You can find lots of books on Amazon about Israel/Palestine and for good reason. But offerings on the Saudi-Iranian rivalry are scarcer. This is a reflection on the state of the book-buying market and not on account of the significance of this conflict. Nor is the paucity of books on Amazon down to too few scholars writing on this subject; but not many of them are writing for a non-specialist audience. This book is the only exception I know.
It’s important to understand because since 1979, the year in which the Shah of Iran was overthrown, the two countries have fought an undeclared Cold War. The Ayatollah Khomeini openly challenged Saudi Arabia’s Islamic credentials and incited the Kingdom’s Shia minorities to revolt. It was a challenge that the Saudis did not ignore – indeed, how could they? The effrontery of revolutionary Shias calling for the overthrow of a Sunni state, and containing the holy cities of Medina and Mecca to boot, could not be ignored.
In seeking to gain the edge of the other, both countries have interfered in regional conflicts like Syria, Yemen and Iraq, sponsoring or least encouraging chosen proxies in these conflicts. Both countries have internal vulnerabilities that the other has tried to exploit. On the Saudi side, the country’s rapid modernization, fueled by vast oil resources, has strained the core of the Saudi social compact, the alliance between the Al-Saud monarchy and the Wahhabi sect, has had the Kingdom’s alliance with the United States. On the Iranian side, the formidable composite of Persian-Shia nationalism that the Mullahs have forged to legitimize their rule struggles to include the country’s various ethnic minorities, many of which located in the vulnerable and valuable peripheries of the Iranian state (the country’s Arab minority is located in the western region, which produces much of the nation’s oil). These vulnerabilities provide both opportunities for both powers to exploit – and an additional reason to indulge in ideological competition overseas, to ease internal tensions (such as Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabism).
In tracing the outlines of this conflict, it also corrects the rarified world of International Relations theory, especially the cruder model-builders of the realist school, who leave ideology out of the calculations between states. Ideas matter. On the other hand, it roots the ideological struggle in concrete realities experienced by both states. We might say that Iran and Saudi Arabia are making their own history but not in circumstances of their choosing. But they make it because they are motivated by ideas and they interpret the facts of the world through those ideas. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is determined to ensure the stability of the Sunni Monarch in Bahrain, because it fears Iranian influence in the event of democratic but Shia-led revolution. Direct evidence of Iranian interference is Bahrain is hard to come by but the fear is real and this fear is rooted in overt Iranian efforts to undermine the Islamic credentials of the House of Saud.
This book does a good job of outlining this lesser-known but key Middle East conflict. Unlike Israel and Palestine, the two rivals have seldom traded actual blows and, unlike the conflict in Palestine, documentation is scarcer. This makes producing such a work quite a challenge but it is done well. It also refrains from polemical, moralistic explanations for each country’s behaviour but one can draw one’s own conclusions from the evidence provided here. A later edition could do with purging and refining some of the academic affectations, to make it even better suited for a general audience. Otherwise, a useful and informative work.
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