Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2014 22:53:14 +0200
Elusive Equilibrium: America, Iran, Saudi Arabia in a Changing Middle East
The United States’ determination to foster a ‘new equilibrium’ between Saudi
Arabia and Iran is likely to remain a distant dream, warn Frederic Wehrey
and Karim Sadjadpour. That’s because enmity between the Middle East’s two
leading states runs far deeper than recent history suggests.
By Karim Sadjadpour and Frederic Wehrey for Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
2 June 2014
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution replaced a U.S.-allied monarchy with a
bitterly anti-American theocracy, Washington’s foreign policy in the
oil-rich Persian Gulf has rested on two strategic pillars: enmity with Iran
and amity with Saudi Arabia. In recent months, however, this
thirty-five-year status quo has been called into question by a rapidly
changing Arab political order and the promise of a U.S.-Iran nuclear
détente.
The combination of the interim nuclear deal with Iran, U.S.-Saudi regional
disagreements, and America’s newfound shale wealth has prompted predictions
of a fundamental
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/world/middleeast/with-iran-accord-obama-o
pens-mideast-door.html?_r=1&> realignment of the geopolitical chessboard ,
with Tehran supplanting Riyadh as Washington’s chief regional ally. Rather
than swap one ally for another, however, U.S. President Barack Obama has
articulated a revised approach to the Middle East. The United States will no
longer seek to isolate Iran but will instead attempt to “get Iran to operate
in a responsible fashion” to foster a “
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?current
Page=all> new equilibrium” between Iran and Saudi Arabia that will be marked
by “competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.”
No bilateral relationship in the Middle East is more consequential for the
region’s future and U.S. interests than that between the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. On nearly every single major issue
in the Middle East, Tehran and Riyadh appear to be on opposing sides,
confounding America’s efforts to bring stability. The two countries are at
once ethnic (Arab vs. Persian), sectarian (Sunni vs. Shia), and geopolitical
rivals, vying for power and influence throughout the Persian Gulf, the
Levant, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq as well as within the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In addition, they
each embrace radically different forms of government and advance divergent
visions for Middle Eastern order, disagreeing most sharply over the question
of America’s presence in the region.
In light of these differences, the two states are likely to remain perpetual
competitors. The question now is whether their competition must manifest
itself in protracted proxy conflict or whether—like France and Germany in
Europe—the two states can settle on a peaceful modus vivendi that, while
falling short of genuine friendship, could help de-escalate sectarian
tensions across the region.
The stakes for the United States in terms of both its projected
disengagement from the Gulf and Obama’s notion of a regional “equilibrium”
are enormous. Washington’s bilateral relations with Riyadh and Tehran may
help facilitate some movement toward a repair of relations. But U.S.
policymakers should harbor no illusions about the difficulty of this task,
given the deep history of distrust between the Saudi Arabia and Iran, the
fractured regional landscape that exacerbates their rivalry, and the
disparate outlooks of their respective ruling elites.
The Roots of Enmity
Saudi Arabia and Iran are each endowed with unique assets. In the
overwhelmingly Sunni Arab Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s custodianship of
Islam’s holiest sites, coupled with its vast energy reserves, offer it clear
advantages. Iran’s long history as a nation-state, demographic superiority,
and ability to project power abroad offer it competing advantages. Each
country also considers itself the natural leader of the broader Muslim
world, Saudi Arabia because of its religious credentials and Iran because of
its ideological bona fides as a bulwark against Israel and America.
These differences and designs have driven hostility over the years. Yet, the
two sides have in the past shown an ability to compartmentalize their
rivalry, reaching a tenuous truce in one geographic sphere while
simultaneously engaging in heated confrontation in another.
The closest parallel to a Gulf-based equilibrium was the uneasy
Saudi-Iranian partnership that existed under the shah of Iran in the late
1960s and 1970s. In the prerevolutionary era, Iran and Saudi Arabia were
linked by monarchical solidarity in the face of communist and republican
threats and by their mutual patronage from the United States. The regional
order at that time was less unsettled, inviting fewer opportunities for
competition between the two sides.
But a return to that era is highly unlikely given the state of upheaval and
conflict in the region today and the two states’ drastically different
domestic politics. Indeed, antagonism and mistrust between the two—and
between each of these countries and the United States—has peaked in recent
months.
