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12 December 2020

Iran and Saudi Arabia Battle for Supremacy in the Middle East


The struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for dominance in the Middle East has insinuated itself into nearly every regional issue, fracturing international alliances and sustaining wars across the region, while raising fears of a direct conflict between the two powers that could involve the U.S.

Saudi Arabia has ramped up its regional adventurism since Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful son of King Salman known as MBS, was appointed crown prince in 2017. And it has cracked down on its domestic critics, including the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. That had little effect on the crown prince’s close ties to the Trump administration, though. Determined to undermine the Iranian regime, Washington pulled out of the nuclear deal with Tehran and used its economic might to suffocate Iran’s economy, bringing the two countries to the brink of war in January. President-elect Joe Biden has promised to reengage diplomatically with Iran—and to make respect for human rights a central pillar of his foreign policy. The potential implications for U.S. partners in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, are significant.

The U.S. and Iran quickly backed away from escalation to open warfare after the U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January. But the Middle East is rife with other ongoing conflicts, including a civil war in Yemen that has fueled one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, another in Syria that may finally be reaching a no-less bloody endgame, and one in Libya that has seen a respite since a tenuous cease-fire was implemented in October. These conflicts exist on two levels: domestic battles for control of the countries’ futures, and proxy wars fueled by the regional powers, as well as Russia and—in the case of Libya—France.

Meanwhile, though it no longer dominates international coverage, the long-simmering dispute between Israel and Palestine continues to flare up periodically. A round of fighting in May 2019 was the deadliest since 2014. And the Trump administration’s one-sided approach in favor of Israel has done more to legitimize the status quo than to move both sides to a sustainable resolution. Like everything else in the region, this conflict has also become embroiled in the larger power struggle, with Saudi-allied leaders willing to remain silent on the Palestinian issue in return for Israeli support in containing Iran. The U.S.-brokered diplomatic normalization deals Israel recently signed with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain simply formalized a strategic realignment that had until now been an open secret in the region. The question now is whether Saudi Arabia will follow suit.

WPR has covered the Middle East in detail and continues to examine key questions about what will happen next. How will the Biden administration reorient U.S. policy in the Middle East, and what will that mean for the region? Will the Turkish-Russian proxy war in Libya be contained within its borders? And will Israel’s recent diplomatic normalization deals translate into deeper ties with the region’s Arab states? Below are some of the highlights of WPR’s coverage.

As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office, the U.S. strategy toward the Persian Gulf is in urgent need of recalibration. Thanks to an emerging European initiative to help bring a modicum of calm to the tense region, Biden will have the opportunity to do a lot of good early in his term.
Domestic Politics

The political situation in the Middle East is in flux, with both Saudi Arabia and Iran facing challenges. Riyadh is contending with international blowback for recent reckless and brutal moves. And Iran continues to be backed into a corner by the United States. Meanwhile, mass protests in Lebanon and Iraq, following the peaceful uprisings that ousted long-time rulers in Algeria and Sudan, sparked discussions about a new Arab Spring, before the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to those popular movements. The pandemic also drove a decline in global energy prices that has further undermined the sustainability of many Gulf states’ oil-based revenue models—and their social contracts that have historically offered generous benefits for citizens in exchange for a lack of democratic accountability for the region’s rulers.
Why Oman’s experiment with an income tax is attracting so much interest in the Gulf, in Will Oman’s New Income Tax Be the Start of a Political Sea Change in the Gulf?

The long-standing flashpoint of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been downgraded as a priority in Washington and the Gulf during the Trump presidency. Instead, Israel’s strategic partnership with the Gulf Arab states to counter Iran has become formalized with the establishment of diplomatic ties with the UAE and Bahrain—with the potential for more normalization deals to follow. The Biden administration promises to be more conventional in its approach to the issue, but whether a change in U.S. policy will have a meaningful impact remains to be seen.

U.S. Policy

The Trump administration’s Middle East policy has been dominated by support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, and attempts to undermine Iran. The administration’s ultimate objectives with regard to Tehran remain unclear, though, and the tit-for-tat strikes in Iraq in January suggested that, his bellicose rhetoric notwithstanding, President Donald Trump had little appetite for an actual war. Trump also clearly tired of America’s military presence in the broader region, but the disconnect between his stated preferences and his administration’s actual policy introduced confusion into regional capitals’ calculations. Biden will certainly seek to reassert American leadership, but just how much he can achieve will depend on the political capital he is willing to invest.

Ongoing conflicts and the threat of new clashes continue to overshadow the region, as hopes for negotiated settlements to the wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya have been repeatedly dashed. Meanwhile, although the battlefield defeat of ISIS fighters—culminating in the death of the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—has reduced violence in Iraq and Syria, that has not spelled the end of the movement. And while the Trump administration’s approach to Syria has been quixotic, few observers expect the Biden administration to expand the U.S. military footprint in a region that many in the U.S. would prefer to leave behind.

Protections for human rights remain relatively fragile across the region, particularly when it comes to political dissidents, women and minority communities. Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have cracked down on civil society groups and political opponents. Most recently, several countries have used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to limit or ban political protest movements that had already brought down two governments in North Africa and threatened others. Biden has said he’ll make human rights a priority of his foreign policy, potentially setting up a showdown with America’s regional security partners.

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