The New Cold War: Sunni vs. Shia Muslims and the Proxy War Between Saudi Arabia and Iran

Introduction

Debates over the rightful succession to Muhammad have spawned centuries of ideological and physical battles between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Although not the only source of conflict in the Middle East and Western Asia, the Sunni/Shia divide has undergirded political turmoil throughout the region. Cleavages between Sunni and Shia parallel other geopolitical problems, both within the same nation-states and between nation-states.

A current manifestation of the centuries old clash between Sunni and Shia is the proxy war taking place between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. Referred to as a new Cold War, the proxy wars have tremendous geopolitical implications beyond the immediately affected regions (Saxena & Dews, 2014). As Saxena & Dews (2014) point out, there is a lot more to the proxy wars than just the Sunni-Shia ideological divide. For certain, religious fervor and fanaticism fuels commitment to various groups or causes. Yet regular old political realism is more likely motivating Iran and Saudi Arabia. Quite simply, regional instability leads to power vacuums, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two Muslim superpowers. Just as the United States and the Soviet Union were the two political poles during the Cold War, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two poles in this new Cold War.

That cold war is now heating up, threatening to become more of a mainstream battle between nation-states. Lebanon, long considered a barometer of the region, and internally divided along Sunni and Shia lines, is in trouble since the resignation of the Prime Minister. While some of the Iran-Saudi proxy wars remain disguised to look like regional sectarian conflicts, the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri was overtly and directly related to the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran (Malley, 2017). In fact, Fraihat (2017) claims that all recent conflicts in the Middle East, whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, or Yemen, share a common factor in the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia (p. 1).

The rivalry plays itself out in sectarian violence, for example, in Yemen with the Shia Houthi rebels. On the surface, the conflict seems like it is just about the Houthis and Yemen. However, when sources of funding and clerical alliances are traced, it becomes clearer that Tehran backs Shia rebel groups exactly like the Houthis and Hezbollah. When the rebel groups become firmly established in official positions of power in nation-states, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the entire world could potentially get drawn into the conflict.

Whenever there is instability within the boundaries of an official nation-state, as with the recent resignation of the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the power vacuum enables Iran and Saudi Arabia to pick up the scraps, move in, and establish dominance. This has been true since the Arab Spring, when both Iran and Saudi Arabia have attempted to take advantage of power vacuum throughout the region via the funding of proxy wars in newly destabilized regions (Fraihat, 2017). The hot spots include Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, and of course, Syria.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are acting in politically and economically expedient ways to serve their own interests. These two nations are both causing and capitalizing on regional destabilization. It is my hypothesis that special interest groups within each of these nations have been funding non-state actors to achieve their political goals. Using various instruments of power (diplomatic, informational, military, economics), Saudi Arabia and Iran are attempting to create new regional alliances. Given the global implications of the conflict, including the disaster in Syria and pending destabilization in Lebanon, improved international diplomacy strategies are imperative (Cotter, 2017). It is my hypothesis that Saudi Arabia and Iran are actually subverting the very concept and structure of the nation-state in order to achieve their goals.

Methods

Without access to classified documents, it will be impossible to prove my hypothesis with empirical certainty. However, it will be possible for me to present circumstantial evidence that both Saudi Arabia and Iran are subverting the modern nation-state concept. Examples include government officials indirectly funding terrorist organizations,...

When actual paper trails are unavailable, the evidence will come from published literature, from scholarly sources, from think tanks, and from official government sources too. To a degree, media sources may also be useful for further analysis of the situation.

I will especially want to examine as closely as possible the ties between the official governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia and regional terrorist groups. Sometimes these alliances are difficult to prove because of the informal means of diverting funds through various middlemen. Alliances between the heads of state and non-state actors are the most critical strategic element in the proxy wars. Finally, any literature available on Iran-Hezbollah connections, or between Saudi and ISIS, will help bolster my research. It is hoped that a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding the New Cold War will lead to better informed and more pragmatic foreign policy.

Literature Review

This review of literature explores prevailing political analysis of the New Cold War, contributing to the discussion by offering suggestions for future research and public policy. Thus far, American foreign policy has remained indecisive regarding the New Cold War. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Khurshid (2013) points out that close economic and political ties to Saudi Arabia have generally led to the United States siding more with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had been supporting many of the regimes that fell during the Arab Spring, regimes that while brutal, maintained a modicum of political stability in North Africa (Khurshid, 2013). In Foreign Affairs, a journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Miller & Brodsky (2017) note that more recent American policy has been relatively conciliatory towards Iran, which of course has exacerbated tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Thus spurned, Saudi Arabia has been acting uncharacteristically boldly in Yemen and also actively supporting anti-Assad Sunni groups, some of which are close to al Qaeda, especially in Syria (Miller & Brodsky, 2017).

Iran, on the other hand, officially supports Assad as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has led to the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister on November 4, 2017. Malley (2017) calls Lebanon a testing ground for periodic bouts of Saudi-Iranian coeistence, (p. 1). In a Brookings Institute (Saban Center for Middle East Policy) analysis paper, Abdo (2013) shows how in addition to Syria and Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain have become the most recent and most important battlegrounds on which proxy wars are being fought between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just as Khurshid (2013) posits, Abdo (2013) claims the results of the proxy wars could even entail a redrawing of geo-political boundaries. Long-term and indirect results of the proxy wars go beyond simple changes to the map, including ongoing threats to security in Europe and North America, backlash against Muslims in both Europe and North America, and instability in Europe due to clashes over border policies and immigration (Khurshid, 2013).

To mitigate some of these immediate issues, Dubowitz & Takeyh (2017) claim the United States needs to add Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the list of foreign terrorist organizations, thereby ranking it alongside Hamas, Hezbollah, and daesh/ISIS/Islamic State. However, dialogue is the solution that almost all analysts recommend. Abdo (2013) stresses the importance of the United States serving as mediatory, engaging allies like Bahrain first in a sort of proxy diplomacy before shifting to facilitate more direct talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Fraihat (2017) likewise states, As difficult as it is for Iran and Saudi Arabia to speak to one another, this is still the best way for both powers to avoid war, (p. 1). In addition to diplomacy, practical diplomacy tactics may include working directly with sectarian groups in affected regions. Carpenters (2014) analysis of Sunni, Shia, and mixed neighborhoods in Iraq shows that collective agency and organization in local communities builds resilience and prevents the infiltration of these communities by external agents in either Iran or Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the literature provides ample circumstantial evidence to prove my hypothesis that Iran and Saudi Arabia are subverting state power, instead reverting to non-state actors as proxies in their ongoing fight for dominance.

The literature also shows that the methods and tactics used to fight the proxy wars include financial, political, and military strategies. In…