Masoud Movahed

Iran’s historic nuclear deal with six major world powers was hailed by all parties involved in the negotiating table. But this deal has also raised the question of how Iran’s relations with its neighbors—especially Saudi Arabia—would evolve next.  In the past few weeks, Saudi Arabia has joined Israel as a voice of opposition to a deal between Iran and the West. As Thomas Friedman accurately observed, now that Iran has established its own relationship with the United States, it has set the Arab states of the Persian Gulf “on edge”. But the common trend in analyzing the Saudi-Iranian relationship in the West is usually rooted in sectarian politics. That is, the longstanding malaise in the two states’ relations is reduced to the binary of a Shia-Sunni divide. Iran and Saudi Arabia are nemesis, many assume, because of the two states’ fidelity to sectarian politics.

It is true that sectarianism is endemic to the politics of the region, given in part to the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia, as the two pillars of power configuration, claim the leadership of the Islamic world. However, what is often omitted in the analyses is the influence of outsiders, namely the United States, which has had a far greater impact on Iran and Saudi Arabia’s bilateral relationship. For instance, from 1996 to 2001, while the Saudis were supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s reformist President Mohammad Khatami cooperated with the U.S. to topple the Taliban and played a key role in the formation of a national unity government. Despite the wide divergence of foreign policy between Iran and Saudi Arabia towards Afghanistan, Iran’s relation with Saudi Arabia was in its halcyon days. Suffice it to say, Iran’s relations with Saudi Arabia is by and large geared towards Iran’s relationship with the United States. To understand why, a bit of history is instructive.

Click here to view this Article