In a room overlooking the waters of the Gulf in Manama, the leader of Bahrain’s largest opposition party ponders a troubling question: Did he throw away a chance for the first real democracy in the Gulf Arab region?

Over two months after the government brought in Saudi forces to help break up a protest movement unlike anything the ruling Gulf Arab dynasties had seen before, many Bahrainis wonder if the question haunts Sheikh Ali Salman like no other.

[VN320090 Salman interview]

Inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, young Bahrainis of all political and sectarian backgrounds converged on the Pearl Roundabout in early February. Their demands were vague and uncoordinated, but the key element was that the Al-Khalifa family release its grip on political life.

After four people were killed and over 200 wounded in a botched attempt by security forces to smash the protest, Crown Prince Salman – leader of the dovish wing of the ruling family – offered a dialogue with opposition groups.

But it was not until three weeks later that those talks finally appeared to be on the point of a breakthrough.

Salman, a famed moderate who vaunts his desire for Al Khalifa rule to continue, is pensive.

“There is a view that we were late to respond to the call for dialogue, but we had our reasons,” he replies. “We did not go to public talks, but we talked behind closed doors. I met the crown prince three times alone during the crisis and my working team was meeting his working team almost daily. But there was no results until March 13.”

That day the crown prince said again he was interested in dialogue, but specified this time that it would centre on seven principles including representative government and a parliament with full powers.

On March 14 Wefaq and six other opposition groups said they wanted clarifications before entering into direct talks with the crown prince.

But that day Saudi troops poured into Bahrain, on March 15 martial law was declared, and the next day the Pearl Roundabout encampment was broken up. The Arab Spring was snuffed out in the encampment was broken up. The Arab Spring was snuffed out in the Gulf that day.

The failure to seize the moment for a historic agreement resulted in a crackdown that has shocked opposition groups and \democracy activists in its ferocity.

Rights activists say thousands have been detained or fired from jobs for involvement in the protests, mainly Shi’ites.

Dozens of Shi’ite places of worship have been demolished, four people have died in custody, and two others in suspicious circumstances, and two Bahraini journalists working for foreign media were beaten in May when just before I arrived in the country.

Twenty-one opposition figures – seven of whom are abroad – are on military trial on charges of seeking to overthrow the system and rights activists say they were tortured and 48 doctors and nurses have been charged with commandeering the Salmaniya hospital for protest purposes and helping ferry arms around.

“What a massively missed opportunity. Wefaq should have had the conviction to stand ahead of the others and sit at the table. I’m sure they rue it,” said one Western diplomat.

The period of martial ended on 1 June with an offer of new talks in July. But it’s claer that the parameters are way wider than before and the specifics of the crown prince talks have been scrubbed. “The ceiling will be lower than the crown prince’s seven points”, he said.

Reform could be set back by a decade. Similar talks on democracy took place in 2001, but the opposition boycotted elections in 2002 because the appointed upper house of parliament was to retain key powers.

Seven opposition parties including Wefaq took part in 2006 elections, but hardliners broke away from Wefaq to form the Haq movement.

Munira Fakhro of secular opposition group Waad says Wefaq was paralysed by fear of losing the street — Shi’ite protesters radicalised by the deaths in their number — after Haq leader Hassan Mushaimea returned from exile on 26 February.

“My analysis is that after all this anger and death among Shi’ites the street was tilted towards Mushaimea. Ali Salman was afraid that if he accepted the crown prince proposal without assurances he would be cheated at the end of day,” she said, referring to opposition anger over the upper assembly in 2002.

“I told them, ‘the crown prince wants to reach out to you but he’s alone because no one is supporting him from his family, you must support him’.”

Mushaimea is now one of the 21 on military trial, along with leaders of two other parties who announced on 8 March that they would campaign for a republic. But the defendants also include Waad’s Sunni Muslim leader Ibrahim Sharif – paying the price for daring to destroy the narrative of Shi’ite opposition bent on creating a Shi’ite state – and some Shi’ite rights activists prominent during the protests.

Fakhro, a Sunni politics professor, said hardliners within the government brought Saudi troops to ruin a historic agreement on democratic reforms that was slowly gestating.

