The Iranian-Saudi relations behind-the-scenes

The government must undertake and acknowledge a number of responsibilities at the diplomatic level, and they include: working to turn Saudi Arabia in the regional balances and equations from a strategic enemy into a strategic competitor and opponent. This is considered one of the most fundamental objectives in the list of priorities of the new Iranian government regarding how to deal with the Arab countries in light of the current appalling situation.

With the victory of Sheikh Dr. Hassan Rohani in the Iranian presidential elections, many analysts believed that the ice that was dominating the relations between Iran and the Arabs in general, and Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular, has melted forever.

The analysts believed in this based on the fact that it is alleged that the tension between Iran and the Arabs goes back to the previous government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that President Rohani came to remove all these tensions.

However, those analysts, in order to prove that the Iranian-Saudi relations are on their way to improvement and recovery, rely on the characteristics of Dr. Rohani, namely: moderation, openness, and being close to Sheikh Hashemi Rafsanjani, who maintained good relations with the Saudi ruling family, even during the current circumstances. The family of Hashemi Rafsanjani has friendship relations with the family of King Abdullah and this is not a secret.

Yet, a question remains here: Could this way of analyzing things, which in general does not take into account the current regional variables, put us on the right track or no? In this article we will try to briefly address this topic in a structural and fundamental way.

There is no doubt that if we had a quick look at the history of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Arab countries, we will find that the regional and international variables were considered one of the most important factors that have an impact on these relationships, even in a time when Sheikh Hashemi Rafsanjani - who likes the Arabs- assumed power as the president of the Republic of Iran.

With the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the Arab rulers all through the 8 years, the duration of the imposed war on Iran, sided with the ousted Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, and the goal was to mitigate the risks which they alleged were threatening their national and nationalist security because of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Then came the black massacre committed against the Iranian pilgrims in 1978, which was the worst thing that affected the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and this incident also led to cutting ties between the two countries for many years. However, with the end of the war imposed on Iran, and when Sheikh Hashemi Rafsanjani assumed power, an era of trying to end the tension and crisis between the two countries began.

Although some sought to portray the movement of ending the tension between the two countries as one of the characteristics of Sheikh Rafsanjani’s personality, way, and vision by which he leads the diplomatic track of the country, but reality was something different completely. The new core variables that occurred in the region were what imposed this Saudi-Iranian convergence. The most prominent variables at that stage were: the collapse of the Soviet Union, launching an attack on Kuwait by Iraq, and the principled position taken by Iran on the attack, which made Iraq a common enemy of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Yes, there is no doubt that the vision of Sheikh Rafsanjani was positively impressive in this field, but it was certainly not what settled things once and for all. But later, in the era of President Mohammad Khatami, who was having a similar vision to that of Sheikh Rafsanjani in dealing with the Arabs, Prince Abdullah Al-Saudi, who was at that time a crown prince in the Kingdom, came to Tehran to participate in the meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Then after a while, Mr. Khatami in turn went to Saudi Arabia to visit King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz. Yet during his reign, which lasted 8 years, the shades of tense were still dominating the relations between the two countries.

Additional incidents imposed themselves on those relations as part of the regional variables: the American aggression on Iraq, and the fall of Saddam’s regime, the Iranian nuclear file, the three Iranian islands that the United Arab Emirates claim that they belong to it, and the empty allegations that say that the Islamic Republic provides support and protection for some terrorist movements (this claim was prevalent during the reign of Sheikh Rafsanjani as well).

Despite the fact that we cannot deny the convergence that took place between Iran and the Arabs in the era of President Khatami, but it was much closer to a formal convergence, for he did not highlight this convergence but only in the meetings and in some official transactions. As for the territorial disputes they remained the same to the extent that made Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, after coming to Iran to participate in the meeting at the level of the heads of Islamic States, intend briefly to issue a statement once again to repeat the allegations of the United Arab Emirates in relation to the three Iranian islands that belong to it as it assumes.

During the era of President Dr. Ahmadinejad, the level of the Iranian-Saudi convergence did not only decrease, but also the tensions and crises increased between the two countries. Although Ahmadinejad initiated for the first time to visit the Kingdom to meet with King Abdullah, who gave him special attention more than the other participating guests and walked to his side shaking hands, but the shadows of the essential variables that occurred in the region were much heavier than giving real and essential meaning for this emergency convergence. Additionally, the Iranian nuclear file and the file of the Iraqi crisis were still interacting, and the Lebanese file was activated more than before and Lebanon turned practically into an arena of conflict and political disagreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, the Iranian support for the resistance movements in the region, although it was present and existing in the eras of presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami, but it became in the era of Ahmadinejad stronger and more pronounced, what led practically to raising the sensitivity of Saudi Arabia towards this support more than previously. Then, Saudi Arabia accused the Islamic Republic of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in America, what caused a rift and great tension at the level of the relations between the two countries.

