Why the Saudi/Iranian Rift is the Most Dangerous Divide in the Middle East

Posted Thursday, January 7, 2016 12:00 am

Dennis Maley

Much of America’s attention is focused on the threat of the Islamic State through both domestic terrorism and the war in Syria. However, the quickly escalating conflict between the two most powerful players in the region–Saudi Arabia and Iran–has foreign policy experts much more worried and rightfully so.

The conflict

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's embassy in Iran was attacked and ultimately set on fire by Shia demonstrators who were angry at the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia who had been critical of the kingdom's royal family and had called for open elections.

Sheikh al-Nimr had been a part of massive anti-government protests that erupted in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province in 2011. He was shot four times under disputed circumstances when he was arrested in 2013, setting off days of unrest in the oil-rich, Shiite-dominated province. He was ultimately found guilty on charges of "foreign meddling" in the kingdom, "disobeying" and sentenced to death by the kingdom's Specialised Criminal Court, which tries terrorism cases.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia had announced that it had executed 47 prisoners convicted of terrorism charges, mostly prisoners with purported al-Qaeda ties, but also the popular Shia ayatollah, who Iran had sought leniency for. The weekend's events quickly touched off a chain reaction between the countries and their allies.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority said all flights to and from Iran had been canceled. Hours later, the kingdom suspended all trade and travel between the two countries, while its allies began scaling back their diplomatic ties to Iran in a show of support for the OPEC leader.

To the casual observer, this might seem like little more than yet another religious spat in a region in which such conflict is a near constant occurrence. However, downplaying the significance of frosty relations between these two strategically-important countries would not paint an accurate picture of what such a squabble could mean for the region–not to mention the West.

For starters, the divide could not have come at a worse time for American diplomacy. As we try to regain our footing in Syria, the United States is trying to normalize–or at the very least stabilize–its long-strained relationship with Iran, who along with Russia is Syria’s most important ally. Iran will be an essential actor in any viable plan to stabilize a country torn apart by a multi-faceted civil war, which not only includes the regime of its dictators and thousands of rebel groups but also al Qaeda, as well as the Islamic State.

In order to accomplish this, the Obama Administration has had to navigate a politically-complicated agreement over Iranian nuclear development that has polarized Congress. That agreement is already strained by the fact that nearly every Republican presidential candidate has vowed to "tear it up" if elected but becomes even more perilous now that our second biggest ally in the region is butting heads with the Iranians.

The U.S. and Iran: A complicated history

U.S./Iranian relations originally soured in the 1950s when social revolution saw the country elect a progressive Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, who had condemned inequitable arrangements with Western oil interests and vowed to nationalize the country’s petroleum industry. U.S. and British intelligence agencies orchestrated a coup to oust Mossadeq, backing brutal dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka "the Shah of Iran.“

Our interference in their democratically-elected government and the ensuing years of oppression under the Shah did not endear us to Iranians, who in 1979 revolted against Pahlavi. The Shah was ultimately forced into exile, leading to a referendum that saw the creation of the Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini.

Later that same year, President Carter allowed the Shah to enter the United States to receive medical treatment, and Iranian revolutionaries responded by taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. An attempted rescue mission ended in the deaths of eight American soldiers following a collision between a helicopter and a transport plane. The final 52 hostages were finally set free after 444 days in captivity, on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

Our relationship remained tense. In 1983, Donald Rumsfeld went to Iraq as an envoy of President Reagan and paved the way for U.S. companies to sell biological weapons materials to then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was already using chemical weapons in his war with Iran, which lasted from 1980-88.

The U.S. sales of live anthrax and bubonic plague viruses would provide the genesis of Hussein's WMD program, as well as more than a little irony when Rumsfeld later feigned contempt for Hussein's actions while Defense Secretary under George W. Bush.

Our relationship with Iran improved a bit in 1985 when, despite a trade embargo, the Reagan Administration began secretly shipping weapons to Iran in exchange for their help in freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. The profits from the arms sales were illegally channeled to Nicaraguan rebels/terrorists called Contras, in what was known as the Iran/Contra Affair.

