Epilogue

Recounts the testimonies of those rounded up by Saudi Arabia as part of their 'anti-corruption' drive in November 2017. Records the unrest that erupted in Iran at the end of 2017 and the US support of the dissidents. Discusses the proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

The Saudi-Iranian Race to Influence the Muslim World

Saudi Arabia backed the Islamization drive by Pakistan’s military ruler General Zia ul Haq, a Sunni. Its official aid to his government was supplemented by contributions from Islamic charities, foundations, mosque collections, and royal princes. When Haq issued a decree in July 1980 for the compulsory collection of religiously enjoined tax of zakat, to be used as charity by the state, Shia leaders protested. They argued that they were required to pay one-fifth of their trading profits to a grand ayatollah of their choice. Haq issued an exemption for Shias. But he and the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate encouraged radical elements in the Society of Scholars of Islam organization to form a militantly Sunni group, Sipah-e-Sahaba. It secured additional funding from Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate. After igniting anti-Shia riots in Lahore in 1986, it started killing prominent Shias. Militant Shias formed Soldiers of Muhammad group to commit tit-for-tat assassinations. The killing of the Iranian Counsel General in Lahore highlighted the Saudi-Iranian proxy war. In Afghanistan, when Moscow intervened militarily in December 1979, Khomeini condemned it. Iran implemented its own anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan while staying clear of the US-Saudi-Pakistani jihad against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul.

Multi-front Cold War between Riyadh and Tehran

When rebel Houthis, followers of Zaidi Shia code, captured Sanaa in September 2014, and expelled Yemen’s Sunni President Abd Rabbu al Hadi, alarm bells rang in Riyadh. Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman led a coalition of friendly states to intervene in the Yemeni civil war in March 2015. This ignited protest by the Shias in Saudi Arabia. Their indignation intensified when, ignoring international appeals for clemency, the Saudi government executed their revered Ayatollah Nimr al Nimr in January 2016. This led to the severance of diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Tehran. In Iraq, whereas Iran dispatched its trained Shia volunteers to fight Islamic Sate in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), Riyadh lent four jet fighters to the Pentagon in Washington’s anti-ISIS campaign. When Riyadh backed Syrian opposition with cash and weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent air force units to Syria, and shored up Assad’s depleted arms arsenal. With Assad’s recapture of Eastern Aleppo, an opposition stronghold, in December 2016, Iran established superiority over Riyadh in Syria. In July 2015, Iran and six major world powers signed an accord on Tehran’s denuclearization program, titled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It won universal approval except by Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Saudi-Iranian Détente

Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic ties with Iran severed in 1987 – a precursor to détente that took effect in 1994 during the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. At Riyadh’s behest, Tehran became the venue for the triennial Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in 1997. It was chaired by moderate President Muhammad Khatami during whose administration there was a thaw between Tehran and Washington. This convinced Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto Saudi ruler, that Iran’s leaders had accepted his advice to mend fences with America which, in his view, would pave the way for a lasting Riyadh-Tehran amity. Invited by King Fahd, Khatami met him in Jeddah. In February 1998, Rafsanjani, leading a large delegation, conducted amicable meetings in the Kingdom’s leading cities. The fond hope of Iran’s policy-makers was to cap economic, cultural and diplomatic ties with Riyadh with a bilateral security pact. They visualized it as an overarching agreement. The Saudis, on the other hand, had a limited version in mind. Therefore, the Saudi-Iranian security pact signed in April 2001 covered only countering organized crime, terrorism and drug trafficking. Meanwhile, encouraged by Abdullah, the other Gulf Arab monarchies warmed their relations with Tehran.

Iran’s Second Revolution; A Millennial Challenge to the House of Saud

Having overthrown the pro-Washington Shah, Khomeini set out to purge the Iranian state and society of American influence. He was aided by the surprise occupation of the United States Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 by militant students. The capture of secret CIA reports on the Middle East by the Iranian occupiers gave credibility to the regime’s description of the Embassy as a “nest of spies,” and created a rationale for taking 52 US diplomats as hostage. The crisis lasted 444 days and ended with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as president in January 1981 after his defeat of the incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. Quite independently, Saudi King Khalid faced an unprecedented challenge to the legitimacy of the House of Saud when on the eve of .the Islamic New Year of 1400 – 20 November 1979 – hundreds of armed militant Wahhabis, led by Juheiman al Utaiba seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Utaiba called for the overthrow of the royal family for deviating from Wahhabism. Aided by the American and French intelligence agencies and Pakistani soldiers, the government regained control of the Grand Mosque. It then took remedial action by imposing strict Wahhabi rules on the social-cultural life of citizens.

