IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA CIVILIO-THEO-ZATION CLASH: REFORMULATING REGIONAL STRATEGIES FOLLOWING THE ARAB SPRING.

• Author: Cohen, Ronen A.

1. Introduction

   Most scholarly literature that analyzes Saudi-Arabia-Iran interactions, rests on religious aspects, meaning Sunni vs. Shi'a or on geopolitical maneuvers. This study suggests a new comprehensive model which combines religion and ethnicity. The new conceptualization studies how religion--Sunna or Shi'a--represents the historical clash on the question of who should have, must have, and who has the historical right to lead the Islamic world. This clash mainly originated from one focal base, Islam, yet it represents a divergence between 'theo'--inter-Islam sub-groups, and 'civilio'--ethnic rivalry, or Arab vs. Persian culture.

   The modern history of Persian Gulf politics shows that even from 1921 to 1979, when Iran was not a religious political entity, ethnic diversity influenced its foreign policy--particularly its vision of being the regional hegemonic power in the Gulf. In fact, under the last Shah, Iran was called 'the policeman of the Gulf'. Our argument is that this term was accepted within the Sunni camp, because this camp perceived Iran as a secular player that was not threatened by Sunni dominance in the region. The case study of 1971, when secular ethnic Persian Iran demanded sovereignty over Bahrain, proves that act was not only religious but also a theo-civilio one. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 intensified the religious aspect of this historical rivalry.

   The relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been characterized by bitter rivalry for many years. The research focus has ranged from realist assessments of the regional balance of power, diplomatic historiography on issues such as oil and civil society, and complex foreign policy analysis targeting religious differences, to eclectic approaches to shared security dilemmas. At the same time, a recent study argues that Iran and Saudi Arabia are not only nation-states but can be seen as social actors that engage in cognitive processes of differentiation in the international system in order to distinguish themselves from the other and to manifest their values and prescriptions. Such processes can occur via speech, roles, images, rhetoric, symbols, or any other strategy in which the aim is to project ideology while contesting the ideological influence of rivals (Cerioli 2018: 295-296.)

   This study argues that alongside regional rivalry, Iran and Saudi Arabia also share a historical religious rivalry, as both see themselves as representing the Islamic world. In accordance with a new study, claiming that both sides use religious-national identity to shape alliances and influence (Kovacikova 2019: 48), this study argues that while Iran sees itself as the leader of both the Shi'i and the Sunni worlds, Saudi Arabia sees itself as the religious leader of the Sunni world only. Moreover, this study asserts that both sides' ambitions in the regional arena emphasize the differences between them, and bring them into a conflict of civilio-theo-zation, as each side uses its religious creed to survive through regional expansion--religiously, territorially, and politically.

   Ever since 2003, when the United States led the Western coalition to topple Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, the regional rivalry between the Shi'a and Sunna has intensified, and the mutual hatred has reached new heights. During President George W. Bush's administration, and mainly during Obama's, the United States abandoned its 'dual containment' policy and withdrew slightly from the Middle East region. This was clearly demonstrated during the Arab Spring upheavals by the United States allowing Mubarak's Egypt to collapse, ignoring Saudi Arabia's fears of internal turmoil, refusing to assist the rebels in Syria (thus letting Russia and Iran establish new elements inside the country), by toppling the regime in Libya, and more. All these events have subsequently made it possible for Iran, the only state in the region that has not suffered any serious social disorder, to secretly promote its nuclear ambitions and to both ideologically and materially send forth its tentacles into the Shi'ite communities in the region.

   Saudi Arabia and Iran do not share a common border, but there is a long and unsettled account between them, since both aspire to ultimately lead the Muslim world, albeit in different ways. Saudi Arabia still remembers Iran's intensive efforts in the early 1980s to export its revolution into other Shi'ite communities in the Middle East region, although finally, Saudi Arabia managed to turn back these efforts by taking care of the Shi'ites within the Wahhabi Kingdom--more by economic than religious means. This approach turned out to be a blessing in disguise since despite Iran's efforts at religious indoctrination, Saudi Arabia's pragmatic yet consistent aid helped it gain the upper hand in controlling the revolutionary religious wave that was sweeping the region (Fuller and Frange 1999: 187, Goldberg 1985: 100-103).

