Riyadh's diplomatic breach with Tehran is just dynasty politics. But it was similar dynastic politics, 500 years ago, that triggered the worst phase of the Christian wars
On Friday, Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslim rulers beheaded their country's leading Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, on charges of seeking “foreign meddling” in the kingdom. On Saturday, an angry crowd of Iranians all Shia Muslims, of course attacked the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran. And Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, put a cartoon on his website comparing Saudi Arabia's head-chopping orgy on New Year's Day (46 other executions on the same day) to the mass executions carried out by the Sunni extremist Islamic State group. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic relations with Iran and all the pundits started talking about the Sunni-Shia ‘war of religion’ that is about to engulf West Asia.
This raises two questions. First, what would a Sunni-Shia war of religion actually look likeIJ And second, has everybody in West Asia taken leave of their sensesIJ The first question is best answered by looking at the history of the Christian wars of religion, ca. 1520-1660. The Muslim world now, like ‘Christendom’ in the 16th century, is made up of independent countries. And the current phase of the Muslim wars of religion is being fought out between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, just as the first phase of the Christian wars was fought between Catholics and Protestants in individual countries.
From the start of the conflict in Europe, however, each European state tried to help its co-believers in neighbouring countries as well, and alliances were increasingly shaped by religious considerations. In the second phase, these alliances dragged most of Europe into the catastrophic Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), fought mostly in the middle of Europe but involving armies from as far apart as Sweden and Spain. The main battleground, Germany, lost between one-third and one-half of its population. Nobody won, of course, and in the very long run everybody just lost interest in the question. But it was a very great waste of lives, time and money.
And so to the second question: Has everybody in West Asia taken leave of their sensesIJ Not exactly, but many players have lost sight of the bigger picture. Former US President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed the sectarian demon in the region. The Arab Spring of 2011 frightened the region's dictatorships and absolute monarchies into increased repression and greater reliance on appeals to sectarian loyalty.
Then King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died a year ago, and the kingdom spun out completely. Saudi Arabia under its previous monarchs was cautious and conservative in its foreign policy. It subsidised various extreme Sunni groups in other countries, but it clung tightly to its American alliance and never engaged directly in adventures abroad.
The new Saudi King, Salman, is 80 years old and infirm. So in practice most decisions are made by his nephew, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (aged 56), or his son, Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (aged only 30). There is intense competition between the two men for succession to the throne, and the decisions coming out of Riyadh have been much bolder than ever before.
The past nine months have seen a major Saudi Arabian military intervention against the Shia side in the Yemeni civil war, the creation of a Saudi-led alliance of almost all the Sunni-majority Arab states, and now the execution of a Shia leader in Saudi Arabia that was clearly calculated to cause a diplomatic breach with Iran.
It's just dynastic politics, in other words, not some inevitable geopolitical juggernaut. But it was similar dynastic politics half a millennium ago that triggered the worst phase of the Christian wars of religion.