The Middle East’s New Cold War

The Middle East’s new cold war heats up

Editorial Board
For decades, conflict in the Middle East was defined as primarily between Arab nations and Israel, with an overlay of Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and Soviet Union. That divide hasn’t been supplanted, but it’s been fiercely joined by another divide with a vast geographical reach. The diplomatic fight that broke out over the weekend between Saudi Arabia and Iran emerged from that second rift, which is often opaque to outsiders: the ancient religious schism between Islam’s main sects, Sunni and Shiite.

The schism dates to a succession dispute after the death of Prophet Muhammad in the year 632. Islam’s Sunni majority and Shiite minority long ago developed different traditions and practices. But the troubles we see today are modern in origin. The geopolitics:

Saudi Arabia is predominantly Sunni and Iran is Shiite, but their religious split plays out as a dangerous rivalry for dominance in the region. Just about anywhere Iran lurks, you find Saudi Arabia on the other side. Think of it as the new Middle East Cold War, as scholar F. Gregory Gause dubbed it. Though you can’t see the Sunni-Shiite divide on a map of national boundaries, Islam’s internecine struggle suffuses much of the instability that makes the Mideast so violent. The list of current Sunni-Shiite war zones includes Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In each you’ll find inexact incarnations of Saudi Arabia vs. Iran:

• In Iraq, where Sunni-Shiite strife nearly destroyed the Shiite-majority state, Iran is a dominant force.

• In Syria, Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S. coalition battling Sunni-led Islamic State and hoping to oust dictator Bashar Assad. Iran wants to prop up Assad, whose Alawite sect practices a form of Shiite Islam.

• In Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s military is bombing the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who are Shiites.

A look at where countries stand in Saudi Arabia-Iran dispute

As in the 20th century’s Cold War that pitted the West against the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia and Iran have military parity. Iran is a serious threat to peace because of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Iran also backs Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Saudi Arabia, the richest country in the Middle East, is a key American ally that holds Iran in check.

Despite their animosity, foreign ministers from both countries attended an early round of Syrian peace talks in Vienna last year. They sat at the same big table, though as far from each other as possible. Don’t expect the two nations, proxies for the two sects, to engage again soon. Their conflict is now in full blossom.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. He had been accused of inciting terrorism but was known as a critic of the Saudi royal family and its harsh treatment of the country’s Shiite minority. The trial was closed to outsiders.

Iranian protesters ransacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, leading Saudi Arabia and three other Sunni-led states, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, to cut diplomatic ties with Iran. The two sides may pull back, but the risk of escalation remains; unlike the old Cold War, this one is fueled by religious fervor.

Fundamentalist Sunnis and terror groups such as Islamic State, Shiites are not rivals, they are infidels. Iran’s Shiite leaders push their own form of religious revivalism: When news broke of al-Nimr’s execution, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Saudi politicians would face “divine revenge.”

Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which created a Shiite theocracy, put the Saudi royal family in a bind. Sunni clerics wanted more power, too, and the royals, as custodians of Islam’s holiest sites, used religion to protect their legitimacy. As Karen Elliott House tells it in the book “On Saudi Arabia,” the Saudis spent $75 billion to promote the country’s radical Wahhabi Islam around the world. The consequences were profound: Al-Qaida rose from that firmament, and 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens.

Americans saw the depths of the rivalry in Iraq, after war began in 2003. When Saddam Hussein, a Sunni dictator, was ousted, violence between Shiites and Sunnis ravaged the country. The bloodletting went on for years. It’s over, yet Sunni and Shiite still see themselves as competitors, not compatriots.

Hisham Melhem, a prominent Lebanese journalist, told a Washington audience after the rise of Islamic State in 2014 that however deep the Sunni-Shiite religious divide, what really drives the violence is an earthly quest for power. “Even if the poor guys who are doing the actual fighting are convinced they are fighting for religious reasons,” he said in a discussion at the Stimson Center, “the actual fight is for political influence.”

Might that mundane reality offer a way out of strife?

Maybe. Political enemies can negotiate. Wars can end.

Or maybe not. The divide between Shiite and Sunni Islam stands at 1,384 years and counting.