Iran-Saudi face-off could have been avoided
Just when one thought that the situation in West Asia — where wars are raging across the region, millions of displaced citizens are migrating out in what has become one of the world's worst refugee crises, and a band of bloodthirsty barbarians is on the rampage — could not get any worse, it did: This past week, the two biggest powers of the region, Iran and Saudi Arabia, severed diplomatic ties. The two have always had an uncertain relationship, driven in part by their competing geo-political interests and in part by their sectarian differences.
They had previously snapped ties between 1988 and 1991. Now, another acrimonious chapter has been added to the narrative. The immediate cause for the snap was the mob attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran after the Government in Riyadh executed a prominent Shia cleric convicted of terrorism. A Saudi citizen, Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr was an outspoken critic of the monarchy and had played an important part in the early days of the Arab uprising.
Notably, while the rest of the region reeled under mass protests that brought down autocrats who had been in power for decades, the Saudi Government was one of the few that managed to keep its boat steady. There were some protests in the Kingdom's eastern Province, home to a sizeable and often restive Shia population, but Riyadh nipped them in the bud. Nimr al-Nimr's death sentence goes back to those 2011 protests, wherein he was accused of shooting police officers and convicted of terrorism. Riyadh was under significant pressure from the international community to call off the hanging, and many had hoped that the cleric would be pardoned.
However, by executing him anyway, Riyadh took a geo-political risk that serves its domestic and foreign policy concerns. Nimr al-Nimr's execution appeases the hardline Sunni section that supports anti-Shia policies and sends out a message that the Government is tough on law and order. Remember, Nimr al-Nimr was hanged along with 47 others, most of whom were Sunni men, convicted for carrying out terror attacks under the Al Qaeda banner between 2003 and 2006. That these death row convicts had stayed away from the hangman's noose for many years was creating an impression that Riyadh was lenient on terrorists. This, the Government could hardly afford in the days of the Islamic State.
On the foreign policy front, the conflict with Iran was expected; and the Tehran embassy attack, reprehensible as it may be, gave Riyadh the excuse it needed to ratchet up tensions and call off ties. This development must be viewed in context of Iran’s improving regional profile in the aftermath of the nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia’s own troubles after the sharp drop in oil prices, and the wars in Yemen and Syria wherein Iran and Saudi Arabia are on opposing sides. With the snapping of diplomatic ties, expect the proxy conflicts to escalate, narrowing the scope for a unified regional effort to end the bloodbaths.