When it comes to the Middle East, the United States has had one overarching concern since the end of the Cold War and its attendant Great Power gamesmanship: countering and/or preventing extremist violence that threatens America or American interests. That’s obviously been especially true since 9/11, when it became clear that the biggest near-term threat to America was Sunni extremism in the form of Al-Qaeda, coupled with the potential for those extremists to get their hands on WMD. This emphasis is all over Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, if you assume (as I do) that his…let’s say “haphazard” responses to crises in Syria and now Yemen reflect a general feeling (right or wrong) in the administration that, apart from containing Al-Qaeda (and now ISIS), what happens in these places is none of America’s concern, while the full-court press to get Iran’s nuclear program under some international supervision reflects a sense of urgency over the proliferation threat it might pose.
When it comes to those Iran talks, Saudi Arabia’s overarching concern is that they will eventually lead to a grand regional realignment by putting the US-Iran relationship on firmer ground leading to an eventual diplomatic normalization between the two countries. The Saudis fear that they will be left on the outside looking in as a strengthened Iran pursues its desires for regional hegemony with American acquiescence, if not approval. This fear often gets characterized as “sectarian,” since the Saudis are the Sunni power in the region apart from Turkey, which doesn’t share the Saudis’ Wahhabi ideology, and maybe Egypt, which is now essentially a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia, Inc., while Iran is the dominant Shiʿa state. However, that’s a simplistic Western gloss over a much more modern concern; the Saudis aren’t concerned with Iran’s Shiʿism nearly so much as they’re concerned with the revolutionary, anti-monarchy nature of the Iranian state.
Evidence? Well, Public Enemy #2 as far as the Saudis are concerned is the very Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, which despite being Sunni has worked for the triumph of political Islam over monarchy much like what happened in Iran in 1979 (they’ve recently been softening that stance somewhat, most likely because their staunch anti-MB position has made it hard to get along with pro-MB Turkey in countering Public Enemy #1, Iran). The Saudis are currently fighting the Shiʿa Houthis in Yemen, but is it because they’re Shiʿa or because they came to power by rebellion? Back in the 1960s they intervened on behalf of the Shiʿa Mutawakkilite monarchy there against the revolutionary anti-monarchy forces of the Yemen Arab Republic, which was backed by Egypt, so it doesn’t seem like Shiʿism is their biggest concern. The Saudis were unhappy when the US invaded and overthrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq, because it meant that a popularly-elected and Iran-friendly Shiʿa government would replace him, but you know what else they were never happy about? Saddam Hussein, since he came to power in Iraq at the head of the (all together now) revolutionary anti-monarchy Baʿath Party. Saudi intervention in Bahrain has been as much about propping up a member of the Good Old Gulf Monarchs’ Network as it’s been about countering Iranian expansionism (the direct ties between Tehran and Bahrain’s Shiʿa opposition are negligible as far as anyone can find). And any worries that Riyadh might have about its own Shiʿa population getting any bright ideas about revolution could apply equally to the kingdom’s Sunnis. It’s the Iranian model that worries them, not the sectarian flavor of that model.
Anyway, I’m digressing. The reason why the Saudis fear an expanded regional role for Iran isn’t as important as the fact that they do, in fact, fear it. Their concerns about a nuclear deal stem not so much out of a worry about an Iranian bomb (the Saudis could have their own bomb or bombs from Pakistan tomorrow if they snapped their fingers) as it does out of fear over the loss of the nuclear issue as justification for keeping Iran in a diplomatic and economic box. While Barack Obama insists that the nuclear deal is just a nuclear deal, and doesn’t mean anything more than that as far as the US-Iran relationship is concerned, the Saudis have been clearly worried for some time now that America’s interests in the region are shifting away from the Gulf states and toward Iran.
It’s pretty ironic, then, that as the nuclear talks progress toward a deal, the Saudis are actually doing everything they can to convince the US that it should pursue closer ties with Iran, because frankly US interests in the region align more closely with Iran’s than with Saudi Arabia’s. Whether you believe that the Saudis have directly aided ISIS and Al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) in Syria or not, you have to at least acknowledge that countering those groups has been down on the list of Saudi priorities even as the kingdom pays lip service to the cause. Now the Saudis are intervening directly in Yemen, ostensibly to counter both the Houthis and ISIS/Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but in reality they’re only (and ineffectually) targeting the Houthis and allowing AQAP in particular to reap benefits (serious benefits, in fact). Meanwhile Iran is, again for better or worse, directly involved in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and to the extent that it’s involved in Yemen at all (which it isn’t, at least not to the extent that the Saudis and US neocons are insisting), it’s to support the Houthis, who have been fighting against AQAP.
At this point, if America’s short term interests in the Middle East revolve around degrading groups like ISIS and the Al-Qaeda franchises to prevent them from attacking the US or its interests, why wouldn’t it pursue closer ties to Iran? It’s not like Washington’s current regional allies (apart from Iraq for obvious reasons), the Saudis chief among them, have shown any real interest in aiding America in that fight. Alliances, despite what you may believe based on the way the US-Israel and US-Saudi alliances have been working lately, are two-way streets. Both parties need to get something out of the deal for the alliance to make sense.
I’m not arguing that closer US-Iran ties would be a good thing, mind you (in the long run, they definitely would be, but only as Iran drops its support for the Hezbollahs and Assads of the world and starts respecting human rights at home), but right now it seems like Washington’s supposed best pals in the region aren’t leaving it much choice.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 