the new cold war in the Middle East

The New Cold War: Sunni vs. Shia Muslims and the Proxy War Between Saudi Arabia and Iran

Introduction

Debates over the rightful succession to Muhammad have spawned centuries of ideological and physical battles between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Although not the only source of conflict in the Middle East and Western Asia, the Sunni/Shia divide has undergirded political turmoil throughout the region. Cleavages between Sunni and Shia parallel other geopolitical problems, both within the same nation-states and between nation-states.

A current manifestation of the centuries old clash between Sunni and Shia is the proxy war taking place between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. Referred to as a “new Cold War,” the proxy wars have tremendous geopolitical implications beyond the immediately affected regions (Saxena & Dews, 2014). As Saxena & Dews (2014) point out, there is a lot more to the proxy wars than just the Sunni-Shia ideological divide. For certain, religious fervor and fanaticism fuels commitment to various groups or causes. Yet regular old political realism is more likely motivating Iran and Saudi Arabia. Quite simply, regional instability leads to power vacuums, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two Muslim superpowers. Just as the United States and the Soviet Union were the two political poles during the Cold War, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two poles in this “new Cold War.”

That cold war is now heating up, threatening to become more of a mainstream battle between nation-states. Lebanon, long considered a barometer of the region, and internally divided along Sunni and Shia lines, is in trouble since the resignation of the Prime Minister. While some of the Iran-Saudi proxy wars remain disguised to look like regional sectarian conflicts, the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri was overtly and directly related to the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran (Malley, 2017). In fact, Fraihat (2017) claims that all recent conflicts in the Middle East, “whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, or Yemen,” share a “common factor” in the “rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia (p. 1).

The rivalry plays itself out in sectarian violence, for example, in Yemen with the Shia Houthi rebels. On the surface, the conflict seems like it is just about the Houthis and Yemen. However, when sources of funding and clerical alliances are traced, it becomes clearer that Tehran backs Shia rebel groups exactly like the Houthis and Hezbollah. When the rebel groups become firmly established in official positions of power in nation-states, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the entire world could potentially get drawn into the conflict.

Whenever there is instability within the boundaries of an official nation-state, as with the recent resignation of the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the power vacuum enables Iran and Saudi Arabia to pick up the scraps, move in, and establish dominance. This has been true since the Arab Spring, when both Iran and Saudi Arabia have attempted to take advantage of power vacuum throughout the region via the funding of proxy wars in newly destabilized regions (Fraihat, 2017). The hot spots include Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, and of course, Syria.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are acting in politically and economically expedient ways to serve their own interests. These two nations are both causing and capitalizing on regional destabilization. It is my hypothesis that special interest groups within each of these nations have been funding non-state actors to achieve their political goals. Using various instruments of power (diplomatic, informational, military, economics), Saudi Arabia and Iran are attempting to create new regional alliances. Given the global implications of the conflict, including the disaster in Syria and pending destabilization in Lebanon, improved international diplomacy strategies are imperative (Cotter, 2017). It is my hypothesis that Saudi Arabia and Iran are actually subverting the very concept and structure of the nation-state in order to achieve their goals.

Methods

Without access to classified documents, it will be impossible to prove my hypothesis with empirical certainty. However, it will be possible for me to present circumstantial evidence that both Saudi Arabia and Iran are subverting the modern nation-state concept. Examples include government officials indirectly funding terrorist organizations, through either faith-based or private sector organizations. When actual paper trails are unavailable, the evidence will come from published literature, from scholarly sources, from think tanks, and from official government sources too. To a degree, media sources may also be useful for further analysis of the situation.

I will especially want to examine as closely as possible the ties between the official governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia and regional terrorist groups. Sometimes these alliances are difficult to prove because of the informal means of diverting funds through various middlemen. Alliances between the heads of state and non-state actors are the most critical strategic element in the proxy wars. Finally, any literature available on Iran-Hezbollah connections, or between Saudi and ISIS, will help bolster my research. It is hoped that a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding the New Cold War will lead to better informed and more pragmatic foreign policy.

Literature Review

This review of literature explores prevailing political analysis of the New Cold War, contributing to the discussion by offering suggestions for future research and public policy. Thus far, American foreign policy has remained indecisive regarding the New Cold War. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Khurshid (2013) points out that close economic and political ties to Saudi Arabia have generally led to the United States siding more with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had been supporting many of the regimes that fell during the Arab Spring, regimes that while brutal, maintained a modicum of political stability in North Africa (Khurshid, 2013). In Foreign Affairs, a journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Miller & Brodsky (2017) note that more recent American policy has been relatively conciliatory towards Iran, which of course has exacerbated tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Thus spurned, Saudi Arabia has been “acting uncharacteristically boldly” in Yemen and also actively supporting anti-Assad Sunni groups, “some of which are close to al Qaeda,” especially in Syria (Miller & Brodsky, 2017).

Iran, on the other hand, officially supports Assad as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has led to the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister on November 4, 2017. Malley (2017) calls Lebanon a “testing ground for periodic bouts of Saudi-Iranian coeistence,” (p. 1). In a Brookings Institute (Saban Center for Middle East Policy) analysis paper, Abdo (2013) shows how in addition to Syria and Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain have become the most recent and most important battlegrounds on which proxy wars are being fought between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just as Khurshid (2013) posits, Abdo (2013) claims the results of the proxy wars could even entail a redrawing of geo-political boundaries. Long-term and indirect results of the proxy wars go beyond simple changes to the map, including ongoing threats to security in Europe and North America, backlash against Muslims in both Europe and North America, and instability in Europe due to clashes over border policies and immigration (Khurshid, 2013).