Saudi officials have reacted cynically and suspiciously to the seemingly
more moderate demeanor Iran has adopted of late. Its new president, the
pragmatic cleric Hassan Rouhani—a protégé of former Iranian president Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani—is poised to improve relations with Riyadh, reaching out
to rebuild ties that deteriorated during the era of bombastic former
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What remains in question is to what extent
Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, are empowered to
meaningfully alter regional policies, which have long been the domain of
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a
formidable military force under his command.
What’s more, the interim nuclear deal struck in November 2013 between the
five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (known as the
P5+1) and Tehran effectively formalized a catastrophe the Saudis long
feared: a bait and switch that bought Tehran time on the nuclear front while
empowering Iran to pursue its own interests across the region, particularly
in Syria, where it supports the regime of its ally Bashar al-Assad in the
ongoing civil war.
In response, senior Saudi officials have been uncharacteristically public
about advocating a more muscular and independent Saudi policy to step up the
battle against Iran. They have lambasted Tehran’s “destabilizing” role in
the Middle East,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/saudi-arabia-will-go-it-alone.htm
l> openly chastised America for being too ready to concede to Iran’s nuclear
and regional ambitions, and warned that Riyadh may confront Tehran on its
own. For their part, Iranian officials excoriate Saudi Arabia’s support for
radical Sunni jihadists and its alliance with the United States, and they
predict that Riyadh’s geriatric leadership is on the
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/world/middleeast/iran-offers-military-aid
-but-not-troops-to-iraq.html?_r=2> verge of collapse.
Beneath this mutual venom, an array of conflicts in fractured states is
inviting meddling by the two powers, fueling a zero-sum struggle for
influence that is unlikely to abate in the near term.
Syria: Center of the Storm
As the political crisis in Syria has deteriorated into a
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/01/us-syria-crisis-toll-idUSBREA300Y
X20140401> humanitarian crisis of epic proportions—as of this writing, there
have been over 150,000 casualties and 9 million people either internally or
externally displaced—a war-weary U.S. president, Congress, and populace have
been reluctant to intervene given uncertainty about Washington’s interests.
Growing concerns about radical elements of Syria’s rebel forces, coupled
with the Assad regime’s brutal resilience, have seemingly downgraded U.S.
priorities from the removal of the Syrian dictator to merely the removal of
his chemical weapons.
For Iran and Saudi Arabia, in contrast, Syria has become the epicenter of a
geopolitical-cum-sectarian bloodbath.
Iran has been strategically isolated since the 1979 revolution, and Syria
has been its only consistent ally. A mutual antipathy toward Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq spawned the partnership between Tehran and Damascus, and
shared fear and loathing of America and Israel has sustained it. Syria
provides Tehran a critical geographic thoroughfare to arm and finance the
Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, one of the crown jewels of Iran’s
revolution.
Tehran thus is strongly motivated to keep the Assad regime in power. Its
stance is driven less by sectarian solidarity than by deep concerns about
what might come after Assad. Syria’s population is overwhelmingly Sunni
Arab, although the country is currently ruled by Alawites, a Shia sect. If
Assad falls, Tehran fears that a Sunni sectarian regime aligned with Saudi
Arabia and hostile to Shia Iran could come to power in Damascus.
Iran is primarily concerned not with the sectarian composition of Syria’s
leadership but with whether these leaders share Tehran’s ideological
worldview and its premise of resistance against America and Israel.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iran-says-it-launched-satel
lite/2012/02/03/gIQARNuDmQ_story.html> As Khamenei once said, “We will
support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime
across the world.” And Iran has given just that support to the Assad regime.
Tehran has provided Assad billions of dollars in loans, credits, and
subsidized oil in order to keep the Syrian regime solvent, and it has
offered conventional and unconventional military aid as well as intelligence
training and cooperation to help crush popular unrest.
According to both U.S. government reports and Iranian official statements,
Tehran has also helped create a 50,000-strong Syrian paramilitary group
known as Jaysh al-Shabi (the People’s Army) to aid Syrian government forces.
