Iran’s Syrian Power Grab and Saudi Arabia
RIYADH
– Inviting Iran to the next round of talks on the Syria crisis in
Vienna, Austria – an invitation that was reiterated last week – has
far-reaching implications. In fact, Iran’s current government is
attempting to overthrow a balance of power that has endured for some
1,400 years – and Saudi Arabia, as the cradle of the Muslim world, will
not allow it.
The divide between
Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s most prominent Shia and Sunni
powers, respectively, has deep roots. If we are to understand what is
really happening in the Middle East today – not just in Syria – one must
consider the origins of the Sunni-Shia schism, the Arab-Persian divide,
and past struggles over the governance of Islam.
Islam was divided between Sunni and Shia
after the prophet Muhammad died and a new successor had to be chosen.
Most of his followers, who became known as Sunni Muslims, felt that the
faithful should base their decision on ability, and supported the Muslim
elders’ choice of Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr. But a small
dissident group, who would eventually become known as Shia Muslims, were
adamant that the new caliph should be a blood relative of the prophet,
and thus decided that Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib
(the fourth caliph, according to Sunnis) was his rightful successor.
Today, 90% of all Muslims are Sunni, and 10% are Shia.
While this
disagreement was playing out, so was the Muslim conquest of Persia,
which began just a year after the prophet’s death in 632. The Persian
Sassanid Empire, exhausted financially and militarily from decades of
warfare with the Byzantine Empire, endured a decisive defeat in the
Battle of Qadisiyyah in 636.
The next year, the
Persian emperor, Yazdegerd III, fled to the border province of Khorasan
and the Arabization of Persia began, with Persians taking Arab names and
converting to Islam. By 651, almost all major urban centers in Persia
were under Arab control, adding momentum to the process.
The mass conversion
to Islam among Persians was the first step toward the establishment of
the first caliphate, a political-religious state comprising all Muslim
lands. At various times in history, caliphates have extended into Asia,
Africa, and parts of Europe. The effort by various forces seeking to
control or restore the caliphate is a recurrent theme throughout Islam’s
history. The so-called Islamic State is only the latest example of
this.
Until the year 1500,
almost all Persians were Sunni Muslims. Then, Shah Ismail – the first
Shah and the founder of the Safavid Dynasty – began a brutal policy of
forcing Persian Muslims to become Shia, in order to distinguish his
iteration of Persia’s empire from the more powerful Constantinople-based
and fervently Sunni Ottoman caliphate.
This history clearly
informs Iran’s actions today. As Shia Muslims, Iranians are a minority
within the Muslim community, a reality that has caused them to feel
persecuted. Rather than accept their minority status, various Iranian
governments have attempted to establish their country’s hegemony in the
Arab world.
Of course, Iran not
only represents only a tiny minority of Muslims; Iranians are not Arabs.
It is thus unfathomable that they would dictate to Arab countries in
any capacity. But this has not stopped Iran’s government from attempting
to commandeer the main levers of Islam, both politically and
theologically. Using Arab countries’ Shia communities, it is trying to
wield control over them, with the ultimate objective of taking over
Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, over which the Saudi
monarch exercises authority as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.
As the Sunni world’s
most influential country, Saudi Arabia knows that it must do what it
takes to limit Iran. In 2011, a Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council
coalition had to neutralize an Iran-sponsored Shia insurgency in
Bahrain. This year in Yemen (a predominantly Sunni country), a Saudi-led
coalition is fighting the Zaydi Shia Houthi rebelds, whom Iran armed in order to take over the country and gain a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula.
In Syria – a
Sunni-majority country where, incidentally, a Sunni Muslim caliphate,
the Umayyads, once prospered – Iran is spending billions of dollars to
prop up President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, dominated by members of a
minority Shia sect, the Alawites (historically known as Nusayris).
Actions by Assad’s supporters have so far caused more than 270,000 deaths, displaced over seven million people internally,
forced nearly four million people to flee, and left close to 12 million
in need of desperate assistance. They have enabled – indeed, fueled –
the rise of the Islamic State, and with it a growing threat to the
global order, as the successive terrorist attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh,
Beirut, and Paris tragically have shown. Given this, Saudi Arabia’s
leadership – regardless of what temporary results are achieved through
the Vienna talks – will continue to work hard to ensure that Assad is
removed from power and that the mayhem is finally brought to an end.
The terrorism, proxy
wars, arms shipments, nuclear ambitions, and grandiose delusions
emerging from Iran are part of an age-old struggle with which the Saudis
have had enough. That is why King Salman is overseeing the greatest
military acquisition and expansion program in Saudi Arabia’s history.
And Saudi Arabia will not stop until Iran – and its Shia proxies –
abandons its revolutionary fantasies and begins working to bring peace
and stability to the Middle East and the wider Arab world.
Nawaf Obaid is a visiting fellow at the
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government.
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