The Greatest Threat Of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia and Iran are two countries that sit on opposite sides of the Sunni/Shiite divide, which can be argued as being the most prominent issue the Middle East faces today. Saudi Arabia is predominantly known to be a Sunni state, while Iran is largely inhabited by Shia Muslims. Both countries aspire to be the hegemonic powers of the region. Ethnically, Iran is known to be a Persian land, unlike Saudi Arabia that is known to be in the heart of the Arab world. These two countries are separated by the Arabian Gulf and throughout the twentieth century and up until today, the relationship between the two countries has been notoriously contentious. Within the past few years especially relationships between the two states have been very fragile with Saudi Arabia ending diplomatic ties early in 2016. The two states are strained over many issues of which are, interpretations of Islam, oil export policy and hegemonic regional leadership.

In 2004 in the midst of the Iranian nuclear aspirations and the slow slide of Iraq into a civil war, there was talk publicly of a “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. The president in the country of Jordan who was a Sunni that proclaimed direct relation to the prophet Muhammad was the person that sounded the alarm about the “Shia crescent”, which started at the Mediterranean Sea and ended at the Persian Gulf. The crescent continued from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. Abdullah and Mubarak along with the Saudi officials suggested the threat of a divided Middle East along the sectarian lines. It would put the forever-downtrodden Shia against their Sunni rulers. They thought that the first battleground might be Iraq followed by the oil laden Persian Gulf region. If this were to occur then the Shiite leader of Iran could secure all of the oil and gas fields in

From as early as 1953 with the assistance in the coup to overthrow then Iranian leadership to the killing of Bin Laden, we see that America has had a hand in the Middle East and as fig.1 demonstrates and if to be believed, the problems that now find need for policies, competencies and leadership had the helping hand of the United Staten in creating the dis function in the region; as Malcolm X would so eloquently state “the chickens are finally coming home to roost.”

The topic for this capstone project is “Saudi Arabia versus Iran and the Ongoing Sunni-Shia Conflict”. The paper will delve into the historical split between the Sunni and the Shia, as well as the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran given the fact that Saudi Arabia is a predominantly Sunni state while Iran is a predominantly Shia state. Evidently, this ancient divide is contributing in one way or the other to the resurgence of conflict in Muslim countries especially in the Middle East. For instance, it is this struggle between the Sunni and the Shia that feeds the current Syrian civil war, which is threatening to change the Middle East. The divide has also fueled violence in other Gulf countries such as Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, as well as Lebanon. Notably however, the entire conflicts are not defined in respect to this Shia Sunni divide since there are many other economic, political, as well as geostrategic factors that fuel the conflicts. Nonetheless, the split is one prism that can help in understanding these tensions (Luomi 36). The two nations of Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing for power and leadership in the Islamic world; consequently, they are employing many tactics including the sectarian divide to attain these ambitions.

Little would we know 20 years laters Bush had dealings with Sadam Hussein about oil, but it was not told to America until way after the fact. Many believed that his family and friends reped all the benefits financially. Iraq blamed Kuwait for pumping oil and not the wealth and resource, and Kuwait was getting more oil than needed under the set-standard by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it diminished the overall cost of oil, which made the most money for Iraq. When Iraqi forces began to come together, near the Kuwaiti border in the summer of 1990, many Arab states wanted to come between the argument. Kuwait wanted to look strong and did not want to show any signs of vulnalerbility and weakness. Arabians were convinced that Iraq and Kuwait needed to reconcile their differences in Saudi Arabia, on August 1, 1990, but the meeting ended up only conlict and counter-conflicts. An additional meeting was set forth to take place in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, much to their surprise Iraq infiltrated Kuwait the very proceeding day, many people believe ithe whole incident was pre-meditated by the-then Iraqi president Saddam

The re-election of President Ahmadinejad in 2009 sparked an attempted revolt against the Iranian government by factions that believed that the election was rigged. However, the revolution did not last long before the government silenced the uprising and restored order. The beginning of the Yemen Crisis in 2011 we see Iran begin funding proxy force, the Houthis, against the legitimate government. In 2012, we see Iran aligning with the Assad regime in Syria as the Syrian Civil War begins in order to assist the Assad regime in retaining power against rebels while defeating ISIS. Iran also backed forces in Iraq in 2014 in the fight to eliminate ISIS from the state. The next year the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) (Iran Nuclear Deal) was signed freeing billions of dollars of previously frozen Iranian assets.

