At least a dozen different dynamics are shaping the deteriorating relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the consequences will have an impact across much of the Middle East for some time. The crisis is comprehensible through a dizzying array of lenses. These include, notably, relatively recent Sunni-Shiite tensions, the rearing of wider Middle Eastern sectarian heads, long-standing geostrategic rivalries in the Gulf region, reactions to big-power policy changes in the Middle East, assorted domestic challenges, an evolving regional ideological landscape with multiple proxy battles (mostly in Arab lands), the long-standing faceoff between Arab conservatism and revolutionary populism, the impact of the last five years of popular uprisings and the subsequent counterrevolutions and civil wars in some countries.
The situation is made all the more complex by the fact that all of these forces and several others around the Middle East, such as social marginalization of some groups, economic disparities and environmental distress, usually all converge. They converge in regional ideological confrontations such as this one, or in conflicts within single countries, such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen or Lebanon.
Most of the contentious issues in play reflect man-made policies and decisions that can be reversed or tempered, thereby resolving both regional clashes and local confrontations. I leave it to both sides and their many supporters and public relations consultants in the region and in Western capitals to hash out the specific grievances, concerns, threats and fears they all express against one another. The history of the modern Middle East has seen such active confrontations ebb and flow, occasionally exploding into war but usually being defused after just a few local bombings, burned flags, shrill media editorials and emptied embassies.
Such abatement of tensions usually happens due to the intervention of either a major regional power such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, or, in the past, Syria and Egypt – or global powers acting unilaterally or through the U.N. Security Council. Here is the most striking and troublesome aspect of the current Iranian-Saudi tensions: This Middle Eastern faceoff between two regional powerhouses, whose mutual accusations are spilling over into many local conflicts within Arab countries, is taking place as traditional global powers that once kept our region in check watch from the sidelines, protect their interests and wonder what to do.
The big new element in today’s Middle East is the continued emergence of decisive leadership, unilateral interventions and diplomatic and military initiatives by the three major regional powers: Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. These three states’ concerns and actions on the ground now are having an immense impact, in parallel to the deeds of global powers and Israel that traditionally influenced major regional trends.
The short-term destabilizing impact of this is evident in the many conflicts and fragmenting states across the region. It reflects two interlinked and simultaneous historic dynamics: Big powers such as the United States and Russia are recalibrating their relationships and interventions across the region, while regional powers step up their involvements in other countries to fill the new voids or confront the threats created by the big powers’ shifts.
The immediate big winners in this situation are political science and international relations professors, who have a bounty of material to analyze on how regional powers, smaller states and even subnational groups all enhance their political impact, as global powers recalibrate. Beyond Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, the actors with considerable new agency and impact in the Middle East include Salafists and tribal Sunni groups in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq.
The Middle East has never known such a situation in which regional and global powers alike, along with empowered local groups, are all engaging energetically in political and military actions in half a dozen different battlefields. They are doing this while also enjoying the capabilities of modern weaponry, within the fertile environments of weakening and collapsing states. Neither global nor regional big powers are available this time to step in and restore order, because they are all in the ring punching away.
Our best hope to step back from the brink of wider regional conflagrations is for sensible and responsible people in all concerned lands, especially in the Gulf region, to grasp the catastrophes that will engulf much of the Middle East if current trends continue. The whole world is also threatened, should energy flows be disrupted.
A frightening warning sign of this is the current fighting for oil installations in Libya between Daesh and assorted Libyan groups. The dangers of something like this occurring in the Gulf region are becoming too great to ignore. I know that our societies are as capable of spawning sensible diplomatic initiatives that could calm things down and resolve the issues that aggravate relations, as they are of undertaking dramatic military and diplomatic moves that express their real fears. We shall soon find out.