By contrast, Saudi Arabia is outraged by the large-scale and indiscriminate
slaughter of Sunni Arabs at the hands of a Shia-supported, Alawite
dictatorship. Riyadh regards the Levant as ground zero in its geostrategic
struggle with Iran, a make-or-break opportunity to clip Tehran’s wings in
the Arab world and alter the regional balance of power back in Saudi
Arabia’s favor.
The anti-Assad uprising has provided Saudi Arabia and the Gulf with a new
chance to weaken Iran. Saudi and Gulf support to the Syrian opposition
escalated in early 2012 with the intervention of Hezbollah and Revolutionary
Guards forces. At the same time, Riyadh appears to be fighting simultaneous
wars against al-Qaeda elements within the Syrian opposition and, to a lesser
extent, the Muslim Brotherhood. A key unknown is whether the cost of this
three-front struggle will eventually exhaust the Saudis, forcing them into
quiet talks with Iran to prevent an outcome that both sides fear: the rise
of transnational al-Qaeda affiliates with a reach beyond Syria’s borders.
The Obama administration’s denouncement of Assad, coupled with its
reluctance to decisively remove him from power, has led to charges that
Washington is either collaborating with both Tehran and Riyadh or cynically
allowing the conflict to fester as a means of hemorrhaging Iran, Hezbollah,
and al-Qaeda.
In reality, the risks of continued carnage in Syria are grave for
Washington, Tehran, and Riyadh. Iran’s support for Assad has had not only an
enormous financial cost but also a perhaps irreparable reputational cost in
the predominantly Sunni Arab Middle East. Riyadh’s backing of rebel groups
could boomerang against the kingdom when and if jihadist factions in Syria
either prevail or are decisively defeated. And the United States must worry
about the prospects of an al-Qaeda-infested failed state that destabilizes
neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan.
Despite these risks, however, both Tehran and Riyadh appear convinced of the
righteousness of their positions, and neither has shown concrete signs of
recalibrating. In this context, America’s interest in seeing both an end to
the Assad regime and the weakening of radical Sunni Islamists will create
tactical convergence and strategic clashes with Tehran and tactical clashes
and strategic convergence with Riyadh. But as long as Syria remains an
Alawite-led minority brutally ruling over a Sunni-majority population,
Iran–Saudi Arabia tension and its resulting regional disequilibrium will
likely persist.
Iraq: The Contested Frontier
Iraq is the lone country that borders both Iran and Saudi Arabia. More than
eleven years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the country remains embattled
internally and continues to be a significant source of regional tension and
resentment against Washington.
Viewed from Riyadh, if America’s sin of omission in Syria has been to Iran’s
benefit, America’s sin of commission in Iraq—the 2003 removal of then Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein—was an enormous gift to Tehran. In just over a
decade, formerly Sunni-led Iraq has been rendered a Shia-dominated state on
the eastern frontiers of the Arab world and is now led by a man, Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom Saudi King Abdullah reportedly considers an
<http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/saudi-arabia/101129/wikileaks-saudi-arab
ia-iran-king-abdullah> Iranian agent.
Rather than aggressively contend with Iranian power as it does in the
Levant, Saudi Arabia has pursued a passive policy of static containment or
damage control in Iraq. Given the country’s Shia majority, Saudi officials
concede that they are playing a losing game in trying to stem Tehran’s
influence, bereft of the local networks, access, and capacity that Iran
enjoys. “You have to hand it to them,” a Saudi official told one of the
authors in 2007. “The Iranians had a plan before the 2003 invasion and acted
on it. They deserve the influence they got.”
Saudi officials seemingly see little benefit in expending energy on
countering Iranian influence in Iraq when the more pressing—and
decisive—struggle is in Syria. Yet worsening sectarian tension throughout
the Middle East as a result of the Syrian conflict has pushed the Maliki
government closer to Tehran and further from its Arab brethren.
For Iranians, a deep lingering resentment over U.S. and Saudi support for
Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war—in which Iran suffered several
hundred thousand casualties, including as a result of Saddam’s use of
chemical weapons—remains a powerful motivation for ensuring a
Tehran-friendly government in Baghdad.
