re: I'll ask this on this board: LOTR, Saruman

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If you believe that Sauron died in the way that Gandalf did, then the point doesn't make sense/irrelevant. If for some unknown reason when he died it was a different way/something different happened to him than Gandalf, I guess you could go wild conspiracy.

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Neither Sauron nor Gandalf actually die, in the same sense as mortal Men. They have a Fea (spirit), and a Hroa (body). "Death" to them is the destruction of the Hroa, at which point the Fea is unbound and "naked"; and then the question becomes whether they have the power to reconstruct the Hroa.

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But Eru chose to resurrect/reincarnate/bring back to life Gandalf

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That's an interpretation of the movies; in the books it is CLEAR that Gandalf is sent back by the Valar, not Eru Himself.

It's this detail that makes the books much different than the movies. Neither the Ainur (spirits of power, such as the Valar or the Maia), nor the Elves depart Arda. Their Fea is bound to Arda, and when they die, they travel. Elves go to the Halls of Mandos, and eventually are given another body (Hroa).
Gandalf also went back to Valinor, and as his quest/mission was unfulfilled, the Valar sent him back; presumably they also gave him his body too.

Sauron, in Silmarillion, faced similar "death" of Hroa, when he battled Huan. Huan had him by the throat, and no matter what he shapeshifted into (werewolf, snake, bat, or "manlike" form), he could not escape.
Luthien told him unless he conceded control of the tower, Huan would 'kill' him (his body), and his naked spirit would have to go back to Morgoth, and face whatever punishment Morgoth so chose for failure.
So that establishes Sauron would return to HIS master, who presumably could restore his body/hroa. But probably wouldn't be nice about things in the process.

In the Second Age, after making the Ring, he left it in Mordor and went to Numenor as hostage. He managed to convince the Numenoreans to frick up and attack the West, at which point Eru completely destroyed Numenor, Sauron included. His spirit/fea arose from the destruction, returned to Mordor, and he reformed (presumably because he left the bulk of his power in the Ring, it didn't take very long. But he forever lost the shapeshifting ability he had before, so he was now stuck with an unchanging body, which was terrible to look upon).

In the battle of the Last Alliance, Sauron's body/hroa was again 'killed'. In the books, he was already down, as were Elendil and Gil Galad. Isildur cut the Ring from his hand with the shards of Narsil as he was down, and took it. (That's another change from the movies, where he was still 'alive' and fighting).

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"But Sauron was thrown down, and with the hilt-shard of Narsil Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of Sauron and took it for his own."

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He was again able to reform, although it took a LOT longer. He appeared as the Necromancer,

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'Gandalf to Elrond, after going to Dol Guldur to spy on the Necromancer:

"True, alas, is our guess. This is not one of the Ulari (Nazgul) as many have long supposed. It is Sauron himself who has taken shape again & now grows apace..."

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and much longer before he declared openly. As stated in the books, Gollum looked upon him:

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`That would be Minas Ithil that Isildur the son of Elendil built ' said Frodo. `It was Isildur who cut off the finger of the Enemy.'
`Yes, He has only four on the Black Hand, but they are enough,' said Gollum shuddering. 'And He hated Isildur's city.'

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So Gollum confirms there are only 4 fingers on the Black Hand. That's a serious detail that a hobbit would know thousands of years after that battle.

The point of this all is that Sauron had the power to take shape again. It would take time, but he had done it twice.
When the Ring was destroyed, that destroyed the power he had transferred into it; and thus he lost the bulk of his power forever.
Ironically, if he had never transferred that to the Ring, he likely never gets utterly defeated, and wins the long game.

As that all applies to Saruman: he is the same type of entity as Sauron, presumably lesser in power (at least while on Middle Earth). He presumably could take shape again as Sauron did. The Valar won't do it for him as they did for Gandalf, so it's on him to do so.

If he stashed the bulk of his essence in a ring (as Sauron did), whatever other purpose that ring would have, it would also be a reservoir he could reclaim, to quickly power back up.

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Also, just from a very basic point of view, this would be taking it way past something Tolkien intended it to be taken. He was not making it that complex or in a different way than how 99.99999999% of readers understand the story ends

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Tolkien had always expressed that Middle Earth was Earth, and that the stories are histories as taken from the Red Book of Westmarch (the hobbit's copy of what they had recorded, from the knowledge of Elrond, Aragorn etc). It was his history of "fairy", wherein he basically reconciles fairy tales, other mythology and legends, with biblical and known histories.

Elves are gone because their time has passed, and it's now the time of Men.
Saruman, as we see clearly, was more interested in Men than Elves, and his focus was on industry and invention. He devised new means of warfare, and employed all sorts of intrigue and influence to run things from behind a veil.
You look at Western Civ history from before Rome, and the main factors of every great civilization was their advance in military tech and tactics, and the increased industrialization. Conquests drive history.

It's not hard to extrapolate that Men fell under the designs of Saruman, when you look at it.