"... First, there are conspiracy theorists who argue that the hardliners within the ruling family, such as the former Crown Prince and interior minister Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz, had been using Nimr to scare the Sunnis and oppose King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue and tentative outreach to the Shiites. On this topic, Hamza al-Hassan pointed to "the regime’s talk of a conspiracy, which it views as undoubtedly coming from Iran."The second theory is that “arresting Nimr earlier would have created heightened unrest”, which the government wanted to avoid, because he had only been appearing in large crowds at funerals or at his mosque. The third theory, which originates from a Wikileaks cable, is that “the government was always ultimately going to react, but on its own timetable."
According to the US magazine, there is another, even more worrisome, dimension. The arrest of Nimr comes amid a military buildup in the Gulf and a similar crackdown in Bahrain. Whereas the exclusion of Nimr was expected to have positive results, things went in a different direction, and the conclusion is now unpredictable. Regardless, it is going to be a “a hot summer indeed” according to Elliott Abrams, researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations...."
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