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2016.12.008. L. ISAEV. "ANNOUNCE TO THEM A PAINFUL PUNISHMENT"*: GEOPOLITICAL
RIVALRY BETWEEN SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN //
"Neprikosnovennyi Zapas". Moscow, 2016, № 2, P. 58-69.
Keywords: "exporting the Islamic revolution", "Arab Spring", the Saudi elite, Arab-Iran, i.e. Sunni-Shiite opposition, the Syrian issue of the Saudi leadership, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, the Arab League.
L. Isaev,
Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science National Research University "Higher School of Economics"
The author analyzes the traditionally stressful relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Negotiations between Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry on Syria, held last year and culminated in the adoption of the UN Security Council resolutions on the situation in the Middle East last December raised hopes for peace in the region, but they were short-lived. At the beginning of 2016, a crowd of angry Iranians smashed the embassy and Consulate-General of Saudi Arabia in Tehran and Mashhad, prompting the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs to announce the rupture of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The author notes that the Iranian masses allow themselves to forget about the rules of international law from time to time, abusing and even killing foreign diplomats. The embassies' massacres have remained an integral part of the Iranian political culture.
The Middle East was on the verge of the next conflict between the traditional rivals. Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia did not become worse once. There have been many contradictions between the two countries since the days of the
* A quote from the Quran (84-24) in the translation of Ignatius Krachkovsky.
Shah, and their striving for regional dominance intensified disagreements. The situation has changed significantly since 1979, when the Iranian leadership adopted a policy of "exporting the Islamic revolution", widely used by the Saudi establishment for the mobilization in the face of the Persian threat until now. Since then the two countries have entered the era of open confrontation, occasionally punctuated by short "thaw".
The author writes that the balance of power in the region was broken after the "Arab Spring", when the most powerful militarily and geopolitically countries have had to fight for their own survival. As a result, new actors, including Saudi Arabia, have become challengers to occupy the leading position.
Starting positions of Riyadh were (and still are) not too strong in the battle for regional leadership. Saudi Arabia had no army like the Iranian or Turkish and political authority like the Egyptian. Also, there is no religious authority. Thus, the Saudi elite decided to build a foreign policy in response to the efforts and initiatives of Iran. Arab-Iranian (i.e. Sunni-Shiite) opposition has become the axis around which the foreign policy strategy of the Saudi rulers was built in recent years. Iran, from the point of view of Riyadh, is the main threat not only to the Saudi leadership in the Middle East, but also the very existence of the kingdom.
Riyadh set a course for overgrazing Shia and Sunni, as well as inciting inter-confessional hostility. Shia have been declared the main target of the kingdom: they had to be provoked into responses, and as a result, much of the Sunni world would appear under the patronage of Saudi Arabia.
It is obvious that today the two questions deliver a major concern for Saudi Arabia: Syria and Yemen. Two unfinished revolutions of the "Arab Spring" in Syria and Yemen, have confused maps of many actors, defending their interests in the region.
President Assad has resisted, and an uncompromising position on the Syrian issue of the Saudi leadership has deprived
the kingdom of possibilities for any future maneuver. The survival of the Syrian regime means a serious problem for Riyadh: Arabian world considers the loss of Saudi diplomacy in Syria as a strategic defeat to Tehran and doubt the ability of Saudi Arabia to contain expansion by Iran in the region. In other words, the kingdom is forced increase its presence in Syria.
If the loss in the Syrian situation means decrease in political weight only, the Yemen fiasco threatens the territorial integrity of the Kingdom, as Saudi province of Jizan and Najran are considered to be Yemeni native lands in South Arabia. Riyadh sought a compromise that would suit all the warring parties. The formula the transitional period proposed by the diplomats of Riyadh, was the basis of the peace initiative, signed within the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf in November 2011, taking into account as much as possible the interests of all concerned actors. However, the kingdom cope with the assigned them the function of impartial arbiter less, drawn into the Yemeni conflict on the side of one of the antagonists.
The prospect to get a hostile regime on its southern borders, backed by the Iranians, has not left the kingdom other alternatives but the beginning of military operations in Yemen. Thus, Saudi Arabia has been bogged down in one more conflict with unpredictable ending, and Iran became its indirect enemy again.
Riyadh started for the practical implementation of the agreement on the Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation signed in the framework of the Arab League in 1950, being one on one with the Persian threat and taking into account the efforts of the Obama administration to diversify their political contacts in the Middle East. However, the Saudis had to fight against the strengthening of Iranian influence in Yemen on their own, supported by mercenaries from around the globe.
Saudi Arabia made another attempt to consolidate allies around themselves in the region in December 2015, when Riyadh announced the creation of "Islamic" coalition against terrorism.
However, it is obvious by now that Saudi Arabia will be able to achieve real participation of all member countries of the coalition in its work and their willingness to accept any obligations in the future. Today, there is only one really functioning mechanism of collective security at the disposal of Riyadh - military Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf. They even managed to prove their worth in practice, when a joint military contingent GCC "Peninsula Shield" was introduced into the territory of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
The Kingdom is forced to remind itself and others constantly about the Iranian / Shiite threat because of the inability to assert its prestige by means of force. The image of a powerful enemy allows Riyadh to neutralize internal risks and assert claims to leadership in the Arab and ideally, in the Sunni world. Saudi elite feels the weakness of its position, and as a result aggravates the contradictions between the two countries, without abandoning these provocations, such as the recent mass executions of Shiite preachers. The author notes that the death sentences in Saudi Arabia are just as commonplace as the Friday prayers.
As one of the most closed societies in the world, the Saudi government does not provide too much information for direct political analysis. However, the change of generations in the power already promises the political instability. Al-Saud dynasty was established as a result of wise matrimonial policy of the founder of Saudi Arabia. Today it is not clear which of the vast number of king-founder grandchildren will inherit the throne after the death of all his sons. Arabian kingdom will be vulnerable due to the fact that the tribal demarcations play a crucial role in the process of transfer of power from the old to the new ruler.
"Al-Qaeda", more than ten years working in Saudi Arabia, promises even more serious challenges for the kingdom. The sleeping cells of radical Islamists, interacting with influential
religious leaders and having communications to the state apparatus, are the result of its activities.
The author notes that the feature of current conflicts in the Middle East is their rather rapid transformation from the local to the regional and sometimes international. Relations between Riyadh and Tehran, as well as the situation in the region as a whole will only escalate in the near future. Their further aggravation makes illusory any hopes for a diplomatic resolution of the old Middle East conflict. Both countries are in a phase of fierce struggle for regional leadership, and a defeat in this confrontation could be fatal for each of them.
The author of the abstract - E .Dmitrieva
2016.12.009. A. KUZNETSOV. CONFESSIONAL POLARIZATION IN POST-SADDAM IRAQ AND THE PROBLEMS OF SUNNI-SHIA RELATIONS // "Islamovedenie", Makhachkala, 2016, № 1. P. 24-35.
Keywords: Iraq, Iran, Shiism, Najaf, Karbala, Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki, Moqtada al-Sadr, religious disagreements, extremism, civil war, Islamic state.
A. Kuznetsov,
Ph. Sc. (Politics), Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
The author notes that the Sunni-Shia conflict is a major threat to stability and security in the Middle East. One of the countries most affected by the Sunni-Shia conflict is Iraq. The case study of the Iraqi conflict is of great practical and scientific value for identifying mechanisms and causes of religious conflicts in the modern Middle East. In addition, this article presents the analysis of the situation with the purpose to find out whether the religious conflict conceals deep socio-political contradictions of religious overtones.
