Saudi Arabia, Iran target Mideast's sectarian discord

At a meeting in Riyadh, leaders of the two nations discussed Iraq's tensions and regional Shiite-Sunni mistrust.

from the March 5, 2007 edition

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But to speak of a Sunni-Shiite divide is not so simple.

"Iran has historically, and clearly in recent times, wanted to pose as a Middle Eastern leader that stands up to more powerful world actors," says Joost Hiltermann, the Mideast director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. Iran's support of Shiites in Lebanon and Iraq is "awkward," he says, because Iran's ambitions go beyond mere sectarianism.

"[Iran] wants to have the greatest influence possible, and it can only do that if it is not a sectarian actor," says Mr. Hiltermann, contacted in Amman, Jordan. "It can be more effective if it does not play the Shiite card. [Iran] has every interest in talking to Saudi Arabia, to suppress that aspect of its rise."

The visit to Riyadh comes a week before Iraq's neighbors and the US will hold crisis talks in Baghdad. Iran's foreign ministry said Sunday that Iran had not yet decided to attend the meeting though it "would spare no effort" to help bring peace.

"What good is our [Islamic world's] common cause if we waste our energies and resources on self-destruction rather than self-preservation?" asked an editorial in the Saudi Gazette newspaper. "Mr. President, your visit signals your best intentions." But Sunni-Shiite reconciliation will not be easy.

As Iran is seen to back its fellow Shiites – as well as Sunni Palestinian groups like Hamas – aspects of Wahhabism, the extremist salafi ideology embraced in Saudi Arabia, lead to conflict. "Wahhabis regard Shiites as heretics," says Bavand in Tehran. "Political necessity requires containment of this behavior. But the rise of militant Wahhabism is a sore point for Shiites." Indeed, visceral anti-Shiite preaching hasn't vanished from Saudi Arabia, where two clerics in January called Shiites "the most vicious enemy of Muslims."

By contrast, Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, delivered a warning in mid-January to a group of Sunni and Shiite clerics. He warned that "the colonial front" (meaning the US and Israel) was seeking to play up sectarian differences. "The issue is not that Shiites and Sunnis should accept one another's beliefs, [but] they should not listen to the enemy's enticements," Ayatollah Khamenei said. "They should not be enemies."

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