Iran moves from pariah state to regional power
Thaw in relations might undermine Saudi Arabia’s role
IRAN’S release from sanctions testifies to its new relationship with the US as it moves from pariah state to regional power, a status that could come at the cost of Saudi Arabia, Washington’s chief Arab ally.
Enemies and allies alike must adjust to Iran under President Hassan Rouhani becoming a power broker in the Middle East after its nuclear deal with world powers and Saturday’s lifting of sanctions that bring it to the top table of international politics.
The swift release last week of US Navy sailors after they drifted into Iranian waters marked the new era in relations after decades of hostility with the West.
After the 1979 revolution that brought Shia Muslim clerics to power, Iran would typically use hostages to extract concessions from its western adversaries.
Early on, it held 52 hostages taken from the US embassy in Tehran for 444 days. That incident ranked alongside Iranian-backed suicide bombings against Western embassies and troops in Lebanon, the hijacking of planes and the kidnapping of Western hostages in the country.
All this left deep scars and incited hostility towards Iran as an outlaw, in the region and the world. Yet last week’s naval incident contrasted to 2007 when Iran captured British sailors in similar circumstances, but accused them of spying and held them for two weeks.
The hiccup over the American sailors “summarises the emergence of a new relation- ship between Washington and Tehran”, said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert.
Washington remains formally committed to Iran’s archrival, Saudi Arabia, but Iran’s attractions are both political and economic: a country that is “a potential regional superpower, and an emerging market”, said Gerges.
Saudi Arabia, however, is implacably at loggerheads with Iran. Its rigid Wahhabi Sunni Muslim clerical leaders treat the Shia as heretics, not far short of how Islamic State jihadis regard the Shias as idolaters to be exterminated.
The Saudis have been badly rattled by Iran’s success in forging a Shia axis stretching from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon, where Tehran’s paramilitary ally Hezbollah is also the strongest political force.
Riyadh says Iran is also behind unrest in neighbouring Bahrain, which has a Shia majority, as well as the insurgency of Shia Houthis in Yemen, where the Saudis launched an air war last year. It also believes Tehran is stirring up Saudi Arabia’s East- ern Province, which contains nearly all the kingdom’s oil and most of its Shia minority.
Yet for the US and its European allies, getting Iran on-side is likely to be vital to their interests – Tehran could be crucial in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The same goes for the search for ending the civil war in Syria. There Iran kept President Bashar al-Assad in power as his sole foreign ally offering help until Russia arrived with its air force last year.
While Iranian confidence grows, Riyadh appears defensive – and unpredictable since last year’s succession of King Salman, who has vested vast power in his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“The Saudis are really behaving with a sense of siege, reacting to events as if each was the end of the world,” Gerges said.
Iran, by contrast, “believes it is a rising power, that the world needs it”.
Saudi officials say their regional policy is coherent, not ideologically or religiously motivated. “We will not allow Iran to destabilise our region. We will not allow Iran to do harm to our citizens or those of our allies, and so we will react,” said Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.
But Iran, too, has its vulnerabilities. It faces the dilemma of how far to liberalise once its economy reconnects to world markets and investment creates new power groups.
Above all, Tehran needs to win acceptance in the Middle East as a legitimate regional power. If Iran is to win Arab recognition as a regional power, it will need to compromise and accept a less assertive role in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.