Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (2nd L) shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerry next to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (far L) and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (far R) after a statement on early November 24, 2013, in Geneva. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]“You must understand,” an Iranian friend said to me several years ago in Tehran, “the relationship that really matters in the Middle East is between Iran and Saudi Arabia—the Shi’a giant and the Sunni lion. And both of us are getting restless.”
My friend was right. Both countries are key regional actors, both aspire to religious leadership of the Middle East, and both have starkly opposed visions of the correct regional order that are increasingly coming into conflict.
Tehran and Riyadh established diplomatic relations with the signing of a Saudi–Iranian Friendship Treaty in 1929, but ties didn’t really get going until the 1960s, largely due to differences in religious practices and Pahlavi Iran’s recognition of Israel.
Tensions dramatically increased with the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Iran’s then-leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, repeatedly denounced the Saudis as “godless,” claiming that Mecca was in the hands of “a band of heretics.” Khomeini’s visceral anti-American stance also meant he viewed Riyadh’s strong ties with Washington, D. C., with intense suspicion and accused the Saudis of being US agents, as he did many people. Riyadh, meanwhile, was alarmed by Khomeini’s early avowed desire to export Iran’s Islamic revolution across the Middle East, fearing its possible destabilizing influence among its own Shi’ite minority.
There are less ideological, more practical tensions too. Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves comfortably outstrip those of Iran (which also has a far larger population), which means it can afford to take a long-term view of the global oil market and is often happy to moderate the oil price if necessary. Iran, however, is far more reliant on consistently high prices—especially in the short term—often to keep the state functioning.
However, tensions have now escalated to a new intensity. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani recently said that reaching a final nuclear agreement with the P5+1 world powers is possible within “six months.” The Iranians and Americans are now talking for the first time in more than thirty years, and the possibility of less hostile relations between the two are growing.
But Iran’s increasing rapprochement with Washington, though by no means certain, is viewed with vocal displeasure in Riyadh. In December last year, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Prince Mohammed Bin Nawaf Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that outlined Riyadh’s concerns: “We believe that many of the West’s policies on both Iran and Syria risk the stability and security of the Middle East. This is a dangerous gamble, about which we cannot remain silent, and will not stand idly by,” he wrote.
Riyadh has also expressed its displeasure diplomatically. After having campaigned for two years to win a seat on the UN Security Council, after the successful vote the Kingdom immediately gave it up, in what many interpreted a signal of its dissatisfaction with US policy on Iran and Syria.
Washington's decision not to intervene militarily in Syria&8212;and thereby allow Iranian influence in the country to grow—has enraged the Saudis. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has now spent several years butchering his own people with the support of Iranian-backed militia group Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force, headed by Qassem Suleimani. Riyadh, meanwhile, funds and arms Syria’s rebels as the two countries are now all but fighting a proxy war on the Syrian battlefields.
Fears of Shi’ite expansion—of a growing “Shi’a Crescent,” a term coined by King Abdullah of Jordan in 2004—are very real across the Sunni Middle East. The replacement of Saddam Hussein by a Shi’a government in Iraq, combined with a Syria still controlled by Alawites dependent on Iran and a Lebanon in the grip of the Shi’a Hezbollah, has allowed—or so the thinking goes—a Shi’a power block intent on further expansion of its influence.
Amid all of this has come Washington’s avowed desire to pivot US foreign policy away from the region towards the East, which it believes will be the key geopolitical arena of the future. The Obama administration began with a determination to lessen US military presence in the Middle East and, critically, to not be dragged into any more ground wars there. This is viewed by many officials in the region as an abdication of US responsibility and, worse, an abandonment of longstanding allies in the region that has once again allowed Iranian influence to grow.
Now US-led diplomacy threatens to free Iran from the international isolation it has suffered for decades and allow its reintegration back into global political and financial structures. Both the Saudis and Israelis fear that Iran may be buying this too cheaply. The recent nuclear deal, they believe, has not addressed the central concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, and that Tehran is reaping benefits without a commensurate dismantling of its nuclear facilities.
As I have written repeatedly over the course of many years, Iran’s integration back into the international fold is to be welcomed. It is simply too geopolitically important to be contained and isolated forever. But in Riyadh, the message is clear: Washington must take care to preserve existing alliances. They are important, too.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