Iraq’s importance as an ally to Iran has only grown given the uncertain
future of the Assad regime. Tehran has used Iraq as a critical thoroughfare
to smuggle its oil, subvert financial sanctions, and arm and finance the
Assad regime. This arrangement, in turn, has deepened Riyadh’s contempt for
the Maliki government, which Saudi Arabia considers complicit in Assad’s
large-scale massacres and, increasingly, the plight of Iraq’s Sunnis in the
troubled Anbar Province, who are embroiled in violent conflicts with the
Iraqi Army.
As elsewhere in the region, it is often difficult discern to whether Iran
considers itself embattled by both U.S. and Saudi influence in Iraq or
whether Tehran distinguishes between the two. Whereas during the Ahmadinejad
era Iranian officials tended to see the United States and Saudi Arabia as a
unitary evil, more recently Tehran has made efforts to distinguish between
its hegemonic (America) and sectarian (Saudi) foes.
As the U.S. presence in Iraq withers, Iran will have more opportunities in
the country, but it will also face greater obstacles. Even among its
co-religionists, Tehran has found there are limits to its influence. If the
increasingly authoritarian practices of the Maliki government continue, it
is Tehran, not Washington, that may soon be regarded by many Iraqis—both
Shia and Sunni—as the meddlesome external power partly responsible for
regime repression, growing insecurity across the country, and economic
corruption.
It is likely that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will continue to be
reticent and ambivalent about improving their relations with Iraq, even if
Iraqi popular sentiment turns against Iran. In this sense, Washington’s
long-standing hopes of convincing the Gulf Arab states to productively
engage with Iraq to counterbalance Iran are ultimately misplaced. Iraq is
likely to remain a contested frontier region for the two sides that is
unlikely to devolve into open proxy conflict but is also unhelpful for a
broader détente.
The Battle for Bahrain
In Bahrain as in Syria, a demographic minority rules over a majority,
although it does so far less brutally. While the Sunni ruling al-Khalifa
family is closely aligned with Riyadh, Iran has attempted—with mixed
success—to portray itself as the champion of the disenfranchised Shia
majority, thought to comprise around 70 percent of the population.
Iran has offered strong moral and limited material support to Bahrain’s
Shia, some of whom regard Ayatollah Khamenei as their spiritual guide, or
marja. But Tehran’s involvement in Bahrain is nowhere near the massive
lethal, material, and financial support that Iran’s Qods Force—the overseas
special operations unit of the Revolutionary Guards led by fabled commander
Qassem Soleimani—has lent to Iraq’s Shia militants and is now providing to
Alawite and government forces in Syria.
Tehran also views Bahrain as an outpost of U.S. imperialism in the Middle
East because the island nation hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s
Fifth Fleet, a hub of maritime command-and-control and logistics
capabilities that Tehran interprets as a means for Washington to constrain
Iran’s influence in the Gulf. Tehran hopes that greater Shia political
influence in Bahrain could help Iran shut down a vital enemy garrison in its
neighborhood. Up until now, however, much of Bahrain’s opposition has
favored a continued U.S. presence in the country in order to balance against
both Saudi and Iranian influence.
Saudi Arabia has inflated the Iranian menace into something it is not. In
this sense, Riyadh has become trapped by its own narrative, which elevates
what is essentially a local struggle over the distribution of economic and
political power to the status of geostrategic competition with its Persian
rival, accusing Iran of trying to foment another Khomeinist revolution.
In many respects, the Iranian menace has been used by Riyadh and the
al-Khalifa to deflect attention from a homegrown movement for greater
dignity and civil liberties. Some Saudi officials have recognized this
reality, albeit privately. In 2006, for instance, a senior Saudi diplomat in
Bahrain acknowledged that the Bahraini Shia were not pawns of an Iranian
chess master. “We could live with an elected Shia prime minister in
Bahrain,” he noted.
Saudi officials want Iran to declare that unrest in Bahrain is an internal
Bahraini matter. Iran will continue to advocate for more representative
government in Bahrain, which implicitly means greater Shia power and a
diminution of Saudi influence.
But there are some signs that both Iran and Hezbollah, which has also
supported Bahrain’s opposition, may be tempering their statements on Bahrain
as part of Rouhani’s broader charm offensive. Whether this shift paves the
way for more substantive de-escalation remains to be seen.