   Despite the Security Council Resolution 598, regarding ceasefire agreements concluded between Iran and Iraq during the hostilities that took place between them, the regional turmoil that Saudi Arabia was trying to manage continued when its previous ally, Iraq, became an enemy by invading Saudi Arabia's neighbor, Kuwait. When this took place, the West, especially the United States, came to the aid of the Saudis and Kuwaitis, taking care of Saddam in 1991 and later, in 2003, settling the account conclusively. Iran, on the other hand, never shed tears over the crushing of its bitter enemy, Saddam, but nonetheless opposed the United States' intervention, especially its involvement in regional disputes.

   With the United States present in Iraq, both Iran and Saudi Arabia understood that the previous local treaties and alliances were now history and that they must therefore recalculate their own regional and international strategies and foreign policies. The bloody consequences of the fighting in Iraq not only led to an intensification of the sectarian conflict and the reappearance of old-new radical and terrorist forces in Iraq such as al-Qaeda and ISIS (aka: ISIL), but also to the re-establishment of branches of the local, old-new Shi'ite radical movements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi's Army and the Qods Forces, among others. Iraq, which not long before had been one of the major factors in the region, retreated from the regional arena, leaving Iran and Saudi Arabia to compete over hegemony, causing both of them to reconsider their ambitions in the Gulf. At first, especially between 2003 and 2016, it seemed as if both were sharpening their swords in preparation for some upcoming battle, which we have called the battle between the theocratic (or theo-ethnic) civilizations of Persian-Shi'ite Iran and Arab-Sunni Saudi Arabia. In the past, the Middle Eastern world was seen as one Muslim and Eastern entity which was antagonistic to the West, but now there were local debates and conflicts taking place within the Muslim world and not with the outside world. Within this world there are also other ethnic and religious conflicts, between the Persian and Arab civilizations and the Shi'ite and Sunni theologies, which have jelled into a two-pronged conflict fueled by the civilizations and theologies of these two regional giants.

   Until July 14, 2015, the regional tension caused by Iran's nuclear ambitions had consistently escalated, but on that day Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Agreement, and the regional race for both hegemony and its prevention shifted into a forced status quo. While Iran, basically, had to accept the West's demands regarding its nuclear intentions, it signed the agreement only after ensuring that its nuclear facilities would remain capable of maintaining its peaceful energy needs. On the other hand, Iran's nemesis, Saudi Arabia, was one of the regional states that had pressured the West to curtail Iran's nuclear capabilities, peaceful or otherwise. However, the agreement still left Iran with potential nuclear military capabilities and this was a bitter pill to swallow. For Saudi Arabia, a simple calculation of Iran's current abilities, President Obama's abandonment of the old Middle East treaties, and the fundamental changes that had taken place in the region as a result of the Arab Spring upheavals made it clear that it was at a crossroads and needed to recalculate its regional and foreign policies.

   While Iran's advances towards obtaining nuclear weapons rang alarm bells in Saudi Arabia, forcing Riyadh and other countries to do their best to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining such weapons, the potential threat to Iran caused by the Saudi arms purchases was not something that could be ignored in Tehran. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2016, Saudi Arabia spent $63.7 billion on its military, while Iran spent only $12.7 billion on defense. To compensate for this disparity in military equipment, Iran adopted a strategy of 'forward defense', meaning that it began to support friendly militias so that they could attack adversaries if they began conflicts with Iran (Rezaei 2016, SIPRI 2016).

   This new development was also seen by the Saudis as the beginning of the final stage of a 35-year-long battle that had been taking place between Iran and the United States over the geopolitical order in the region in general and Iran's place in that order in particular. After containing Iran for decades, the Saudis believed that the United States and the West had come to terms with the idea of Iran as a regional power. The fear of this happening was in fact the primary reason why Saudi Arabia had opposed the nuclear deal in the first place. To the Saudis, the nuclear agreement marked the end of the United States' effort to maintain a regional order based on Iran's exclusion and on the primacy of Saudi Arabia (and Israel). Consequently, in order to both regain its centrality in...