Then, in 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air flight, killing all 290 people on board with the explanation that the Airbus A300 had inexplicably been mistaken for a fighter jet. Most of the victims were Iranians on their way to Mecca, which obviously set back U.S./Iranian diplomacy quite a bit.

Things began to look better in the late Ô90s, when the Iranian people elected Mohammad Khatami, a moderate reformist who called for "a dialogue with the American people." Things looked quite promising in fact, until President George W. Bush denounced Iran as part of an "axis of evil" (with Iraq and North Korea) in his 2002 State of the Union address.

Iran was highly offended of course, paving the way for the strained relations we've had since, though that dynamic has certainly gotten much worse in light of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's outward contempt for the country and repeated urging for U.S. supported air strikes on suspected nuclear sites.

As you can see, our relationship with Iran is very complicated and far less one-sided than the black and white They Hate Us For Our Freedom propaganda that is so often thrown up in defense of not bringing them to the table on anything that involves the fate of their home region.

Why has the U.S. embraced the Sauds?

Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is also complicated, or at least more complicated than the one word that is so often used to sum it up: Oil. Indeed, our interest in the kingdom began completely in oil when John D. Rockefeller was able to secure the exclusive rights to have his company look for oil there in the 1930s. A joint effort soon found oil reserves of previously-unthinkable proportions, quickly making them a much sought-after ally to all of the industrialized world.

The Saudis wisely sought to assume greater control over their oil (avoiding Iran’s later fate) but allied themselves with the U.S. during the Cold War and the fight against Soviet-style communism. The relationship then became more about Saudi Arabia’s need for security against Russian expansionism and our need for strategic influence throughout the oil-rich region than about oil. In the Ô50s, we began selling arms to the Sauds and helping to train their military.

The relationship soured a bit during the 1973 oil embargo, which was issued in response for our support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, but was bolstered at the end of that decade when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the House of Saud began to worry that it was only the beginning of a westward Soviet expansion that would eventually target them.

Once again the Cold War brought our two nations together, as the U.S. helped train Afghan Mujahideen fighters (including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden) to fight off the Red Army.

Saudi Arabia matched U.S. spending to prop up resistance and helped bog the Soviet Union down in a long and expensive quagmire that looked very much like our own experience in Vietnam. U.S./Saudi relations got even tighter when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Those two nations have their own complicated history and while Saddam's aggression was ostensibly owed to a dispute over oil in a large reserve along their shared border, his country had long argued that Kuwait was rightfully an Iraqi province–and an attractive one at that, considering that not only was it wealthy but could provide the landlocked Iraqis with over 200 miles of Persian Gulf shoreline.

Saddam's aggression presented the Saudis with a new enemy who threatened the region's status quo, which had been so generously benefiting their country. The U.S.-led the Gulf War invasion solidified Saudi Arabia’s position as a not to be messed with state and sent a message that the United States was willing to use force to promote stability in the region.

Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. The reported organizer of the attack, Osama bin Laden, was also a Saudi. However, the House of Saud viewed him as a common enemy because he had denounced the royal family and had called for a more extreme theocracy in the country, including a complete removal of Western influences, i.e. the United States.

This is where the religious component becomes complicated. Saudi Arabia has promoted and funded the most extreme brand of Islam the world has seen. Its government is essentially split between a theocracy and a monarch with the clerics controlling the courts and empowering the royal family as the ruling element of the country.

Because the Saudi government provides financial subsidy and free education to their subjects–who overwhelmingly use it to study the extremely orthodox Wahhabism that tends to impugn the lifestyle of the royals–the House of Saud is literally aiding its own demise.

The U.S. has also had a hand in this. Mujahideen literally means "those engaged in Jihad." Like the Saudi royals, we had no qualms about inciting such flammable tensions when it suited our purpose–baiting the Soviets. However, many of our old strategies have indeed come home to roost–bin Laden, Saddam, the Taliban, etc., in what we commonly call blowback.

When viewing the situation objectively, it is quite difficult to look at Iran and Saudi Arabia and call the former evil and the latter our friends, all while keeping a straight face. Saudi Arabia leads the world in public beheadings, makes China’s civil rights look liberal and is responsible for the recruiting, funding and incitement of radical Islamic terrorists far more than Iran–or any other country in the world for that matter. They are little more than the horse we happened to back all those years ago.

