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Iran and Saudi Arabia, the keys to why two old rivals are now exploring the thaw

2023-03-11T10:41:41.898Z


The two powers, which have announced the reestablishment of their diplomatic relations, have been in a confrontation for decades over the search for regional hegemony.


Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been looking at each other with mistrust for decades from both sides of the Persian Gulf.

Both with oil as their main source of income, have clashed in the search for religious and geopolitical hegemony.

They are confessional Islamic countries, but with a fundamental difference: while Saudi Arabia considers itself the guarantor of Sunni orthodoxy, Iran is a country with a Shiite majority, the minority branch of Islam, which Muslim fundamentalists consider heretical.

While Riyadh has been a major US ally in the region for decades, Tehran is its main antagonist.

The rivals have announced this Friday the resumption of their bilateral relations, broken since 2016. These keys explain the origin of their confrontation and the scope of the possible thaw.

Why are Iran and Saudi Arabia at odds?

Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Wahhabism —which defends a radical return to the Islam of its origins—, is the country that is home to the two holiest places in Islam, Mecca and Medina.

Its kings consider themselves the custodians of Sunni orthodoxy, opposed to the heterodox Shiite current, the majority in Iran.

This historical religious rivalry was exacerbated after the advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, which represented the triumph of a theocracy with a strong republican component and with the explicit objective of exporting Shiism to the region.

The Iranian revolutionaries called for the overthrow of monarchies in countries such as Saudi Arabia, whose Shiite minority represents between 10% and 15% of its population.

In the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), Riyadh supported Baghdad to prevent Iran from exporting its Islamic revolution.

Since then, both countries have maintained successive wars through the mediation of other agents (state or not), supporting rival groups in conflicts such as the Afghan in the years of the Soviet occupation, the Lebanese and the current ones in Syria and Yemen.

This competition also has an economic aspect: the rivalry for control of the markets of the main source of income for both: oil.

What triggered the break in relations in 2016?

On 2 January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite minority cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, who was sentenced to death for “terrorism” and “sedition”.

Following his execution, a mob stormed and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.

Riyadh responded by withdrawing its ambassador, a move that was followed by the Iranians.

In September 2019, a major oil facility in Saudi territory was attacked by drones and cruise missiles launched by Iranian military-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen.

What has motivated the approach?

The United States did not respond to Iran over the attack on Saudi oil wells in 2019. According to several analysts, that led Riyadh to reach out to Russia and China, two countries that maintain good relations with the Iranian regime.

In addition, during the US presidential election campaign, Joe Biden said he would make Saudi Arabia a "pariah state" for the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a crime in which the CIA targeted the powerful crown prince.

Iran, for its part, is more isolated than ever, at least from the West, not only because of its uranium enrichment program, but also because of the brutal repression of protests sparked by the death in police custody of the young Mahsa Amini. , as well as for having supplied drones to Moscow for the war in Ukraine.

What consequences will the agreement have?

It seems unlikely that the reestablishment of diplomatic relations will end a decades-long rivalry and the direct involvement of the two countries in regional wars through their support for rival groups in Syria and Yemen.

The pact also flies over the talks to reactivate the nuclear agreement with Iran, which Riyadh has radically opposed, for leaving out regional powers, among other reasons.

Last week, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, stressed on a trip to London that this agreement is dying and advocated a new formula that includes countries like his, a possibility that would be smoothed if the thaw with Tehran comes true.

The possible advantages of this agreement do not erase, however, the irreconcilable visions of Iran and Saudi Arabia on the future of the Middle East and their antithetical search for regional hegemony.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-11

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