However, this tension reached its peak with the emergence of the new variables that took place in the region, with the intervention of Saudi Arabia military in Bahrain, and the involvement of its troops in killing Bahraini citizens, especially the Shiite Muslims, as well as its intervention politically in Yemen, and working to change the path of the revolution therein, supporting the ousted president Hosni Mubarak until the last moments of his rule, and its contribution to sabotage Iran’s relations with Egypt during its revolution. Most importantly, it had a role in the Syrian crisis, what became actually the peak of the political conflict and even the civilization related one between the two countries in recent years. All these important regional variables have had a significant impact on the nature of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

These tensions between the two countries, did not reach before, perhaps ever since the war imposed on Iran until today, to the degree of calamity and complexity reached today in terms of the quantity and quality. The existing evidences indicate that these tensions are not solvable in the short and near term. Still, the repercussions and consequences of Bahrain’s crisis are subsequent, and even in relation to estimating the victory of the rebels of Bahrain in the near future. These tensions will then increase, but what if Saudi Arabia doubled the level of its intervention and blatant bias to the Government of Al-Khalifa in Bahrain?!

In Syria, too, the intervention of Saudi Arabia at the level of supporting the terrorist extremist groups with arms, money and political coverage, and turning -taking into account the fact that Qatar has almost been removed from the equations and the accounts of the Syrian crisis - to be the first regional player siding with the opponents of the regime of the Syrian President Dr. Bashar al- Assad. This intervention would aggravate the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In case the Syrian crisis was transformed to Lebanon or Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran will find themselves engaged face-to-face in a direct conflict.

Dr. Rohani and the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia
Dr. Rohani, in addition to the fact that the crises and tensions that are facing the Iranian-Saudi relations have been inherited to him from the era of former Iranian President Ahmadinejad, he has also been inherited to a great extent the existing regional crises in the region in which Iran was engaged in one way or another.
It is true that we cannot say that the officials in charge of the diplomat affair have no effect originally on producing the course of events, but in reality the equations and balances of the regional powers have the biggest role in forming the conflicts in the region. In fact, this is what forced both Russia and China to stand in the face of America and to defend Syria, and this is also what made Iran and Saudi Arabia- practically- have the same point of view on everything related to the important regional files approximately.

Experience has shown in the reigns of the two presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami that no matter how diplomacy is affected by the characteristic of the President, but it cannot remain protected from the sweeping and rapid regional variables. Today, the current crisis in Syria (the sole strategic ally to Iran in the whole world) is becoming increasingly important to Iran day after day.

It is necessary that the government of President Rohani takes advantage deliberately as much as possible of the personal characteristics of the president to overcome these obstacles faced in the diplomatic tracks, and to alleviate the tensions that ruin the relations between the two countries. However, we should not forget that the differences between Iran and Saudi Arabia have reached to an extent that it is no longer possible to resolve them just with dialogue and diplomatic meetings or just through political and economic sessions and meetings.

The new Iranian government has responsibilities that must be acknowledged by it at the diplomatic level, including: working to turn Saudi Arabia in the regional balances and equations from a strategic enemy into a strategic competitor and opponent. This is considered one of the most fundamental objectives in the list of priorities of the new Iranian government regarding how to deal with the Arab countries in light of the current appalling situation. We should not in any way deal with absolute optimism, or think that it is possible to resolve all the outstanding issues with some meetings, phone calls, or through mutual blessing messages and so on.

The existing problem between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in its essence and core, is not closely related to the characteristics and personality of the Iranian president, though these characteristics can change part of the issue apparently. If the new government was able to make achievements in the dialogue with the Arab countries, and in particular with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, while maintaining the stability of its initial positions and constant bases upon which the Islamic Revolution was based, this would really be considered a big job achieved by the Iranian government.

Indeed, both Iran and Saudi Arabia represent completely different thoughts, lines and cultures. Those two cultures can convergence in many aspects, and getting rid of all the obstacles and tensions could be done provided that to make significant and wide changes in terms of the intellectual foundations and bases that determine the identity of each of them, and we believe that this is impossible when viewing the current situations and circumstances.