Over the next five years, Iran gained the advantage in the war. They conquered the Majnun Islands in 1984 and the Fao Peninsula in 1986.(“Chemical Weapons and the Iran-Iraq War, Javed Ali, 2001”) Iran used human wave assaults as a strategy, which resulted thousands of men to lose their lives in battles that ended as stalemates. Iraq had the advantage in the air, using aircraft and missiles attacks on the industrial plants, shipping yards, oil installations, and cities of Iran. After establishing the success of the air attacks, Iraq began the use of chemical weapons. Iraq leaders in Baghdad even went to the extreme of authorizing the use of chemical weapons against their own Kurdish minority in northeastern Iraq after some of them became rebels and provided support to

The conflict also links to the power struggle between the Shia government of Iran and Sunni government of Saudi Arabia as they border each other. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are against a Houthi takeover because they fear they may no longer have free passage through Yemen. Saudi Arabia and members of a coalition first got involved when they launched a military operation which aimed to bering back the rule of President Hadi.

This sudden rise and shift of ideology was not well received by many within the region, especially by Iran’s largest neighbor, Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein. Saddam did not welcome the ideals and new order of government so prominently displayed in the Iran. The Iranian Revolution’s encouragement of a new societal order within its border directly contradicted

Such a position was of great influence in the Middle East what is further exacerbating the fears of Saudi Arabia about the changes is the United States’ refusal to participate more actively in the ongoing war in Syria and Yemen against its competitor, Iran. Eisenstadt states that, in the political spheres of Saudi Arabia, it is believed Shiite Iran is a rival for leadership not only in the region but in the entire Muslim world. The Saudis believe that Iran is behind most conflicts and hot spots in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Iran support opposite sides of the civil war in Syria and Yemen. Particularly strong in Riyadh and in the other capitals of the Arab Gulf states, there is a fear of the growing influence of Iran on its Shiite minority.

​Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a branch of the Islamic organization known as al Qaeda. The AQAP is based in Yemen and was formed in 2009 after an announcement that Yemeni and Saudi terrorists were unifying under a common banner (National Counterterrorism Center [NCTC], 2014). The AQAP is now considered the most active and dangerous branch of al Qaeda (Masters, 2014).

Over thirty years later, this use of terrorism has continued and remains an important foreign policy instrument for the Iranian regime as it antagonizes the neighbors in the Middle East and with the United States (Byman #2, 2015, Pg. 2).

One of the principal goals of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was to drive the United States armed forces out of Saudi Arabia and Somalia by violence. It’s opposing the United States for several reasons’ first United States was regarded as ‘infidel’ because it was not governed in a manner consistent with the group’s extremist’s interpretation of Islam. Second, the united state was viewed as providing the essential support for other infidel government and institutions such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the nation of Israel and UNO which war regarded as the enemies of the group. Third, al-Qaida opposed the involvement of the United States armed forces in the gulf war in 1991 and in operation restore hope in Somalia in 1991 and 1993 which were viewed by al-Qaida as perpetual preparations for an American occupation of Islamic countries.

This paper will cover the region of Yemen. This paper will discuss the events leading to the exiling of the internationally recognized government of Yemen and the effects of that takeover. This current turmoil in Yemen has again gained the attention of the international community not only because who is involved, but also the destruction it is causing. This paper will also cover the second and third order effects of the threat, and regional actions that have taken place in Yemen. The information used to make this paper was gathered from a pool of news sources and online articles.

Same was the case with Iraq, which is an oil rich country and has the second largest oil reserves on the Earth. By the end of 1970, Saddam Hussein rose to power in Iraq and established himself as its head. He did not approve of the radical islamic ideas booming in Iran and slowly making their way to Iraq and it was during this time when Iraq invaded Iran, over the disputed Shatt-Al-Arab waterway that divided both the countries. The US, Europe, and other countries of the Persian “Oil” gulf financed Iraq in this war, and crowned Saddam as “The Defender of the Arab World”. Unfortunately, for Iraq and Saddam, things did not go as planned and Iran retaliated crushing Iraq’s powers and forcing it to retreat.