The United States has enormous stakes in Bahrain given the presence of the
Fifth Fleet. A lowering of Saudi-Iranian tensions might enable more
progressive factions within the ruling family to undertake more substantive
reforms to quiet an increasingly radicalized opposition. This would not only
improve the long-term viability of the monarchy but also stave off a
potential threat to U.S. citizens and assets on the island. In addition, it
would be a positive step toward establishing an equilibrium in the Gulf that
could facilitate a diminishing need for U.S. military presence.
Israel-Palestine: Two States or One?
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia consider themselves patrons and guarantors of
Palestinian nationhood and attach enormous domestic and regional legitimacy
to these claims. But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is another example of
Tehran and Riyadh backing rival local factions with competing solutions.
Saudi Arabia supports a two-state solution and has recently backed U.S.
efforts to revive a peace plan that
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/05/us-israel-palestinians-kerry-idUS
BRE9BU0KE20140105> King Abdullah first proposed in 2002. The plan offers
Israel full recognition in exchange for a withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and
the return of Palestinian refugees. Riyadh has also been the Arab world’s
principal financial patron of the Palestinian Authority.
In contrast, since 1979 Iran has come to see the rejection of Israel’s
existence as a critical source of its revolutionary identity and a means to
transcend the Arab-Persian and Sunni-Shia divides in its bid for regional
leadership. In pushing for a one-state solution, Iran has backed militant
rejectionists such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Hezbollah, Iran’s principal proxy in
the Levant, cites continued confrontation with Israel as its raison d’être
for bearing arms. An Israeli-Palestinian settlement would seriously
undermine this rationale.
Riyadh has vehemently opposed Iran’s support to militant Palestinian
factions. In 2010, King Abdullah reportedly told then Iranian foreign
minister Manoucher Mottaki that “you as Persians have no business
<http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/13/uk-saudi-iran-idINKBN0DT1AL2014051
3> meddling in Arab matters” after the Iranian diplomat had tried to justify
Iran’s support to Hamas on the basis of Islamic solidarity. Saudi Arabia
tried but failed to wrest Hamas away from Tehran by brokering a peace
agreement between Hamas and rival Palestinian faction Fatah in 2007. The
accord quickly fell apart amid street fighting. And despite Iranian
differences with Hamas over Syria in 2011, Tehran appears to be
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/hamas-iran-rebuild-ties-fallin
g-out-syria> restoring relations with the militant party—a further blow to
Saudi influence in the Palestinian arena.
The growing convergence of Israeli and Saudi policies toward Iran’s nuclear
program, fueled by a mutual perception in Riyadh and Tel Aviv of a U.S.
retreat from the region, has further damaged Saudi Arabia’s standing among
Palestinians.
That said, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may not be a source of enduring,
unsolvable enmity between Riyadh and Tehran. The Palestine issue is less of
a zero-sum game in which the two sides are backing armed combatants on
opposing sides of the sectarian spectrum than the conflict in Syria, for
instance.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict could, however, prove the single biggest
impediment to the U.S.-Iran rapprochement that Saudi Arabia so desperately
fears. For both Tehran and Washington, the question of Israel’s existence is
a deeply entrenched issue of domestic politics; Israel has no greater ally
than Washington and no greater adversary than Tehran. Even in the event of a
nuclear deal between the United States and Iran, continued Iranian support
for militant groups opposed to Israel’s existence would prevent a full
normalization of relations between Washington and Tehran.
Oil: Necessity Trumps Ideology
The Washington-Riyadh alliance is premised on the United States providing
Saudi Arabia security in order to ensure the steady flow of Saudi oil to the
world. But that foundation is being shaken by America’s burgeoning
<http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/daniel-yergin-traces-the-effect
s-of-america-s-shale-energy-revolution-on-the-balance-of-global-economic-and
-political-power> indigenous shale energy industry , plans for a U.S.
foreign policy rebalance to Asia, and a series of fierce disagreements over
regional issues like Egypt, Syria, and Iran. Notwithstanding these
differences, the United States has had no more reliable ally in OPEC than
Saudi Arabia, which has traditionally been at loggerheads with Iran over
oil-pricing quotas.
