It would be one of those “losing the forest for the trees” episodes if the sharply escalating rift between Sunni-Wahabi Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran were seen only in terms of the spiraling reactions to the Saudis’ execution of the Shiite preacher Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on terrorism charges.
Indeed, it seems clear to us that the confrontation is the inevitable outcome of the Iranian nuclear weapons agreement and the concomitant efforts by the Obama administration to enlist Iran in the effort to settle the Syrian civil war and in other trouble spots as well.
Saudi Arabia, long a U.S. ally and Iran have for years been competing for leadership of the Gulf region. The Iran nuclear deal has been publicly decried by Saudi Arabia as virtually guaranteeing Iran’s entrance into the nuclear club with all of the leverage that status provides in the international arena. So it was doubtless only a matter of time before the Saudis called the U.S. out on whether they would still have American backing going forward.
In a sense, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were drifting apart well before the nuclear agreement. According to Martin Indyk, former senior aide to Secretary of State John Kerry and currently the executive vice president of the Brookings Institution, things started going south when the administration abandoned Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring. The Saudi royal family and leadership openly expressed the fear that President Obama would adopt the same hands-off posture should the uprisings spread to their country and also questioned whether they could continue to rely on Washington.
So the Saudis are putting the Obama administration’s feet to the fire with a view to forcing a decision on whether Saudi Arabia will continue to receive U.S. support – or that support will shift to the Iranians. To be sure, since the nuclear agreement was concluded, the U.S. and Iran have publicly squabbled about continued Iran’s support for terrorism and its ballistic missile testing as well as new U.S. sanctions on the Iranians and visa restrictions on travelers who have visited Iran.
But, unfortunately, in each case the Obama administration has backed down, only further heightening Saudi fears. From where we sit, the Saudis are the lesser of two evils. It would be folly to throw our lot in with the Iranians while they are still committed to supporting terror and unrest by both word and deed.