By Lars Berger *
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the June 8-9, 2009 conference entitled "Israel and the Arab States: Parallel Interests, Relations, and Strategies," jointly held in Jerusalem by the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Members of the new Israeli government have entertained the notion of an Israeli-Arab realignment vis-a-vis Iran. This article argues that such hopes are bound to be disappointed. They rest on a Realist understanding of Middle East international politics that fails to take into account the role domestic considerations and identity politics play in foreign policy decisionmaking. While Riyadh is undisputedly concerned about Iranian power projection in the region, improved relations with a U.S. administration that is more open to its concerns and an increasingly diverse set of international security links mean that it does not feel the need to endanger domestic and regional legitimacy by openly engaging Israel without any perceived progress along the parameters outlined in the Abdallah initiative of 2002.
THE IMAGE OF A SHI’A THREAT
Expectations about a broad regional realignment vis-à-vis Iran are very much rooted in Neo-Realist assumptions about the self-help nature of international politics and the irrelevance of domestic politics. In the case of Saudi Arabia, such a perspective could therefore assume a natural tendency to align with Israel. Set apart from other actors in the region by specific (complementary) military and economic strengths and weaknesses, both countries share a common link with the United States and a concern about revisionist regional powers like Egypt under Nasser, revolutionary Iran, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein.[1]
It is thus no coincidence that the image of a moderate, i.e. pro-Western, block that transcends the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been reemerging for the last couple of decades. Washington policymakers toyed with that idea of a “strategic consensus” during the presidency of Ronald Reagan and suggested an “informal alliance” against “radical regimes” and “extremism” in the context of the President Clinton’s “dual containment.”[2]
In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, U.S. politicians and some academic observers had begun to differentiate between supposedly apolitical Sunni societies on the one hand and the supposedly violent, fanatic, and revolutionary feature of Shi’a Islam on the other. This allowed the autocratic governments in predominantly Sunni countries to portray the rising influence of militant Islamist groups as being the result of “foreign,” in particular “Shi’i” influences.[3]
While Riyadh obviously had much cause for concern in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War when Saudi security clashed with Iranian participants of the annual hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca,[4] the most prominent case of Iranian support for Shi’i terrorist groups operating in Saudi Arabia constituted an attack not on Saudi targets, but on the U.S. airbase in Dahran in 1996. With the attacks occurring in a time of Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the leadership in Riyadh was even concerned about the negative repercussions possible U.S. military reprisals against Tehran might have. Nowadays, the idea of a “Shi’a threat” is more of a rhetorical device to express concerns linked to Saudi-Iranian competition over the direction of domestic politics in Iraq and Lebanon as well as Iran’s nuclear program.[5]
In fact, the violent Islamist threat to Saudi internal security appears limited to Sunni groups. This does not mean, however, that Iran does not feature in Saudi perceptions of domestic stability at all. Concerns about Iranian support for al-Qa’ida have been noticeable ever since Riyadh began to take seriously its domestic violent Islamist opposition. At various stages of the current struggle, reports have surfaced suggesting links to Iran. For instance, in February 2003, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who would later become al-Qa’ida’s leader in Iraq, was reported to have met al-Qai’da’s then military commander Sayf al-Adil in Iran to plan not only the Islamist infiltration of Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, but also to plot the terrorist attacks on Western housing compounds in Riyadh in May 2003.[6] In February 2009, Saudi Arabia released a list of 85 most wanted terrorists. Thirty-five of them were last seen in Iran with Saudi officials accusing one of them, Abdallah al-Qarawi, of being closely involved in much of the radical Islamist unrest in Saudi Arabia of recent years. According to the same report, al-Qa’ida cells in Iraq and Lebanon are directed by al-Qa’ida members residing in Iran.[7]
Iran’s ability to use Saudi Arabia’s Shi’i population as leverage against Riyadh is curtailed by the fact that the Shi’a in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia seek spiritual guidance from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq (Najaf), and not from Iran.[8] In fact, the religious leadership in Iran is increasingly concerned about Iraqi Shi’i centers of learning reasserting their traditional predominance in Shi’i Islam. Ironically, despite the current talk about Iran as the main beneficiary of Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, its strategic position might therefore still weaken over the long run. This would be the case in the event of a successful democratic experiment in Iraq, which could serve as an effective shield against Iranian “soft power” by providing a more attractive role model for Saudi and Bahraini Shi’a who share Arab ethnicity with their Iraqi coreligionists.
