Iran and Saudi Arabia once agreed on the virtues of monarchy and alliance to the United States, but the Iranian Revolution of 1979 turned them into adversaries, each hostile to the other’s regional ambitions and very conceptions of state. To Saudi Arabia, Iran’s pretensions to global Islamic leadership were menacing and quixotic, while for the Islamic Republic, Saudi Arabia’s position as both center of Muslim worship and cultivator of Western alliances was hypocritical. Their role as major Middle Eastern powers, however, means they have no choice but to deal with each other.
1. The US helped the Shah dominate the Persian Gulf at Saudi Arabia’s expense.
Following British withdrawal of the Royal Navy from the Persian Gulf in 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson treated Iran and Saudi Arabia—both of which were US allies at the time—as “twin pillars” of Gulf security. The Johnson Administration hoped that the British-inspired policy would contain Iranian ambition in the region, but the Shah continually lobbied for a bigger Iranian role, and carefully cultivated his relationship with Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon. Nixon liked the Shah, declaring himself “stronger than horseradish” for the monarch. He had little faith in the Saudis. He was happy to see the Shah fill a security role throughout the Gulf at Saudi Arabia’s expense.
2. The Shah advised Saudi King Faisal to protect his rule with discos and miniskirts.
In a 2001 interview with PBS News, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan recalled a letter the Shah wrote to King Faisal in the late 1960s. “Please, my brother, modernize,” the Shah wrote. “Open up your country. Make the schools mixed women and men. Let women wear mini skirts. Have discos. Be modern, otherwise, I cannot guarantee you will stay in your throne."
3. Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution was explicitly anti-Saudi.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 marked the beginning of a persistent mutual animosity between the two states. The revolution overthrew a major monarchy in the region at a time when Middle Eastern monarchies were already in decline, and Khomeini denounced monarchies as unIslamic. He also denounced relations with the United States unIslamic, cutting at the Saudis’ mot important alliance. The Saudi royal family saw Khomeini’s wish to export revolution as a threat, albeit an impractical one, since Iran’s revolutionaries were Shia, whereas the majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni.
4. Saudi Arabia supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.
Saudi Arabia supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War as part of its struggle to contain Khomeini’s movement, even though Iraq had started the conflict. Saudi Arabia saw Iran’s new regime pursuing greater legitimacy at home by exporting its revolution to Iraq, where the two main centers of Shia learning—Najaf and Karbala—are located. Saudi Arabia offered Iraq substantial financial backing. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia reportedly told Saddam Hussein, “You provide the rijal” (which means “men” in Arabic) “and we’ll provide the rial.’” Saudi Arabia gave Iraq between 24 to 27 billion dollars during the war and supported it diplomatically.
5. Saudi security forces killed hundreds of Iranian pilgrims in Mecca in 1987.
From the early 1970s, Khomeini had issued anti-imperialist, pan-Islamic themed messages addressed to all Muslims via Iranian pilgrims visiting Mecca, in spite of Saudi Arabia’s objections to his use of the hajj for political purposes. In 1987, Saudi security forces caused one of the major traumas in Saudi-Iranian relations when they fired on pro-Khomeini pilgrims. Around 400 people were killed in the clashes, and most of them were Iranian. The Saudis then broke off diplomatic relations, and instituted a quota system, limiting the number of Iranian pilgrims allowed to visit each year.
6. Khomeini’s death facilitated rapprochement.
After Khomeini died in 1989, Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ignored Khomeini’s record of antipathy to the Saudi regime and initiated a new phase of diplomacy. Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, did not share Khomeini’s scorn for Saudi leaders, but didn’t pursue better relations either, merely tolerating Rafsanjani’s efforts. The two countries restored relations in 1991.
The period between 1997 and 2003, during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, marked a high point in relations. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who is now King Abdullah, wanted to engage Iran and got along well on a personal basis with both Rafsanjani and Khatami. The 1997 Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Tehran brought together representatives of both countries, who hadn’t visited each other’s countries for almost 20 years.
7. Prince Saud Al Faisal accused the US and Britain of handing Iraq to Iran.
Despite a period of pragmatism in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Saudi leaders remained wary of Iranian ambitions to export revolution. The Saudis resented Iranian meddling in Iraq following the 2003 US invasion and blamed the US for allowing it to happen. In 2005 Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s long-serving foreign minister, told the Council on Foreign Relations that the US had created a power vacuum for Iran to fill: “The Iranians now go in this pacified area that the American forces have pacified, and they go into every government of Iraq, pay money, install their own people...even establish police forces for them...They are being protected in doing this by the British and the American forces in the area.”
8. King Abdullah asked the US to “cut the head off the snake”—i.e. to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In 2010, Wikileaks published a 2008 US embassy cable revealing that King Abdullah had asked the US, during a meeting between General David Petraeus, the top US military commander in the Middle East, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, to “cut the head off the snake” by striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. The cable also revealed that Prince Saud Al-Faisal did not want to strike Iran, but recommended further sanctions against Iran instead. It also revealed that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued against a strike, saying that it would only set Iran back by several years.
9. The war in Syria brought relations to a new low.
Beginning in 2011, the war in Syria put Iran and Saudi Arabia on opposing sides of an appalling struggle, with Iran seeing President Bashar Al-Assad’s survival as a fundamental strategic matter, and Saudi Arabia believing his survival was as impossible as it was undesirable, and pushing for his downfall. Iran supported Assad by providing loans and oil and by mobilizing Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards on his behalf. Saudi Arabia entered the proxy conflict late in 2011, following Turkey and Qatar. Saudi Arabia’s Syria policy, which was directed by Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, was novel for Saudi Arabia, which has not typically sought to overthrow governments.
10. Iran and Saudi Arabia still need each other.
Relations between the two countries began to shift again under President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, even though they don’t have complete sway over Iranian foreign policy. Rouhani and Zarif reached out to Saudi leaders, and while they met resistance at first, Prince Saud Al Faisal has said we would welcome a Zarif visit. Zarif has so far given priority nuclear talks, but the two will likely meet at the UN General Assembly meeting later this month. The Islamic State’s storming of Iraq this year could force Iran and Saudi Arabia to cooperate to broker a political compromise to end Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq. And if they can achieve that in Iraq, in theory, they can achieve it anywhere.
This article is an edited version of Islamic Adversaries: Iran and Saudi Arabia.
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