Tensions may deal a blow to the fight against terrorism
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday and asked all Iranian diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours after angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Teheran in protest against the execution of 47 people, including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, on terrorism charges by Riyadh. Following Saudi Arabia’s move, Sudan and Bahrain severed ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates said it would downgrade ties with Teheran.
The United Nations, the United States and the European Union all condemned the latest executions carried out by Saudi Arabia, and urged countries in the Middle East not to escalate religious tensions further. On the other hand, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saudi Arabia would face “divine revenge” for “unjustly spilling the blood” of Nimr and urged the Islamic world to strongly protest his death.
This is not the first confrontation between Riyadh and Teheran, which for decades have been fighting for the religious leadership in the Middle East. Portraying itself as the de facto leader of the Islamic world, the Sunni Saudi Arabia has prided its guardianship of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, on which millions of Muslims converge to perform hajj every year. And Iran, as the largest Shiite Muslim country, has become a major security concern for many Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, for not only following a different strand of Islam but also its growing military might.
Having survived the Western economic sanctions over the past decade, Iran has also managed to make notable progress in ballistic missile and submarine research. Besides, the new Shiite-majority government in Iraq has fundamentally reshaped Baghdad-Teheran ties, to the benefit of the latter. And even the regional political upheaval, or the so-called Arab Spring, failed to create unrest in Iran.
As such, the latest confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia has a lot to do with the latter attempting to contain the former’s rise. Also, the confrontation has highlighted the fact that Islam as a religion stands divided, not least because of non-religious factors.
That religion is about almost everything in a Muslim’s life could, in some ways, help mobilize and unite believers for a public cause, but in many ways it could be easily demonized by the West and exploited by extremist and terrorist outfits like the notorious Islamic State to wage war on regional peace and prosperity.
Given these facts, the escalating tensions between Teheran and Riyadh may deal a blow to the region’s fight against terrorism, allowing the IS to regain its strength after the losses it suffered recently. Although the two major regional players are unlikely to declare war on each other, they will be less willing to cooperate in the fights against terrorism, probably prompting other Muslim states in the region to readjust their anti-IS strategies based on religious sects.
As for the West (including the US, a traditional ally of Saudi Arabia), it may not be interested in getting further involved in the Teheran-Riyadh row, which cannot be settled in the short term. But the top priority for the conflictstricken Middle East countries should be local people’s well-being, which can only be secured if all regional leaders agree to manage their relations in accordance with peaceful coexistence, jointly fight terrorism, and enhance transnational economic cooperation.