Author : Kabir Taneja

Expert Speak Raisina Debates
Published on May 14, 2021
Iran and Saudi Arabia talks: Stakes of the states at play in West Asia’s conflicts

This week, Iran officially confirmed that it was in talks with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, the Sunni seat of power, and Iran, the Shia seat of power, cut all ties with each other in 2016 after Shia protesters had attacked Saudi missions following the execution of a Shia cleric by Riyadh.

In April, reports surfaced that Saudi and Iranian officials had met in Baghdad, Iraq, to begin laying the groundwork for potential expansion of talks. On 12th May, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Jawad Zarif, said: “We are ready for close ties with Saudi Arabia”. In the meantime, as Riyadh plans to open this door, Saudi is also mitigating its other crisis points to hedge its diplomatic and military bets, some of which have arguably misfired over the past couple of years.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, arrived in Riyadh on 10th May, the first such high-ranking visit between Saudi and Turkey since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi within the premises of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Riyadh and Ankara have been competing rivals over influence in the larger West Asia (Middle East) region, specifically when it comes to Sunni Islam, with Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan orchestrating an aggressive and expanding foreign policy in what were earlier seen as exclusive Saudi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) influence zones. On the other hand, Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, also visited Saudi, extending a thaw between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members who had a major fallout resulting in a more than three-year long economic and political blockade against the gas rich Doha. Both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi blamed Qatar for punching above its weight in the region and supporting terrorism (mostly the Qatari state’s hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood). The result here was that Qatar persevered through the blockade and opened new channels and partnerships with the likes of Turkey and Iran. Even with a Saudi–Qatar normalisation on the horizon, Doha will hedge its interests and keep both Tehran and Ankara close as partners.

Saudi’s willingness to open dialogue with Iran comes at not just an interesting time, but also in an interesting capital, Baghdad. Over the years, Iran’s proxy wars in the region have become even more aggressive, using political vacuums in states such as Iraq and Syria to orchestrate designs of Shia militias that were loyal to Tehran and regional leaders, propping up de-centralised power structures in these two countries using local religious leaders and warlords alike to create a web of pro-Iran armed factions. These proxy battles between the seats of Shia and Sunni power, culminated most publicly in the Yemen civil war, where Saudi and UAE air campaigns tried to push back the Houthi rebels, who have been backed by Iran. Arguably, the Houthis have gained a significant upper hand in Yemen, and fractures within the Gulf alliance, with the UAE in 2019 reportedly pulling out most of its forces from the Yemen conflict in a blow to Riyadh, only aided the Houthis and Iran to double down on their gains.

Over the years, Iran’s proxy wars in the region have become even more aggressive, using political vacuums in states such as Iraq and Syria to orchestrate designs of Shia militias that were loyal to Tehran and regional leaders, propping up de-centralised power structures in these two countries using local religious leaders and warlords alike to create a web of pro-Iran armed factions.

In Baghdad, Iran also holds an upper hand, although not necessarily through transparent political patronage. The creation of Shiite militias over the years, a design often attributed to Iranian General Qasseim Soleimani who initially marketed the same as an anti-Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) pitch and was assassinated in a US drone strike in January 2020, now prove a grave challenge for the likes of the Arab world and Israel alike. According to a new report released by US-based think tank Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, despite crevasses between the Shia militias, with some being loyal to Iran and others to Shiite shrines in Iraq instead, Iran’s influence led by its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been significantly cemented. These divisions have more than often played out in public, with protests by Shias against Iran, including in places such as Karbala, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest sites. However, despite these anomalies, it is difficult to ignore the fact that Iran’s strategy to build large swathes of influence zones in conflict-ridden territories such as Iraq and Syria that border Israel and Saudi Arabia have worked far better than the Arab world, Israel or the West’s tactical, diplomatic, and strategic plans to push back against the same.

And this is, perhaps, why Saudi Arabia’s young Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), is now looking for middle paths. During MbS’s initial rise to power as heir apparent in 2017, his first tasks were to ward off internal challenges to his rise from within the House of Saud, and second, to stamp his authority regionally and internationally, and announce his arrival on the international stage. During this period, many saw UAE’s Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed as MbS’s mentor, easing him not only into an inherently powerful position, but aiding his thinking on the future of a moderate Saudi Arabia led by an open market economy. However, arguably, the MbS–MbZ bonhomie fell through over the past year or two. The UAE distanced itself from Yemen and maintained a basic outreach with Iran to ensure that it is not ensnared in a larger conflict. Meanwhile, MbS went ahead and normalised relations with Qatar, despite Abu Dhabi’s opposition regarding Doha not doing enough to address the issue of it supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nusra Front (Qatar meanwhile denies these accusations).

Fast forward to 2020, and the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, which brought Israel–Arab ties to a new beginning. Next, the big question remained whether the Saudis would join this arrangement. However, now that Riyadh is willingly opening channels for talks with Iran, without a third-party mediation, this adds a new dimension to the path forward that the Saudis are willing to take. The oddity here is perhaps that Riyadh chose to go opposite to the UAE and the Abraham Accords, and attempt to talk with Iran directly. Of course, as mentioned earlier, the UAE already has a working relation with Iran, and now having one with Israel will allow the Emiratis to hedge a lot of risk that they faced. However, a thaw directly between the theological and ideological fulcrums of Sunni and Shia Islam will have a significant resonance much beyond geopolitics, potentially addressing societal and cultural fissures that have lasted for centuries. Realistically, the ask from both Saudi and Iran is mammoth, and any actual compromise will largely come down to Saudi’s demands on Iran dismantling its militia ecosystems, which the Ayatollah and the IRGC will, in all likeliness, not commit towards.

It can be argued that MbS’s strong-arm policies put in place during his ascent to power, which coincided with the then US President Donald Trump in the White House and his unquestioned blessings placed upon the Gulf states against Iran, have fallen short of their intended aims, from Yemen to Iraq, and Syria to Qatar. An outreach to Iran today may just be the result of some of these policy failures, where strategies designed to push back on Tehran’s moves of creating a “thousand Hezbollahs” in and around the Gulf region have not worked out, only giving Tehran further on-ground advantage over time. And this, for Saudi, is more of a tactical failure than a strategic one, as it relied overwhelmingly on air power in theatres such as Yemen, which yielded comparatively limited results compared to the advantage local Houthi rebels managed to secure by moving militias on the ground.

An outreach to Iran today may just be the result of some of these policy failures, where strategies designed to push back on Tehran’s moves of creating a “thousand Hezbollahs” in and around the Gulf region have not worked out, only giving Tehran further on-ground advantage over time

Finally, this change in thinking of the Saudis at the end of the day may not be bad news. If any of these initial stage talks can lead to even a few introductory steps towards institutionalising a long-term dialogue, it will be one of the most significant regional diplomatic successes in recent history, and a critical barrier broken to allow multiple theatres of conflict dotted across the West Asian region a possible chance towards resolution and long-term peace.

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Author

Kabir Taneja

Kabir Taneja

Kabir Taneja is a Deputy Director and Fellow, Middle East, with the Strategic Studies programme. His research focuses on India’s relations with the Middle East ...

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