The Saudi Arabia-Iran Relationship

The Gulf’s Existential Challenge

- Dr Peter Bartu

The September 14th strikes on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq plant and the Khurais oil field seemed a plausible response by Iran to a relentless media and economic assault waged against it by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and its allies in the US administration and Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu. Yet, almost two months later there is still no forensic evidence as to who carried out the attacks, and this for an incident that might well have sparked the region’s next war. Subsequently, Saudi Arabia has indicated a willingness to open talks with Iran through Pakistan and Iraq and also with the Houthi in Yemen to end what has been another hapless fiasco. The logical conclusion of poor policies of the past few years has been laid bare; the country that can’t afford a war has realized that it confronts a country with nothing to lose. Was this inevitable and can the SaudiIran relationship be reset anytime soon?

Saudi-Iran relations have always required careful management even before the 1979 revolution when Iran was economically integrated into the region and closely allied with Israel and the US. The Saudis, and the Gulf States broadly, were relatively young countries, institutionally weak in every sector, had no comparative industrial advantage with Iran and culturally could not compete with their neighbour which laid claim, often arrogantly, to being a civilization. After 1979 relations quickly soured with the post-revolutionary state which inspired both Shi’a and Sunni Islamic movements across the region and was seen as a direct threat by many states. But, even here Saudi-Iran relations were not destined to enmity. The Islamic Republic’s 5th President Mohammed Khatami regularly conferred with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and there was some optimism, unrealized, that President Hassan Rouhani at the start of his first term in 2013 could inject some balance.