“Saudi Arabia decided democracy should not happen because it could affect the Eastern Province,” she said, referring to the Saudi region where Shi’ites dominate. “They were waiting on the Saudi-Bahrain causeway for a few days and when they saw they would reach a concensus, they said ‘that’s it’.”

In March the protesters had begun to move beyond the roundabout to stage demonstrations outside government ministries and at the Manana financial district. The slogans now included demands for the removal of the ruling family or at least its prime minister of 42 years Sheikh Khalifa.

Salman says he didn’t agree with the escalation in protests or the open call for a republic, but admits they complicated the position of Wefaq and the rest of the opposition.

He said he had hoped Wefaq’s central demand for elections to form a body to write a new constitution would neutralise Haq’s radicalism by bringing them into the process.

“We knew that if there was a constituent assembly Haq would take part in the elections for it and we knew that a majority of the assembly would support a constitutional monarchy,” he said.

The government and Sunni leaders have another theory for why the opposition appeared to drag their feet over negotiations: Wefaq was waiting for approval from Iran.

“We think so. How else would you explain them not coming to negotiating table? Why they need a green light from religious clerics?” said Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Senior International Counselor at the Information Affairs Authority.

“We need a rational, practical leader who doesn’t look for religious blessings before he can embark on a political reform initiative,” he said.

“We didn’t see leadership emerging from their side and they didn’t let themselves loose from radical elements or come to the negotiating table.”

Wefaq leaders roll their eyes at these accusations. They say they are not interested in Iran’s system of clerical rule, and that in any case most Bahraini Shi’ites look to Ali Sistani in Iraq as their reference in religious affairs. Bahrain’s most senior Shi’ite cleric is Sheikh Issa Qassim.

Sheikh Abdullatif Al-Mahmoud, leader of the mainly Sunni National Unity Rally which emerged as a counter-weight to the Shi’ite opposition during the unrest – almost certainly with prodding from the preeminent royal group of prime minister and ministers of defence, interior and the royal court – goes further.

“In the second week of March their clerics were telling the Shi’ite masses that the Hidden Imam was about to come. That held them up going go into talks since they thought the Shi’ite state was coming,” he said. Pressed further on this claim, Mahmoud said he could hear Shi’ites on the rooftops of the Muharraq district shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ – to him a clear sign of connivance with the Imam.

The twelfth Imam of mainstream Shi’ism disappeared in 9th century Iraq and many believe he will return one day. Yet Mahmoud also suggested the U.S. navy was coordinating with Wefaq – some ships had left Manama port, he said – and Iran was widely assumed to be on the point of a landing forces.

In other words, the mother of all conspiracies.

“So the Hidden Mahdi will come on the USS Eisenhower?” former Wefaq MP Khalil Almarzooq joked.

The diplomat said such thinking among Sunnis is a sign of real fear over their future if Shi’ite parties were to become the dominant force in a parliament with more powers to legislate and form governments.

Much was at stake. Had the reform talks progressed on those terms, Al-Khalifa could have found themselves the first of the Gulf dynasties who emerged dominant from the British colonial period to cross the Rubicon of ceding key elements of their extensive powers to become figureheads for the nation.

“The fear among the educated Sunni classes is absolutely real. They are convinced they (Shi’ites) want an Iranian state in Bahrain,” the diplomat said.

Unofficially negotiating in the name of the government, Mahmoud spent five hours debating with the opposition groups – including the secular Waad – at Wefaq offices in March 13.

Mahmoud and Salman concur in their version of events that the Sunnis wanted the royal family to have guaranteed representation on the assembly that would write a new constitution.

The opposition parties objected but Salman says he told Mahmoud that the bar on votes approving constitutional changes could be 60 percent or more to assuage Sunni concerns of Shi’ite domination. Mahmoud says Wefaq’s rejection of a royal family place on this constituent assembly was a sign of nefarious Shi’ite intentions.

In a sign of the mistrust now prevailing, Mahmoud says that when news of Saudi troops’ imminent entry came in, Salman stood up and announced: “We will seek the help of Iran.” This phrase has now become for government alllies part of the official history of what happened. Wefaq says he never said that.