Saudi is quite possibly the strangest country in the world. In many ways, Saudi Arabia is more medieval than the quite cosmpoliton actual medieval Islamic world - and yet at the same time the influence of vast quantities of petroleum money and its erstwhile Western allies conspires to drag the whole country into the modern world. Mercedez Benzes and camels. American oilmen and Morality Police. Bedouins and international jet-setters.

Because the state religion is the ultra-conservative Wahabbi school of sunni thought - a sort of Islamic Hardshell Baptism which Saudi shares with the Taleban in Afghanistan - the official tone of the country can often veer towards an almost hysterical level of orthodoxy. By comparison, Iran, where by now the average man on the street could care less, is a liberal free-thinker's paradise. At the same time, the royal family, which now numbers at least in the thousands, are immune from every rule they make, and make very little effort to conceal their habit of out-decadenting the infidels.

Saudi Arabia issues no tourist or transit visas, and when a Westerner is in the country at all, it's usually to live in the country-within-a-country of American military bases and Saudi Aramco compounds. Doing business in Saudi is difficult due to the constant meddling, nepotism, and favoritism of the royals. Foreign women in particular tend not to linger long in Saudi; Saudi Arabia does not issue or honor driver's licenses for women, and even foreign women are nominally required to dress to Wahabbi standards of modesty outside foreign compounds(think headscarves and usually veils), on pain of beating by the Morality Police.

There is almost certainly a great deal of resentment towards the royal family by Saudi commoners, and many people I know that have spent time in the country feel that in the absence of a strong American military presence, the 'ibn Sauds would be deposed very quickly. Nobody's quite sure if this would mean a turn towards even more conservative Islam, in the style of the Taleban and native son Osama bin Laden, or a weakening of the bonds of religion which already make the country a virtual theocracy. Everybody agrees that it would be violent.