Whereas Tehran has in the past been more concerned about maximizing
short-term profits, Riyadh has taken a longer view—a difference in temporal
outlook that stems from each country’s oil reserves and production capacity.
Iran has the world’s fourth-largest proven reserves (around 136 billion
barrels), nearly half of Saudi Arabia’s 267 billion barrels of reserves. Due
to a variety of factors—including sanctions and antiquated
infrastructure—production costs in Iran are significantly higher than in
Saudi Arabia: some estimates put the cost of extracting a barrel of oil in
Iran at more than three times the cost of extracting a barrel in Saudi
Arabia. Riyadh has in the past used its swing production capacity as a
weapon against Iran—not just under the current round of sanctions but also
before the revolution.
A number of new trends are challenging Saudi Arabia’s longtime primacy.
Riyadh faces a shortage of global demand, growing internal demand, the
re-entry of Libyan crude into the global market, and increased production
from Iran with the easing of sanctions. If and when Iraq reaches its full
production potential, Saudi standing could slip further. U.S. shale
production, which is expected to peak in 2018, may force significant cuts in
OPEC production over the next several years.
That said, these trends should not be overstated. Saudi Arabia retains
enormous power as a swing producer, and its oil exports are critical to the
economic health of global heavyweights like China, upon which the economies
of the United States and Europe depend. Such linkages mean that Washington
will continue to remain engaged in the protection of Saudi supplies
regardless of American shale output.
For its part, mismanagement and sanctions have prevented Iran from fully
exploiting its vast energy reserves. Tehran earned over $600 billion in oil
revenue during Ahmadinejad’s tenure as president—around 60 percent of its
total oil revenue over the last century. But that money was largely
squandered on populist economic policies that exacerbated rather than
ameliorated the country’s high inflation and unemployment. Since then,
escalating economic and financial sanctions, notably a total European
embargo on Iranian oil, have dropped Iranian production and exports by more
than 50 percent.
Revamping Iran’s oil industry, production, and exports has been one of the
key policy pursuits of the Rouhani government. Former oil minister Bijan
Zanganeh—who served in the administration of reformist president Mohammad
Khatami—was brought back to the helm, and he has courted Western (including
American) oil companies and vowed to increase Iran’s production back to the
status quo ante.
Of all the points of contention between Washington, Tehran, and Riyadh,
oil-production differences may prove the most manageable. The respective oil
ministers of each country, Zanganeh in Iran and Ali al-Naimi in Saudi
Arabia, are technocrats, not ideologues. Yet much will hinge on a nuclear
deal. If one is not reached, the United States will continue to inhibit, via
sanctions, Iran’s production and export of oil.
Gulf Security and the U.S. Presence: The Elephant in the Room
At the heart of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry lies a simple irony: Iran
mistrusts and fears the United States and wants it to exit the Gulf, yet
Gulf Arab nations desire America’s continued security presence in the region
precisely because these states fear and mistrust Iranian ambitions.
Since Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi instituted a military modernization program
in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia has looked to an outside patron—Washington—to
balance Iran’s superior strength. When Tehran calls for a regional, local
solution to Persian Gulf security (that is, the departure of U.S. forces)
Saudi Arabia immediately sees a design for Persian hegemony that harks back
to the era of the shah, when Riyadh was consigned to the status of
Washington’s junior partner.
Yet Saudi opposition to an indigenous, regional Gulf security architecture
may eventually erode in the face of current and impending realities, such as
the growing chasm with the United States and the fractured consensus among
the Gulf states. Despite its vocal protestations and threats of a divorce
with Washington, Riyadh has few if any other reliable options for an outside
security guarantor. Russia, France, China, and India all have shortcomings
and limitations related to their capacity and desire to project power in the
Gulf—or sharp political differences with Riyadh on key issues like Syria and
Iran.
Riyadh has called for greater steadfastness and cohesion among the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) states, the organization of Gulf Arab monarchies
that was founded in part because of mutual concerns about Iran. But these
calls have gone largely unheeded. While GCC countries continue to harbor
private concerns about Iran, they have responded favorably to
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/12/gcc-cautious-but-positive-
new-iran-ties-2013121116241525583.html> Iran’s charm offensive. Oman went so
far as to publicly reject Saudi calls for greater defense cooperation among
GCC states.
