Saudi Arabia and Iran to Clash?
Now this is an ironic ‘Plan B’ (or C):
Here’s an “or else” scenario from Nawaf Obaid, an adviser to the Saudi government, that actually sounds promising — not a term that usually springs to my mind to describe Saudi scenarios. Contemplating what he would call an unwelcome American withdrawal from Iraq, Mr. Obaid writes that the Saudi government just might fill the breach out of “religious responsibility” to Iraq’s Sunni minority. Saudi Arabia, “the de facto leader of the world’s Sunni community,” Mr. Obaid writes, just might decide to support Iraq’s Sunni fighters, just as Iran has been supporting Iraq’s Shi’ite fighters, to avert a possible “full-blown ethnic cleansing.”Imagine: Sunni Saudi Arabia vs. Shi’ite Iran — and nary an American soldier ordered to pull his PC punches in the crossfire. But there’s more. Mr. Obaid continues: King Abdullah might also “decide to strangle Iranian funding of the [Shi'ite] militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties …The result would be to limit Tehran’s ability to continue funneling hundreds of millions each year to Shi’ite militias is Iraq and elsewhere.”
I like. If Saudi Arabia “strangled” Iran’s economy, that would also strangle Iran’s capacity to fund its nuclear blackmail program, not to mention Hezbollah and other murderous proxies. And what was that the Saudi adviser said about cutting the price of crude oil in half?
A Saudi-Iranian, Sunni-Shi’ite rift over Iraq sounds like a win-win situation for the United States, maybe even better than the Sino-Soviet rivalry of the Cold War. This time around, instead of nuclear weapons to build in the interim, we would have something even more liberating to work on — energy independence.
We can bet on it that the large majority of the ‘Muslim world’ will simply ignore the obvious – namely that what’s happening is a clash between Sunni and Shiite Muslims – and will continue to blame America for just about everything, but those who are actually willing to think for themselves might just come to the conclusion that – perhaps – many problems that exist in the ‘Muslim world’ are caused by the Muslims themselves.
The ‘plan’ described in the article I link to is absolutely fascinating: Wahabi Saudi Arabia against Shiite Iran. Two regional ‘superpowers’. Will this divide the Middle-East in two? What will this mean for the region? Saudi Arabia will, most likely, work more together with the US while Iran will look at China (and Russia) more. In other words, there will be two ‘cold wars’: Saudi Arabia – Iran and US – China.
One can wonder about how likely it is that this all will happen, but it does not seem completely impossible, perhaps it is even quite likely.
12 Responses to “Saudi Arabia and Iran to Clash?”
I agree somewhat with your assertion with the blame being on the Arabs. A big problem is that the Shia are seen as the ME Gypsies or US trailer trash by the Sunnis. The average Shia is far removed from the wealthy Sunnis breaking all the rules in Monte Carlo. The SA royalty are a plutocracy unwilling to to any dirty work. That’s what the poor from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are for. The rich Sunnis are worried that the ‘dirty’ Shia will storm the Bastille.
Fascinating point of view.
I wonder if the real powers behind the US throne were aiming for this. They may not have enjoyed being taken for granted by the Saudis and looked for a way to have them replace us.
Paul, that is an interesting question. Of course, we can expect theories like that to come from certain people in the Mideast: hence, the blame is put solely on the US again (I’m sorry, I’m writing an essay about anti-Americanism and it pisses me off).
Rudi, yes I agree. My girlfriend is Muslim and we are talking about subjects like this every now and then. I heard stuff like “they are not Muslims” to “I do not understand how they can believe this”.;)
You really, really don’t want a refional war between Sunni and Shi’a to break out in the Middle East. I would estimate that 20% of the world’s oil shipments would disappear in a hurry. Can you live with $150 oil.
I don’t think so.
People are talking of a possible recession next year, 2007. I can guarantee it wouldn’t be just a recession but a depression. And Europe would be hurt as much as the USA.
Personnally I think the world is a lot closer to madness than many people realize. I’m a pesssimist trying to be an optimist.
I am going to assume a Iran Saudi conflict that quickly includes all Shiites and Sunnis. Saudi Arabia has a population of 21 million [I am excluding non citizens] , Iran has 68 million. Iran has it’s own weapons programs, but the production capacity of more advanced weapons like the various longer range missiles is questionable. They might be able to get help from North Korea, but the supply routes are easily shut down. Saudi Arabia can buy the weapons it needs but the battle will be fought on the ground and that is where Iran has a distinct advantage in numbers.
