Riyadh looking to assert itself in Middle East

The feud between Saudi Arabia and Iran sparked by Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Shiite cleric shows no sign of abating. After Saudi Arabia announced it was cutting diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday, Bahrain and Sudan followed suit and severed their diplomatic relations with Iran.

The abrupt deterioration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran was triggered by Saudi Arabia’s execution of 47 individuals it had convicted on terrorism charges, including a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr.

Angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Teheran on Saturday and set fire to it. In response, Riyadh announced it was severing ties with Teheran, and it ordered Iranian diplomats to leave within 48 hours.

With Saudi Arabia ruled by Sunni Muslims and Iran run by Shiite Muslims, ties between the two countries have remained cool, if not tense, in recent years. But the latest souring of relations between the two major countries in the Middle East has heightened tensions to their highest point in years.

Judged by the norms governing international relations, the action of deliberately damaging a country’s embassy is sure to cause a severe setback in bilateral ties. But that does not necessarily mean severing ties is the appropriate response.

In September 2012, armed men stormed the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans including the US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. As the United States was the mastermind behind a regime change in the country, it did not respond with cutting ties with Libya.

If history is a mirror, Saudi Arabia seemed to be overreacting to the torching of its embassy in Iran. After all, Teheran did not want the incident to continue to fester and acted quickly to deal with the incident, announcing 40 people had been arrested on suspicion of taking part in the attack on the Saudi embassy.

Yet, if the complexity of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Western countries is taken into consideration, it is not difficult to understand Saudi Arabia’s strong reaction this time.

Thanks to the shale gas revolution, the US is less dependent on Saudi oil today, which has led to a decline in Saudi Arabia’s importance on the US’ geopolitical chessboard.

Since the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, an increasing number of politicians and media commentators in the West have openly accused Riyadh of “funding jihadists”.

The shift in relations between Saudi Arabia and the US-led West culminated last month in a new anti-terror coalition of 34 Sunni states rallied by Riyadh to boost its own profile in the campaign, which was obviously futile in the face of the much larger coalition led by Washington.

Meanwhile, Iran’s relations with the US-led West have dramatically improved. In July, Teheran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany reached a historic agreement which paved the way for resolving the long-standing Iranian nuclear crisis peacefully.

However, the agreement was met with strong opposition from some US allies in the region including Saudi Arabia, and its severing ties with Iran can be perceived as an open show of defiance to the US’ warming ties with Iran.

As the US still needs Riyadh as an important ally to project its power and help it tackle thorny issues in the region, Washington is asking for both Riyadh and Teheran to exercise restraint after condemning the torching of Saudi Embassy in the strongest terms.

But the sole superpower obviously should do more and draw Riyadh and Teheran back to diplomatic channels to resolve their differences.

... if the complexity of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Western countries is taken into consideration, it is not difficult to understand Saudi Arabia’s strong reaction this time.