The Elusive Equilibrium
During times of relative regional tranquility, Tehran and Riyadh have shown
an ability to manage their ethnic, sectarian, and ideological rivalries. But
during times of regional turbulence, Saudi Arabia–Iran tension is
self-perpetuating: the contentious regional environment deepens mutual
ill-will, which in turn makes regional conflicts—such as the one in
Syria—even bloodier.
While Washington’s long-standing impulse to align with Saudi Arabia against
Iran in these conflicts has been severely strained, any U.S. strategy intent
on improving ties with Tehran, and bringing about equilibrium between Tehran
and Riyadh, will be equally challenging.
For one, despite the potential for a nuclear détente between the United
States and Iran, there are few signs that Tehran’s senior leadership,
particularly Khamenei, is genuinely interested in a constructive
relationship with Washington. Even Iranian officials perceived as more
moderate, such as Abbas Araghi, a senior nuclear negotiator, have
consistently stressed that “
<http://iranpulse.al-monitor.com/index.php/2014/02/3880/araghchi-negotiation
s-not-about-us-iran-normalization/> enmity between . . . [Iran] and America
is still in place. . . . America from our view is
<http://www.isna.ir/fa/news/92112115052/%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82%DA%86%DB%8C
-%D8%A8%D9%87-%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%85-%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C-%D8%AC%D8%AF
%DB%8C%D8%AF-%D9%BE%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AE-%D9%85%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D9%87%DB%8C%D9%85-
%D8%A2%D9%85%D8%B1%DB%8C%DA%A9%D8%A7> still the Great Satan and nothing has
changed.”
It is possible to foresee a day in which an energy self-sufficient America
renews its alliance with an Iranian government that has finally prioritized
national interests over ideological ones. But, in the near term, it is
unlikely that the largest economy in the world (the United States) is going
to demote the world’s key energy producer (Saudi Arabia) to form an alliance
with a country (Iran) that remains torn between resistance and
reintegration.
The potential emergence of a more moderate Iranian government that improves
relations with Washington raises other serious questions for Riyadh. Similar
to its smaller Persian Gulf neighbors, Saudi Arabia is concerned with not
only the character of the Iranian government in power but also the size and
perceived “imperialist” ambitions of the Iranian nation writ large,
regardless of who is governing the country. Given that much of Riyadh’s
alliance with Washington is driven by mutual concerns about Iran, would the
United States still court Saudi Arabia’s friendship with nuclear, economic,
and military cooperation if it were no longer worried about Tehran, or would
Riyadh find itself on the periphery of U.S. policy?
Confronted with warming U.S.-Iranian ties and the rest of the Gulf’s
improving relations with Tehran, the Saudis have been seemingly compelled to
start their own unilateral overtures, inviting Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif to visit Riyadh. But, given the ferocity of the Syria
conflict and the current outlook of elites in both states, these initiatives
are likely to remain limited in scope. Much will hinge on Iran’s willingness
to de-escalate and diminish its involvement in the Levant to a degree that
is acceptable—from a face-saving point of view—to more pragmatic elements in
the Saudi regime. Yet, given the continued dominance of the more hardline
Revolutionary Guards (in contrast to the more moderate Iranian foreign
ministry) in hot spots like Syria, this scenario does not seem likely in the
near future.
The most important obstacle to real improvement in ties is the inescapable
reality of the Gulf’s structural disequilibrium. Regardless of the type of
regime in Tehran, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states will continue to
demand external military backing to balance what they see as Iran’s inherent
hegemonic aspirations. And Iran, for its part, will continue to demand a
Gulf that is free from foreign forces so that it can assert what it sees as
its rightful leadership role.
In that sense, the notion of a new, more constructive equilibrium between
Iran and Saudi Arabia that could facilitate a lessening of U.S. commitments
in the Gulf appears more a distant dream than a short-term likelihood.
US Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince
Saud al-Faisal, courtesy of U.S. Department of State/wikimedia commons
Public Domain
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Secretary_Kerry_Meets_With_Saudi_For
eign_Minister_al-Faisal_%282%29.jpg> Public Domain
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