rebellion by Shiites because it feared the creation of a hostile government about 30 kilometers from some of its main oil fields . It has deployed diplomacy in other uprisings, and remained on the fence in still others. It also pledged $20 billion to help stabilize Bahrain and Oman, which has also faced protests.

In Yemen, Saudi Arabia joined the coalition seeking to ease out President Ali Abdullah Saleh because it thinks the opposition might prove a more reliable, less unruly southern neighbor.

On Syria, an initial statement of support by King Abdullah for President Bashar al-Assad has been followed by silence . That silence reflects a deep ambivalence, analysts said. The ruling Saudi family personally dislikes Mr. Assad - resenting his close ties with Iran and seeing Syria’s hand in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, a Saudi ally. In Libya, after helping push through an Arab League request for international intervention, Saudi Arabia left its neighbors, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to join the military coalition supporting the rebels. It has so far kept its distance publicly from Tunisia as well, although it gave refuge to its ousted president, Zine el- Abidine Ben Ali.

There are also suspicions that the kingdom is secretly providing money to extremist groups to hold back changes. Saudi officials deny that.

In 1952, after toppling the Egyptian king, Gamal Abdel Nasser worked to destabilize all monarchs, inspiring a regicide in Iraq and eventually the overthrow of King Idris of Libya. Saudi Arabia was locked in confrontation with Egypt throughout the 1960’s, and it is determined not to relive that period.

Mohammad F. al-Qahtani, a political activist in Riyadh, said, “We are back to the 1950’s and early 1960’s, when the Saudis led the opposition to the revolutions at that time, the revolutions of Arabism.”


By NEIL MacFARQUHAR