How much of Arabia could ibn Saud have conquered

He did well conquering Mecca and medina but could he have conquered Qatar, Bahrain and the Emirates or dare I say all of the Arabian peninsula? At this period of time Britain and France were too busy focusing on the Turks.
 
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Well he didn't really go on his expansion kick until the 1920s with Asir in 1920 and then Hejaz in 1924, by which point the Treaty of Lausanne had been signed settling things with the newly constituted Republic of Turkey. Even if it was before then I don't think it would have been much effort on the part of the British to tap India for some colonial troops to re-occupy Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain the Trucial States or Oman if the Saudis tried to annex them.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Donor
Well if the Saudis were able to crush Yemen during the Saudi- Yemeni border war they could have taken more than just Jizan and Najran. Most likely Hodeida would also have been annexed.
 

LordKalvert

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Depending on the time frame, perhaps some parts of Jordan and certainly could have pushed a little deeper into Iraq. Yemen has been mentioned

As for the Gulf States- Kuwait, the UAR, Qatar, Oman- they are British protectorates from long ago and could never be taken
 

TinyTartar

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Ibn Saud could have conquered anything that was not nailed down by the British or French. That means no Jordan, no Iraq, etc, but he could have taken whatever parts of Arabia that the British were not in.

That did not leave much.

Had he messed with Britain, he would have had issues. The Indian Army was powerful even during the interwar period and could have curbstomped him.
 
Could he join the Axis in the Second World War and attack British Arabia? Saudi Arabia could support Italy in East Africa.
 
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