At the same time, however, the scenario of Shi’i groups seeking to emulate peacefully their moderate coreligionists’ success in adapting to Iraq’s democratization poses another kind of challenge for authoritarian Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The image of a “Shi’a threat” and the specter of an “Iranian-dominated” opposition make it easier to justify vis-à-vis the West in general, and the United States in particular, slower progress with political reform or even a return to repression.
This calculation played a role in the post-2003 relationship between the House of Sa’ud and the Eastern province. In line with neoconservative ideas about the regional effects of Saddam Hussein’s fall, the political resurgence of Iraq’s Shi’a inspired their Saudi coreligionists. At a time when a number of other Arab Gulf countries began to engage with heavily controlled political reform measures intended--to some extent--to present themselves as stable, forward-looking bases for the U.S. strategic presence in the region, the political leadership in Riyadh saw itself confronted with the choice between greater repression or the accommodation of the expected increase in Shi’i demands for political autonomy.[9] The widespread fear that Saudi Arabia itself could become a target of the “war on terror” and thus suffer the breakaway of the oil-rich Eastern province heavily populated by the country’s Shi’a minority meant that the latter were suddenly in danger of becoming the ”fifth column” not of Iran, but possibly of the United States.[10] Then Crown Prince Abdallah thus decided...
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*Dr. Lars Berger is a Lecturer in Politics and Contemporary History of the Middle East at Salford University/Greater Manchester, UK; M.A. (2002), Ph.D. (2006) from Friedrich-Schiller University Jena/Germany. He was the 2002/2003 APSA Congressional Fellow in Washington, DC. In 2007, he received the German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO) award for best Ph.D. dissertation on the impact of Islamist terrorism on U.S. relations with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
NOTES
[1] For a modified version of Neo-Realism, which takes into account threat perceptions to analyze alliance patterns in the Middle East, see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 3rd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
[2] Lars Berger, Die USA und der islamistische Terrorismus. Herausforderungen im Nahen und Mittleren Osten (Paderborn: Schoeningh, 2007).
[3] Shireen T. Hunter, The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence? (Westport: Praeger, 1998), p. 15.
[4] Madawi al-Rasheed, “The Shia of Saudi Arabia: A Minority in Search of Cultural Authenticity,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (May 1998).
[5] Robert F. Worth, “Foreign Money Seeks to Buy Lebanese Votes,” New York Times, April 22, 2009.
[6] Peter Finn, “Al Qaeda is Trying to Open Iraq Front,” Washington Post, September 7, 2003; Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt, “Al Qaeda Figure Tied to Riyadh Blasts,” Washington Post, May 18, 2003.
[7] Robert F. Worth, “Saudis Issue List of 85 Terrorism Suspects,” New York Times, February 4, 2009.
[8] Frederic Wehrey et.al., Dangerous But Not Omnipotent. Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East (Santa Monica: RAND, 2009), pp. 19-20.
[9] Anoush Ehteshami and Steven Wright, “Political Change in the Arab Oil Monarchies: From Liberalization to Enfranchisement,” International Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 5, p. 918; Daniel Neep, “Dilemmas of Democratization in the Middle East: The ‘Forward Strategy of Freedom,’” Middle East Policy, Vol. 11, No. 3, p. 82; Graham Fuller, Islamist Politics in Iraq after Saddam Hussein, United States Institute of Peace, Special Report No. 108 (August 2003), p. 7.
[10] Iris Glosemeyer, “Checks, Balances and Transformation in the Saudi Political System,” in Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman (eds.), Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (London: Hurst, 2005), pp. 223-24.
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