To mitigate some of these immediate issues, Dubowitz & Takeyh (2017) claim the United States needs to add Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the list of foreign terrorist organizations, thereby ranking it alongside Hamas, Hezbollah, and daesh/ISIS/Islamic State. However, dialogue is the solution that almost all analysts recommend. Abdo (2013) stresses the importance of the United States serving as mediatory, engaging allies like Bahrain first in a sort of proxy diplomacy before shifting to facilitate more direct talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Fraihat (2017) likewise states, “As difficult as it is for Iran and Saudi Arabia to speak to one another, this is still the best way for both powers to avoid war,” (p. 1). In addition to diplomacy, practical diplomacy tactics may include working directly with sectarian groups in affected regions. Carpenter’s (2014) analysis of Sunni, Shia, and mixed neighborhoods in Iraq shows that collective agency and organization in local communities builds resilience and prevents the infiltration of these communities by external agents in either Iran or Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the literature provides ample circumstantial evidence to prove my hypothesis that Iran and Saudi Arabia are subverting state power, instead reverting to non-state actors as proxies in their ongoing fight for dominance.

The literature also shows that the methods and tactics used to fight the proxy wars include financial, political, and military strategies. In Syria, boots on the ground are being used by Iran and Saudi Arabia, and likewise in Bahrain (Abdo, 2013; Khurshid, 2013). In Yemen, Saudi has been using airborne attacks (Khurshid, 2013). In 2015, the air attacks came to a head when Iran attempted to violate a Saudi-backed blockade by landing in Yemen, causing Saudi to retaliate by destroying airport runways there (Fraihat, 2016).

However, financial assistance to sectarian groups is what makes the New Cold War a true proxy war, in which the actual fighters unofficially stand in for the principles and ideologies of Sunni Saudi and Shia Iran. The literature does show that both Iran and Saudi Arabia have sent billions of dollars to various groups that serve their political and economic interests , particularly in Syria (Khurshid, 2013). Cyberattacks may become increasingly integral to the proxy wars. Wehrey (2012) also points out that Iran has already successfully launched cyberattacks on Saudi Arabian business interests by helping Shia groups within Saudi Arabia to carry out the attacks.

One of the reasons why sectarian groups have been so willing and ready to fight the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran is that in many nation-states in the Middle East, marginalized minority groups experience systematic discrimination and marginalization. The motivation for uprisings already firmly in place means that Iran and Saudi Arabia have a relatively easy time finding supporters and arming proxy soldiers. In a Foreign Affairs article, Wehrey (2012) claims even within Saudi Arabia, Shia groups experience economic and political marginalization but internal uprisings in the kingdom are readily suppressed. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia fund local groups sympathetic to or aligned with their respective Shia and Sunni causes, even though ideology is most likely a distraction from the underlying political and economic motivations for the proxy wars.

Many susceptible countries exhibit the dangerous condition of what can essentially be called a type of apartheid, in which “political power is held by a sectarian minority,” (Khurshid, 2013). The reason why Bahrain receives so much attention in the literature is that it practically epitomizes the problem, in that the ruling Al Khalifa family is not only Sunni but has “strong ties to Saudi Arabia,” but manages a tenuous hold over a majority (70-75%) Shia population (Mabon, 2012, p. 84). Bahrain’s geographic location also renders it susceptible to infiltration from both Saudi Arabia and Iran,. Moreover, if Iran were to successfully infiltrate and arm the Shia majority in Bahrain, it could potentially have a devastating effect not just on Bahrain but on Saudi Arabia’s own domestic security. In fact, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia boasts “the majority of Saudi oil reserves,” but the Shia population there “has yet to benefit economically,” (Wehrey, 2012, p. 1). Social instability and political instability create dangerous breeding grounds for sectarian violence.

Research Implications

In international relations, few areas are as perennially important as the Middle East. The proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia obviously have immediate effects in the affected areas, particularly in Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen. Therefore, the implications of this research will demonstrate not just the phenomenology of the proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia but also the possible effects and risk factors associated with different interventions. The research should help foreign policy analysts determine the most likely outcome of different American strategies. For example, the research can illustrate how the United States could use the instruments of power to deter and mitigate further conflict. Diplomacy may only be useful in the proxy wars between Iran and Saudi Arabia if the entirety of the situation is understood.

Thus, this research attempts to clarify the political and economic motivations for both Iran and Saudi Arabia in pursuing specific strategies. Additionally, this research could be used to predict the next acts on the horizon, identifying potential hotspots based on money trails or on localized economic and social instability. The research may also inform best policies on the use of surveillance, especially when it comes to observing and documenting religious and political rhetoric used by clerics to foment sectarian violence.

This research also reveals the short term and long term effects of the proxy war. Thus far, the effects include adverse political, economic, and social situations, impacting strategic alliances, economic relationships, and humanitarian concerns. The effects extend beyond the Middle East, too. Beyond their direct impacts on local politics, economics, and social issues, the proxy wars present clear threats to global security. Migration and refugees, the spawning of terrorist cells in far-reaching locations, and economic instability due to fluctuating oil prices could all be potential outcomes. These outcomes affect Europe, North America, and indeed the rest of the world.

Moreover, this research may demonstrate how the international community should respond. The “new Cold War” is heating up, and could result in dramatic transformations of the geo-political landscape in North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia. It is not unforeseeable that other nations including the United States could eventually get involved. Redrawing national boundaries is not necessarily a realistic solution, because redrawing boundaries could cause massive population migrations and humanitarian disasters along the lines of Syria. Even if a simplistic Sunni-Shia differentiation is used to redraw political boundaries, it is unlikely the situation will be neatly resolved.