International attention has recently been diverted from the civil war in Syria and the global struggle against the Islamic State by the escalation in the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The immediate cause of the mounting tension between these two states, which are the respective leaders of the rival Sunni and Shiite camps, was the execution of Saudi Shiite leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr by the Saudi authorities on January 2, 2016, and perhaps also the killing of Zahran Alloush, leader of the Syrian Sunni Army of Islam (Jasysh al-Islam) in a bombing near Damascus on December 26, 2015. Thus far, the confrontation is playing out in the diplomatic arena, but in an extreme scenario, it has the potential to ultimately cause the Middle East to deteriorate into a dangerous military collision between these two regional powers.

On January 3, 2015, the Saudi Foreign Ministry announced the severing of diplomatic relations with Iran following a violent demonstration in Tehran staged in response to the execution of Nimr al-Nimr. In the course of the demonstration, an angry mob seized the Saudi embassy and set it ablaze. Along with the Saudis, Sudan and a number of Gulf states announced they were severing or downgrading relations with the Iranian Islamic Republic, and Riyadh expanded its anti-Iranian coalition. The Arab League convened to discuss the crisis, issued a condemnation of Iran’s actions, and proclaimed that it would not accept Iranian involvement in the region or attempts to spark sectorial conflicts in Arab countries. At the same time, the Arab League has stopped short of calling for a general severing of relations with Iran, although in the course of the meeting, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain announced the establishment of a sub-committee to discuss intensifying the measures against Iran.

These developments represent a new round in the longstanding marked conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia that emerged after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and more forcefully, since the onset of the Arab Spring. This conflict is based primarily on political, economic, and security-minded disputes, all related to the Saudi-Iranian struggle over influence in the Persian/Arab Gulf region and the Middle East in general, as a manifestation of the historic struggle between Sunnis and Shiites. Iran views Saudi Arabia as the cause of the spread of Salafi jihadist Islam, while for its part, Saudi Arabia is leading efforts to curb the growing influence of Iran and the Shiite axis in the Middle East.

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