Iranian options: The straight of Homuz would a major area of contention, no doubt the US navy will do everything in it’s power to keep the lanes open, and oil flowing. I don’t think Iran will want to provoke the US in direct confrontation. That leaves missile attacks on oil facilities [of which Saudi Arabia has considerable built in redundancy] or ground attack from the Shiite areas of Iraq, letting shear numbers decide the issue.
Saudi options: A missile exchange creates considerable havoc but does not decide the issue, the number of Shiites, Iranian and Iraqi is a huge concern in defending the borders. In order to offset the advantage in numbers the Saudis need help from a large Sunni state, Turkey with a population of 70 million and geographically near is the logical choice. The problem with Turkey is that the military is secular, they might not want to get involved. Problem two is any ground operations would have to go through Kurdish areas. Although Sunni the Kurds might not want Turks crossing into their territory even in the name of defending the true faith.
I think if there is to be a clash between these two powers the first sign of something brewing would be a diplomatic effort by Saudi Arabia towards Turkey and the Kurds.
Grognard, Nice stream of consciousness.
Another options is that Iran and SA prepare for war and then divide up Iraq along ethnic lines, with Kurdistan a separate state. By that time the Iraqi’s may welcome the peace.
Paul in Austin, interesting scenario. The Saudis would have to determine if the Bathists once integrated into Saudi Arabia would represent a threat to the regime. Iran might have a similar problem with the Iraqi Shiites in that they might resent “Persian� control. There are ways around these issues, mostly by paying off tribal leaders, so the scenario is a possibility, and both nations dramatically increase in size and power.
For the sake of being brief, there seems to be two train of thoughts out there about what the US will do with Iraq and let regional powers to help alleviate the violence. The two thoughts are total opposites, but they are spoken at the same time.
In one corner is the Saudi help to strengthen the Sunnis. Here are a couple of posts I had seen about this plan:
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Washington Post op-ed by Nawaf Obaid
The Washington Note
Then there is the second plan to entrust the passing of the baton by picking the US’s favorite. The intriguing part of this description is the use to Thomas Ricks’ (author of FIASCO) sources in the Pentagon. The link below will have two more links – one a video of a teevee interview with Ricks and an op-ed piece Ms. Rozen had done for the LA Times two plus weeks ago.
One plan is to depend on the Saudis and the other is to “throw our lots” with the Shi’ites. Which plan is the one to do?
War and Piece
More links about the Shi’ite tilt
Sic Semper Tyrannis
The Washington Post
One of the key goals of the US preemption in Iraq was to create a counterforce of democracy and freedom that would sweep through the region. Instead, it’s looking like Saddam’s removal increased Iran and Syria’s regional hegemony and destabilized the region, leaving Saudia Arabia and Egypt feeling vulnerable. One of the many unintended consequences of the decision to remove Saddam.
The problem with the Westerners is that you guys don’t understand what role the religion play in the Muslim World.
Frankly speaking the religion is only for the poor to believe in and the powerful and wealthy to abuse and manipulate. Also the religion is used as a deterrent to democracy and an excuse not to comply with international obligations so that their hold on power is not weakend.
Whatever the outcome in Iraq, the blame is on US, either by Shia or Sunni. Iraqis will kill their brothers as much as they could in the near future as they are not to be blamed by no one in the Islamic world.
In my understanding, if US pulls out, the most likely situation will be, Iraq going into full scale civil war with a powerless government, different factions backed by various regimes in the region, making way for another brutal dictator to takeover the central government in the name of Islam. Maybe someone like Zawahiri or Zarqawi.
More unstability in the world, because of the world’s denial of the real conflict- powerless and illeterate people enslaved by relentless dictators- forcing a faith cutomised to suit the latter while they themselves do not practice it.
I totally disagree with your idea of having a win-win situation for united states in the case of sunni-shi’ite civil war in the middle east. Remember that the Afghan civil war (1989-1996) led to the most brutal regime and most sophisticated terrorist network in the 20th century. Imagine what would a large scale middle eastern civil war bring.