Shiites Rising: Islam's minority reaches new prominence

Shiite Muslims are leading an 'axis of resistance' that unnerves Sunnis and challenges the US and Israel. Part 1 of two

from the June 6, 2007 edition

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Already, some Shiites see divine intervention on Hizbullah's behalf during last summer's war – as well as in the broader Shiite rise. "There is no retreat ... this is a progressive march that is being overseen by God, maybe. We have this deep conviction," says Mr. Mussawi. "[Shiite influence] is not going to go back. It's going to thrive."

Sunni fears of the Shiite Rise

Alarmed Sunni leaders, the traditional holders of power in the Arab world, are warning of a "Shiite Crescent" forming across the region, and of sectarian conflict spreading with it.

Even while Saudi Arabia and Iran have held meetings to calm Sunni-Shiite tension, Saudi King Abdullah warned in January that, "We are aware of the dimensions of spreading Shiism and where it has reached."

The Shiite spread "will not achieve its goal," the monarch told a Kuwaiti newspaper, because Sunnis "seem immune to any attempts by other sects to penetrate or diminish its historical power."

Saudi Arabia is a US ally that follows the austere Wahhabi strain of Sunnism and produced 15 of the 19 attackers on 9/11. In December, Riyadh told Washington it would back Sunni insurgents in Iraq if Iran's influence there grew. Saudi cleric Abdul Rahman al-Barak, in a religious ruling, called Shiites "the worst of the Islamic nation's sects" and "infidels."

Al Qaeda, too, sees growing Shiite strength as a threat. In a video broadcast last month, Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri lambasted Iraqi Shiites in the government as the "spearhead of the Americans and their claw with which they combat the Mujahideen and torture the Muslims."

Sunni Arab leaders worry that their people associate them with the Western camp, while Iran's Ahmadinejad and Lebanon's Nasrallah are seen as the defenders of Islam.

"There is a fearfulness, because Nasrallah ... has an incredible ability to reach out, to be believed, to be admired – indeed, to be feared – by other sects, especially Sunnis in the region," says Nicholas Noe, the Beirut-based editor of Mideastwire.com and an expert on Hizbullah speeches. There "is an attempt [by Sunnis] to shift the divide from Shiite-Sunni – because that is a dangerous divide for a lot of these regimes – to a Persian-Arab divide," he says.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has been shouted down by his own Fatah supporters, angry about Hamas, their Iran-backed Palestinian rivals, saying, "Persians go home. Persians must die."

For many Arabs, the Persian racial slur harks back to pre-Islamic rivalry. "The Iranians know that the divide-and-conquer strategy that kills [their regional leadership] is Persians versus Arabs," says Mr. Noe.

And uncertainty about Iran's motives runs deep in the Arab world. Iran came under strong criticism at a high-level conference in Jordan in late May when Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said an Arab peace plan does not have "any chance" of success. The former Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, retorted that Israeli-Palestinian peace is "an Arab issue and should be resolved within the Arab fold." And Bahraini Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa said Iran should be transparent on the nuclear issue and "work in partnership with its neighbors and not at their expense."

Battle for a new Middle East

The practitioners of confrontation cast their aims in sweeping terms. "Victory of the resistance was not only a victory of arms [over Israel, but also] a victory for the ideology and culture of the resistance," Nasrallah said in an April speech, according to a translation from Mideastwire.com. "The resistance stood in the face of this project for which they are seeking a name, i.e., the New Middle East."

Such rhetoric strikes a chord far beyond Shiite power centers. Hizbullah's victory declaration "is very important for the Shia, but also for the Sunnis in Egypt, where Hizbullah is famous and Nasrallah has become a hero," says Sabrina Mervin, an expert on Shiism at the French Institute of the Near East in Beirut.

"Now Iran is the only country in the region to face the US and this plan of a New Middle East," says Ms. Mervin. "More and more it's growing, this feeling of injustice."

Analysts say there are limits to what this axis can achieve, since each case of Shiite "power" has different roots and aims.

They don't expect the Shiite-Sunni conflict in Iraq to spill over into direct sectarian war elsewhere. Iraq's strong Arab nationalism is likely to check any Iranian effort to fully control the country.

The New Middle East, for this axis, is more about burnishing the ideal of confronting the West than pushing a strategic plan.

"What you have now is a franchising of that [resistance] ideology," says Daniel Brumberg, author of "Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran." While there is a short-term anti-US ideology taking root, competing agendas between Shiite leaders will prevent creation of a "greater Shiite, Iranian hegemony in any clear-cut sense."

Still, it does appeal. That's one reason Iran is unlikely to back down on its nuclear ambitions, say analysts, which bolsters Iran's status among allies, and unnerves enemies. "This model [of resistance] is finding its place.... When Ahmadinejad goes to any country and expresses this view to young generations, they are attentive to it," says Mr. Taraghi, the right-wing politician in Tehran. "It's like a flame that you light up in the darkness."

The original "war on terror" – against Al Qaeda alone – has now been allowed to dangerously expand, says Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival."

"We're at the point in this region [where] we can't militarily turn the dynamic," says Mr. Nasr, who teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Al Qaeda "is not going to go away," he says, so the effort should be to examine what drives the axis of resistance, address those issues, and "bring everybody to the table again."

That means talking to Hamas, to Sadr, to Syria, to Hizbullah, and even to Iran, he says, if only to return to a single-front battle against Al Qaeda.

"The more of these guys you bring in from the cold, the smaller the scope of resistance," says Nasr. "[But] if you operate on the assumption that you can crush the resistance, then you are committing yourself to perpetual war."

• Thursday: The populist Shiite leaders and the militants who follow them.

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All eyes on Sadr: Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr delivered Friday prayers in July 2003 at a mosque in Kufa, Iraq. Then, he delivered a 'wait and see' message on the US occupation. Scott Peterson/Getty Images