We are left with a region where the Iranians and Saudis will have no more opportunities to cooperate to resolve regional crises, starting with those in Syria and Yemen. Which means, that in the near future, the US, the Europeans and other parties involved in the geo-political game of the Middle East will be left with a difficult choice: Military action against Iran and its proxies, or living with a nuclear-armed hegemonic Iran.
The first presidential visit from Iran since 2003 comes at a complicated moment in Tehran. For the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is the best of times and the worst of times. Iran’s regional influence has never been as expansive as it is today. Yet, there is a huge push back against Tehran from some of its Arab neighbours, Israel and the Trump Administration.
Another turbulent year in the Middle East has drawn to a close, but there will be no respite in 2018 from the regional chaos that is underpinned by the inflamed rivalry of Saudi Arabia and Iran. The young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has consolidated power, embarking on an unprecedented cultural revolution and economic reforms in Riyadh, but his foreign policy ambitions have yet to bear fruit. Instead they will continue to sap lives and resources in neighbouring Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, unless a political settlement is reached.
Any new upheaval in Iran has far-reaching implications in the short term for the nuclear deal, and in the longer term for regional stability (Syria, Lebanon and Yemen) and regional power relationships (Saudi Arabia, Iraq). At best, social ferment could herald a new discussion – at worst, it would descend into a fight: about what sort of country Iran wants to be, and how religion and the state might reach a new accommodation.
Saudi Arabia appears to be on a warpath across the Middle East. The Saudi-orchestrated resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and Saudi officials’ bellicose rhetoric after the launch of a ballistic missile targeting Riyadh from Yemen, appear to herald a new period of assertiveness against Iranian interests across the Middle East.
Israel and Saudi Arabia may seem unlikely allies in regional politics but recent developments have pushed Riyadh and Tel Aviv closer together, setting the stage for the Middle East’s strangest bedfellows. The covert ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, based on an alliance against the “common threat” of Iran, are part of a new regional paradigm, analysts say.
It is true that Saudi Arabia stoked the Sunni-Shia conflict in the region after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the jurisprudence of the intra-Islam war of the sects was dug up from the Saudi past and its embrace of Wahhabism in the 18th century. If it gives up extremism in 2017, it will have to say goodbye to all that Wahhabism has entailed.
Conflicts in the Middle East, whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, or Yemen, share a common factor: the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. For years, this rivalry has inflamed violence in areas already torn by war and created new battlefields where there had been relative peace before.
Various Western intellectuals, ranging from Thomas Friedman to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have argued over the past decades that Muslims need their own Martin Luther to save themselves from intolerance and dogmatism. The Protestant Reformation that Luther triggered exactly 500 years ago, these intellectuals suggest, can serve as a model for a potential Muslim Reformation. But is there such a connection between the Reformation in Christendom and the “reform” that is arguably needed in Islam?
The role of a dominant actor in an informal security alliance is to offer leadership and security aid to junior parties. To fulfill its role, Saudi Arabia needs financial resources and a committed group of leaders at home who are willing to build the alliance’s security architecture and provide additional benefits—including aid and military hardware—to those who volunteer to join. And on those terms, Saudi Arabia has yet to demonstrate to its partners that it is up to the task.
