Who will rule the Middle East?

The latest brawl between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been a decade in the making. Iran’s execution of a Shia cleric this month, the subsequent storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and Iran’s supreme leader declaring “God’s hand of retaliation will grip the neck of Saudi leaders”, are merely symptoms of a much deeper turmoil. 

The nuclear deal signed last June between world powers and Iran sent shock waves rippling through Saudi Arabia. The freeing up of sanctions and Iranian assets worth US$100 billion triggered alarm bells in Riyadh’s corridors of power. 

Meanwhile proxy wars being fought between the region’s two religious superpowers have killed hundreds of thousands in Syria, destabilised Iraq and Yemen and sent tremors through Lebanon and Bahrain.

What we are witnessing is no less than a war for supremacy in the Muslim world between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran. 

The ruling Saud family views itself as the custodian of Islam and sees Shias as heretics. The House of Saud perceives the rise of Iranian theocracy since its 1979 revolution as an existential threat. For evidence of Iran’s growing influence in the region they point to Hezbollah’s dominance of Lebanese politics, the rise to power of a Shia-led government in Baghdad and the entrenchment of the Tehran-backed Bashar al-Assad in Syria. 

The Saudis have gone on the offensive in neighbouring Yemen, leading a coalition of predominantly Sunni-led states against the threat of a take-over by the Houthi rebels, who are Shia.

The West’s rapprochement with Tehran is not being taken lightly. The entire region is steadily descending into a series of proxy wars in which no side is willing to back down. That spells disaster for war-torn countries like Syria – but neither Riyadh nor Tehran is counting the cost in human lives. 

Is it any wonder that peaceful Arab Spring protests in Syria turned violent so quickly? With money being channelled into opposition groups by the Saudis, the Turks and Qatar, the Syrian Spring has turned into one of the most enduring and bloody conflicts in the Middle East, and none of the major foreign powers can do anything about it.

Tehran, for its part, sees itself embroiled in a long-term battle to become the citadel of hope for all Shi’ite communities in the region. And here it gets interesting.

All Sunni-led countries in the region have small to sizeable Shia minorities (and sometimes a majority, as in the case of Bahrain): Saudi Arabia (10-15 per cent), Qatar (14 per cent), Kuwait (36 per cent), Lebanon (27 per cent), Palestinian Authority (5 per cent), Jordan (2 per cent), UAE (15 per cent), and so on. Even prior to the execution of the Saudi Shi’ite cleric, Iranian proxy groups were threatening hostilities against Saudi Arabia. 

Typical of such threats was a song released by Khataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi Shi’ite militia listed by the US State Department as a terrorist outfit. The lyrics go: “The enemies of God will not be safe … We will avenge Sheikh Nimr if he is executed … Our brigades will roar like a lion.” 

In the aftermath of the cleric’s execution, almost all the Tehran-backed militias issued similar threats, from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Iraq’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr organisation, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada. All these groups are an extension of Iran’s foreign policy.

The cat-and-mouse game being played out between Riyadh and Tehran and their regional allies is part and parcel of a greater geopolitical battle between these two Mideast religious powerhouses. Tehran sees a weak spot in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, where a marginalised Shia minority is located on the Persian Gulf amid rich oil deposits. If Iran can foment turmoil there – either through its proxies or by inciting the local Shi’ite populace – then it could put a serious dent in the Saudi economy. 

Conversely, if the Sunni opposition or even Islamic State manages to push Assad out of power, it would deal a major blow to Iran’s ability to project power beyond its borders.

The gloves are finally off: the animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia is out in the open. The rest of the Muslim world is being cowed into submission through threats or deal-sweeteners. But the immediate danger lies in the region itself. We have to wait to see precisely how each of these powers and their allies project their power to counter the other. 

In the meantime, we can effectively write off hopes of a settlement in the Syrian civil war. The rest of the world is now merely a spectator in this “winner takes all” game, where sectarian violence is being fuelled to serve the national interests of warring Islamic giants, for whom notions of peace are firmly on the back-burner.