Why the current tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia?

This is another complicated relationship with lots of history. Iran is the Shiite capital of the Middle East and the only country where Islam’s minority sect enjoys a majority. They are also Persian, not Arab. As the leader of the Shia world, they have a natural tension with Sunni-dominated countries like Saudi Arabia, where Shiite Muslims are often oppressed.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 saw Iran topple a leader who, like the Saudi King, was friendly to the West, while also ushering in the region's first Shia theocracy. As a result, Saudi Arabia, like the U.S., backed Saddam in his war with Iran and everyone but Assad (Iran's ally) during the current Syrian Civil War. While war has been raging in Syria, Saudi Arabia has been more quietly bombing targets in Yemen's much less-covered civil war, where they accuse Iran of supporting Shia rebels.

There is little doubt that Saudi Arabia executed al-Nimr only to fan the flames among the Sunni majority, even if it came at a steep price for us. Remember, the U.S. has been warming to the Shia-led Iranians in its effort to find a pragmatic outcome in Syria. That doesn’t sit well with the Sauds, so it’s also likely that there was a message to American officials in their actions.

What about the oil?

Our relationship with Saudi Arabia (as well as much of the oil producing nations in the region) isn’t so much about getting access to their oil as to making sure that their output stays stable, ensuring a somewhat stable and predictable global economy that is based on reasonable prices that remain pegged to the U.S. dollar. Small hiccups from conflicts such as the Iran/Iraq War to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina have had profoundly negative effects on global markets.

Oil supply and demand is so tight that a reduction of even 3-4 percent output for a few days or weeks has enormous economic consequences. Perhaps equally important, any movement away from the U.S. dollar as the world’s petrocurrency would not only end our ability to run huge deficits but also cause a major evaporation of foreign investment (the Saudis own around 7 percent of Wall Street as a result of having so many petrodollars to invest).

Believe it or not, the U.S. is now the number one oil producer in the world thanks to all of the dirty hydrofracturing we invested in when oil prices skyrocketed during the latter half of the last decade. The Sauds preferred it when we did not provide so much competition, giving them more control over global supply through OPEC. As a result, they’ve been ramping up their output, turning on the big spigot in order to flood the market with supply and drive prices down, since drilling for and refining fracking oil is much more expensive than tapping into the Middle East’s much more accessible and easily refined reserves.

As a result, many fracking operations have been selling at a loss during the glut in order to make scheduled interest payments to investors. Other nations like Russia and Venezuela who are overdependent on energy sales have also seen their economies contract and their currencies fall as the global market continues to suffer from excess supply.

The Sauds have also been cozying up to China, who desperately needs to secure long-term access to reliable energy supplies, as they have no oil of their own to speak of.

China's energy-thirsty economy, enormous standing army, and deep pockets make them the obvious alternative to the U.S., should it come to that, especially since such a relationship would be far less complicated with an authoritarian state than a Western democracy.

What’s the end game?

It’s hard to say. As I’ve demonstrated, U.S./Saudi relations have historically bounced back from every little rift, while our history with Iran is much more checkered. For whatever reason, we’ve just been less confident in our ability to manage a successful relationship with Tehran, despite little evidence that Riyadh is a safer bet.

The bottom line is that there is no secular, Western-styled, democratic country in the region aside from Israel, which doesn't have oil and is at odds with virtually every country in the Middle East to one degree or another. As such, as long a petroleum drives the world economy, the United States will have to dance with a devil so to speak and seems to be following the old devil that you know is better than the devil that you don't philosophy.

Once thing, however, is certain: destabilized regions that are resource rich and strategically valued are flash-points for conflict, and world wars have been fought for less than what is at stake in the Middle East today. With the interests of the U.S. and other Western powers, as well as Israel, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and ultimately China in play, it would not seem hyperbolic to suggest that the situation is akin to a giant powder keg floating in a sea of gasoline.

Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Arabs and Persians?

Dennis Maley is a featured columnist for The Bradenton Times. His column appears each Thursday and Sunday. Dennis' debut novel, A Long Road Home, was released in July, 2015. Click here to order your copy.