A regional cold war?
Photo: ionpetrescu.ro
Somebody in Iran will have to pay the price," Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal's phonation in response to alleged plot by Iranian officials to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington is symptomatic to a growing regional cold war in Middle East. This cold war takes shape in a regional scale between two countries with asymmetric power in comparison to other Arab countries. The question of leadership which falls within the 'zero-sum' equilibrium in Middle East lies into the gravity of the tension. The history of rivalry traced back to Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution that suddenly upturned relations between two countries previously described as the "twin pillars" that guaranteed U.S. security in the Gulf. The fear that the new Islamic republic would export its revolution across the Middle East prompted a strategy of containment by Saudi Arabia, including backing for Saddam's Iraq in its eight-year war with Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran are divided by long-standing structural tensions. Each has aspirations for Islamic leadership, and each possesses different visions of regional order. Whereas Tehran regards Riyadh as America's proxy and a buffer against Iran's primacy in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia worries about Iran's asymmetric power and regional ambitions, especially its expanding influence in post-Saddam Iraq and its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The latest exacerbation was the U.S. government's announcement that it had foiled an alleged plot by Iranian officials to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Two men, including a member of Iran's special foreign actions unit known as the Quds Force, were charged in New York Federal Court with conspiring to kill the Saudi diplomat, Adel Al-Jubeir. The men tried to hire a purported member of a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the assassination with a bomb attack while Al-Jubeir dined at his favourite restaurant. Though it remains unclear whether Saudi Arabia and Iran really pose existential security threats to one another because of their policies or intentions, both countries' leaderships are using the exaggerated threat of the other, coupled with their own sense of vulnerability, to turn a local feud into a major cause of region-wide tension and proxy warfare. What resembles to the post-WW II scenario that laid down the foundation of Cold War is that the whole Arab World is facing the most tumultuous moments of structural change in several generations, and countries are reconfiguring both their domestic power structures as well as their intra-regional relations. This situation is being exploited by the regional power aspirants like Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is a cold war but played by the United States at the back. United States has started to use the alleged plot of assassination as leverage with other countries that have been reluctant to apply harsh penalties against Iran. Following the Carter Doctrine that denies any outside influence in Middle East by big powers and the rise of any asymmetric power within the region, the United States is continuing its Byzantine policy of divide and rule fueling this rift. It pursues a policy of aggrandisement of Iranian threats to Arabs and weakening of Israeli threat that is benefitting US-Israel policy significantly by dividing the Arab consensus on Palestinian statehood and changing the attention of Palestinian bid for UN membership. Besides, the perceived imbalance is securing the necessity of US as a security guarantor and boasting US arms trade in the region. The atmosphere for a cold war began when the US and its allies toppled Saddam's Sunni-led regime in 2003, and Tehran emerged as the strategic winner with its deadly enemy Saddam gone and an elected Shia-led government in power in Baghdad. After 9/11, the US have liberated and empowered Iraq's Shia majority and had ridden Iran's another regional Sunni foe, the Taliban government in Afghanistan, lifting yet another restraint on Tehran's regional ambitions. Iran's foreign policy goals are diametrically opposed to Saudi King Abdullah's primary objective. While Tehran supports chaos in places like Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Iraq and Bahrain, Riyadh is trying its best to bring stability to these countries. What concerns Saudi Monarch's most is Iran's policy of Iranianization within the domestic fronts of politics like Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Shia majority of Iraq particularly their political frontiers such as Da'wa Party, Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and The Sadarist. Tehran is also trying to forge ties with Sunni Islamic groups like Hamas and with Syria, which has been marginalised by the West. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have accused Iran of trying to create dissent in their countries. Sporadic unrest in the Shia-majority eastern province of Saudi Arabia is seen as part of a Shia revival. Protests by the Shia majority against a Sunni monarchy in Bahrain, an island linked by a short causeway to Saudi Arabia, were seen in Riyadh as evidence of Iranian meddling. In Syria, wherein Iran is supporting the Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni regimes are backing the protest movement. Proxy wars have started such as in Yemen where Tehran is backing Houthi fighters who make up around 40% of the population to restore the Zaidid imamate system, which was overthrown in 1962. To contain a growing Iranian threat Saudi is using a soft containment strategy through alliance building such as the use of GCC to create an antagonist Sunni circle against Iran. It invited Jordan and Morocco to join GCC. Saudi is increasingly taking hold of leadership in the conflicts within the region. It has strongly backed intra-Palestinian negotiations and hosted Makkah talks since its success in reconciling Palestinian factions would strengthen Riyadh's hand in the struggle for leadership in the Middle East. Riyadh led a coalition force from the GCC countries into Bahrain to help the government crush the Iran-backed Shia protest movement. Moreover, the Saudis rushed to provide financial handouts to the new Egyptian government following the collapse of Egypt's Mubarak regime. It has launched a propaganda war spreading concern over Iranian nuclear program. Riyadh has a vested interest, no less than Israel's, to disrupt the US-Iran nuclear talks. A 60 billion dollars arms deal with USA suggests the Saudi's crave for military preparedness against Iran. Beyond the exogenous outlook of the development, the domestic political manipulation by both the governments stands much relevant. Both Saudi monarch and Iranian government are not out of the 'domino effect' of populist movement in the neighborhood. A Saudi-Iran confrontation would tighten popular support in favor of both the governments in their own country, deflecting a domestic democratic rise. It is too early to conclude on this escalating cold war. We better closely observe forthcoming developments in the Middle East.
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