In 1979, as smoke rose from the Grand Mosque in Mecca during a bloody zealot siege, I felt the first tremors of Saudi Arabian extremism firsthand. A quarter-century before 9/11, the seeds of the hijackers’ radicalization were already being sown inside the kingdom. Working in Riyadh at a private school for the Saudi royal family, I know firsthand that a cumulative series of internal crises led to that tragic day.

The 9/11 attacks were not just an assault on America, but the explosive export of Saudi Arabia’s internal domestic crises. The state’s compromises with extremist elements allowed an ecosystem of terror to flourish and eventually converge with global conflicts.