Black Gold and America Shape Iran and Saudi Arabia

The discovery of oil near Masjid-e-Suleiman in Iran in 1908 by a British company aroused interest in Britain and America to explore the wider region for it. Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) secured oil concessions in Saudi Arabia from King Ibn Saud in 1933. The subsequent Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) struck oil in 1938. The importance of Saudi petroleum increased when, following Iran’s nationalization of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1951, Western countries boycotted Iranian oil. The political turmoil in Iran ended with the restoration of the briefly deposed Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to the throne with the assistance of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in August 1953. He leased the rights to Iran’s petroleum to the consortium of four Western oil companies for twenty-five years. With that, the United States became the prime Western influence in Tehran. By then Riyadh had forged military links with Washington. Soon rivalry developed between King Saud, a spendthrift ruler, and his austere Crown Prince Faisal. It ended with Saud abdicating in favor of Faisal in 1964. Four years earlier, Saudi Arabia had become one of the five founders of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Introduction

The Introduction outlines the four-pillar foundation on which the main text of the volume rests. These are Sunni-Shia differences in doctrine, ritual, law, and religious organization; the singular role of Sunni Islam’s Wahhabi doctrine in the rise of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, occupying four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, starting with the small First Saudi State (1744-1818), followed by the Second Saudi State (1824-1891); the salience of Saudi Arabia as the birthplace of Islam and the site of the Kaaba, the centerpiece of the Hajj pilgrimage; and the social, economic and demographic differences between Iran and Saudi Arabia; and their reasons for claiming exceptionalism. Overall, the Introduction serves the function of a framing chapter.

Conclusions

After Islamic revolutionary movement’s success in overthrowing Iran’s secular Pahlavi dynasty in 1979, Saudi royals felt that full cooperation between their theocratic kingdom and the Islamic Republic would follow. This was not to be. The basic differences between a republic and a monarchy were compounded by the two nations’ contradictory relations with America. The US, the ultimate protector of Saudi Arabia, was decried as the Great Satan by Khomeini. A détente between the two states, forged in 1994, fell apart in 2002. In the renewed rivalry, Riyadh tried to gain an upper hand by stressing Iran as a country of Shias, a minority sect in Islam. Tehran made gains by default in the aftermath of Washington’s disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, and as a result of the Riyadh-led diplomatic and commercial blockade of Qatar in 2017. Its strategic alliance with Syria, ruled by an Alawi president, remained intact. In the Yemeni civil war between Iran-backed Houthi rebels, occupying the capital, and the government of Riyadh-based President al Hadi, the conflict remained unresolved. Bin Salman failed to secure the expulsion of the pro-Iranian Hizbollah ministers from Lebanon’s national unity government. Overall, Tehran enjoyed superiority over Riyadh in the Middle East.

The Gulf Rivals’ Eastward March

As de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah aided the Taliban, a hard line Islamic fundamentalist party in Afghanistan, created by Pakistan in 1994 during the civil war. Assisted by Islamabad and Riyadh, the Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996. In their spring and summer 1998 offensives, they seized more territory. During their capture of Mazare Sharif, eleven diplomats from Iran’s consulate “disappeared”. The subsequent tensions between Iran and the Taliban escalated to the point when Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards carried out military exercises near the Afghan border. Thus pressured, the Taliban handed over the Iranian diplomats’ corpses. President Khatami was quick to condemn the 9/11 attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden based in Afghanistan. In contrast, the widely shared view of senior Saudi princes was that 9/11 was part of the Zionist conspiracy to get Washington fired up to launch a worldwide campaign against Islamic terrorism. Iran clandestinely supplied intelligence on the Taliban on the eve of Washington’s anti-Taliban campaign in October 2001. Yet in January 2002, President George W. Bush included Iran along with Iraq in his “Axis of Evil.” Ignoring Abdullah’s opposition to aggression against any Arab country, Bush ordered invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003.

Saudi Arabia at the Center of the Twentieth Century’s Last Major War

At the end of 1990, Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August of that year dominated headlines internationally. US President George H. W. Bush, an oilman, saw that by annexing Kuwait, Hussein would control 20 per cent of the global oil reserves almost on a par with Saudi Arabia’s. That would deprive Riyadh of being the swing producer able to cause rise or fall in petroleum prices. Such an eventuality had to be aborted with the backing of the international community, with Saudi Arabia as a crucial part of the project. After convincing King Fahd, on the basis of dodgy evidence, that Hussein was readying to attack his country, Bush got invited by Fahd to send US troops to the Desert Kingdom. It was thus that Saudi Arabia became the center of the century’s last major war. By December 1990, the Pentagon, leading a coalition of twenty-eight nations, thirteen of them Arab or Muslim, assembled the most lethal fighting machine since the Second World War to confront 545,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait and southern Iraq. The fighting between 16 January and 28 February 1991 ended with the defeat of Iraq and the liberation of Kuwait.