Published in the Jerusalem Post, 10 April 2023
Saudi
Arabia and Iran have been rivals for religious and political power ever since
Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. Their
antagonism is a visible expression of the deep chasm that divides Islam into
its two main branches, Sunni and Shia. The
extremists of each side regard the other as apostates, heretics and infidels. Even so, arms-length diplomatic relations
were maintained, with a short hiatus between 1987 and 1990 instigated by Saudi
Arabia, but they were decisively severed by Iran on January 2, 2016 and
remained so for seven years.
A fact rarely mentioned is that
Saudi Arabia, the very epicenter of the Sunni Muslim branch of Islam, is home
to more than two million Shia Muslims. This large minority – estimated at
between 10% to 15% of the total population – lives largely in the Eastern
Province in the Qatif and al-Ahsa governorates.
Saudi’s Shia minority,
who frequently complained of being treated as second-class citizens, found a
champion in the early 2000s in Sheikh Nimr Bagir al-Nimr, a Shia cleric.
In 2009 he began demanding that the government respect Saudi Shia rights.
He backed this by threatening to split the oil-rich Qatif and al-Ahsa regions from
Saudi Arabia and unite them with Shia-majority Bahrain.
Saudi authorities
responded by arresting al-Nimr and 35 others. Two years later, in 2011,
Al-Nimr took a leading role in the Arab Spring uprising in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi police again arrested him during what they described as an "exchange
of gunfire." On October 15, 2014 he faced Saudi’s Specialized
Criminal Court and was sentenced to death. On news of Al-Nimr’s execution
along with 46 others on January 2, 2016, Iran severed diplomatic relations with
Saudi Arabia.
Recently, to the surprise of many, China stepped forward as an honest broker, and its good offices resulted in an agreement between the long-standing adversaries. On March 10, 2023 Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to renew diplomatic relations and refrain from interfering in each other’s domestic affairs. April 6 saw the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia meeting in Beijing for the first formal gathering of their top diplomats in more than seven years.
How true, deep and
lasting can this reconciliation be?
The problem that Iran
poses to the civilized world stems entirely from the Islamic revolutionary
regime that the nation wished on itself back in 1979. Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini became Supreme Leader in December 1979. His philosophy, which he
set out nearly 40 years before, required the immediate imposition of strict
Sharia law domestically, and a foreign policy aimed at spreading the Shi’ite
interpretation of Islam across the globe by whatever means were deemed
expedient.
“We shall export
our revolution to the whole world,” he declared. “Until the cry 'There is no
god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”
Pursuit of this
fundamental objective has involved the state – acting either directly or through
proxy militant bodies – in a succession of bombings, rocket attacks,
assassinations and acts of terror directed not only against Western targets,
but against non-Shia Muslims as well. “To kill the infidels,” declared
Khomeini, “is one of the noblest missions Allah has reserved for
mankind.”
With Islam’s two holiest
cities, Mecca and Medina, within its borders, the Saudi kingdom sees itself as
the leader of the Muslim world – a claim hotly contested by Iran. In 1987, when
tensions reached breaking point during the Hajj, Khomeini declared that Mecca
was in the hands of “a band of heretics”. Now, in restoring diplomatic
relations with Sunni leaders whom they regard as heretics, Iran's leadership
may be making a pragmatic political move. It is scarcely likely to
represent a sincere beating of swords into ploughshares.
In his extensive
writings on Islamic philosophy, law and ethics, Khomeini affirmed
repeatedly that the foundation stone of his ideology, the very objective of his
revolution, was to impose Shia Islam on the whole world.
“We wish to cause the
corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the
world,” he declared. “We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems
which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of
the Prophet.”
One wonders if communist
China has noted that it is explicitly included among the targeted enemies of
Iran’s Islamic revolution, that it has been pin-pointed by the regime for
destruction? China may yet find its new ally biting the hand that feeds
it.
Iran’s leaders want to
destroy the world as we know it. They want to overthrow Western-style
democracy of which America is the prime exponent, to wipe out the state of
Israel, to eliminate communism, to impose Shia Islam first on the Muslim world,
and then on the world entire, and to achieve political dominance in the Middle
East. They believe that any means are justified in the struggle to achieve
their aims – God-given aims, as they perceive them. In pursuing them they
are prepared to bluff, trick and cheat, and to undertake or facilitate acts of
terror regardless of the deaths or injuries inflicted.
For 44 years world
leaders have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to recognize the quintessential
purposes that motivated the leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979, or to
appreciate that these same objectives have driven the regime ever since and continue
to do so. Saudi leaders no doubt believe that restoring diplomatic
relations is a useful political ploy, but surely appreciate that the deal is
superficial and cannot begin to touch the real problems that the Iranian regime
poses to the Saudi kingdom and the rest of the world.
The Sunni Arab world
recognized some time ago who its main enemy was. The Abraham Accords are
one outcome. Saudi Arabia is widely perceived as on the brink of joining the
association. Would its new reconciliation with Iran withstand the shock?
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-738817
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