"The new cold war": Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (left) and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah (right)
© Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images, © photo by Salah Malkawi/Getty Images
Nearly three years after the Arab Spring, the Middle East is divided along a new faultline—Iran on one side, Saudi Arabia on the other. Would-be allies are clustering around each one. The division is likely to become starker in the course of 2014. “The United Arab Emirates and Jordan are very close to Saudi Arabia at the moment,” said an eminent representative of one of them, “and everywhere we go, we find Iran, or Qatar, or now Turkey working against what we want.”
This is the new Cold War, as some analysts call it—although given the way in which it is fought out through proxies in Syria and beyond, it doesn’t always seem very cold. And President Barack Obama’s determination to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear programme has stirred it further, shaking up the old map of allegiances and leaving Saudi Arabia and Israel wondering whether America still shares their prime interests.
The roots of the new affiliations go back long before the Arab Spring. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a powerful trigger; in removing Saddam Hussein, it left Iraq in the hands of a government which reflected the country’s Shia majority, long oppressed by the Sunni regime. That strengthened the hand of Iran, itself overwhelmingly Shia, and encouraged it in its ambitions to be the region’s great power. The US’s discovery of its own shale gas, and its “pivot” in attention away from the region towards Asia is another big factor.
The recent nuclear deal—Iran freezing its controversial programme in return for the lifting of sanctions—reflects Obama’s calculation that 35 years after the Islamic revolution it is time, if at all possible, to bring its former enemy in from the cold. Britain has joined in; only recently, ministers were prone to say “we’ve tried to talk to the Iranians, endlessly, but then they trash our embassy”—but the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is now making new efforts to reopen ties.
To say that Saudi Arabia—and Israel—are appalled would be an understatement. Saudi ministers have hinted that if Iran gets close to nuclear weapons capability, Riyadh might feel forced to follow suit (and many presume it could get the technology quickly from its close ally Pakistan). That—and anger at the US’s refusal to get involved in Syria—is behind the Saudi refusal to take up one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council in October. “It’s an extraordinary state when the US President is almost on better terms with Iran’s President than he is with Israel’s Prime Minister or anyone in Riyadh,” said one western diplomat.
The effects are seen in Syria, where support from within Iran and Saudi Arabia goes to rival groups. The jostling for influence through proxies is extending through Libya to Tunisia, said one senior diplomat. The government in Turkey, increasingly Islamist in its prescriptions, is taking an active interest.
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