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  • The Middle East is one of the most complex regions in the world:

  • Currently there are 4 failing states and 3 wars, with major powers increasingly taking

  • opposite sides.

  • Countless armed militias and terrorist groups are spreading violence across borders.

  • The region has seen conflict after conflict going back well into the 20th century.

  • But among all the uprisings, civil wars, and insurgencies, two countries always seem to

  • be involved: Saudi Arabia and Iran.

  • They're bitter rivals, and their feud is the key to understanding conflicts in the

  • Middle East.

  • The Saudis and Iranians have never actually declared war on each other.

  • Instead, they fight indirectly by supporting opposing sides in other countries and inciting

  • conflicts.

  • This is known as proxy warfare.

  • And it's had a devastating effect on the region.

  • Countries, especially poor ones, can't function if there are larger countries pulling strings

  • within their borders.

  • Both the Saudis and the Iranians,

  • see these civil wars as both tremendous threats,

  • and also potentially enormous opportunities.

  • The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has become a fight over influence, and the whole region is a

  • battlefield.

  • It's why the rivalry is being called: a Cold War.

  • The most famous cold war was fought for 40

  • years between the United States and Soviet Union.

  • Looking forward to the day when their flag would fly over the entire world.

  • They never declared war on each other, but

  • clashed in proxy wars around the world.

  • Each side supported dictators, rebel groups, and intervened in civil wars to contain the

  • other.

  • Like the US and Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia and Iran are two powerful rivals - but instead

  • of fighting for world dominance, they're fighting over control of the Middle East.

  • In order to understand the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, let's go back to the origins of each country.

  • In the early 1900s, the Arabian peninsula was a patchwork of tribes under the control

  • of the Ottoman Empire.

  • After World War I, the empire collapsed, leaving these tribes to fight each other for power.

  • One tribe from the interior, the al-Saud, eventually conquered most of the peninsula.

  • In 1932, they were recognized as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  • 6 years later, massive oil reserves were discovered in Saudi Arabia, and, in an instant, the Saudi

  • monarchy was rich.

  • That oil money built roads and cities all around the desert country - and

  • it helped forge an alliance with the US.

  • On the eastern side of the Persian Gulf, another country was emerging, but having a much harder

  • time.

  • Iran also had massive oil reserves and an even bigger Muslim population.

  • But constant foreign intervention was creating chaos.

  • Since the 18th century, Iran had been invaded by the Russians and British twice.

  • In 1953, the US secretly staged a coup, removing the popular prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh.

  • In his place, they propped up a monarch, Reza Shah, who was aggressively reforming Iran

  • into a secular, westernized country.

  • But he harbored corruption and terrorized the population with his secret police, the

  • Savak.

  • By the 1970s, both Saudi Arabia and Iran had oil-based economies and had governments heavily

  • backed by the US, but the feelings among each population were very different:

  • Ultimately at the end of the day, the Shah of Iran, powerful as he was, simply

  • did not have the same control over his people or ultimately the same legitimacy and affection

  • that the Saudi people felt towards their monarchy at that point in time.

  • That's because Iran's Muslims felt stifled by the Shah's reformations and by the end

  • of the decade, they finally fought back.

  • Iran's Islamic revolution overthrew a powerful regime,

  • that boasted military might.

  • It's really in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic revolution

  • overthrow the Shah, that the real tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran begins.

  • Ayatollah Khomeini was a Muslim clergyman, who preached against Western-backed secular

  • monarchies.

  • He advocated for a government that popular, Islamic, and led by the clergy.

  • And In 1979, he led a revolution to establish just that.

  • It was a massive international event that prompted reactions around the world especially

  • in Saudi Arabia.

  • The Iranian Revolution terrified the government of Saudi Arabia.

  • They were fearful that Ayatollah Khomeini

  • would inspire their populations to rise up against them,

  • exactly the way he had caused the Iranian population

  • to rise up against the Shah.

  • There was a religious threat too.

  • Up until now, the Saudis had claimed to be the leaders of the Muslim world.

  • Largely because Islam's two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina are in Saudi Arabia.

  • But Khomeini claimed his popular revolution made Iran the legitimate Muslim state.

  • There was another divide; Saudi Arabia's population is mostly Sunni, the majority sect

  • of Islam, while Khomeini and Iran are mostly Shia.

  • Westerners always make a mistake by drawing an analogy between the

  • Sunni-Shia split and the Protestant-Catholic split within Christianity.

  • The Sunni-Shia split was never as violent.

  • And in much of the Islamic world,

  • when Sunnis and Shia were living in close proximity,

  • they got along famously well.

  • So, while the Sunni-Shia split was not a reason for the rivalry, it was an important division.

  • After the revolution, the Saudi's fears came to life when Iran beganexporting

  • its revolution”.

  • This CIA report from 1980 details how the Iranian started helping groups, mostly Shia,

  • trying to overthrow governments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia.

  • And they prompted the Saudis

  • to redouble their efforts, to fight against Iran.

  • They bolstered their alliance with the US and formed the GCC, an alliance with other

  • gulf monarchies.

  • The stage was set for conflict.

  • 20 second. Iraqi planes attacked Mehrabad Airport outside

  • Tehran. Iraq was gambling on a short sharp...

  • The rise of Iran as a regional power threatened

  • other neighboring countries as well.

  • In September 1980, Iraq, under the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran.

  • He was hoping to stop the Iranian revolution, gain power, and annex some of Iran's oil

  • reserves.

  • But they didn't get far.

  • The war bogged down into stalemate complete with trench warfare, chemical weapons and

  • heavy civilian casualties.

  • When Iran started winning, the Saudis panicked, and came to Iraq's rescue.

  • They provided money, weapons, and logistical help.

  • So it becomes critical to the Saudis that they build up Iraq, and build it up into a

  • wall that can hold back the Iranian torrent that they have unleashed.

  • The Saudi help allowed Iraq to fight until 1988.

  • By then, nearly a million people had died.

  • Iranians largely blamed the Saudis for the war and the feud escalated.

  • Fast forward 15 years and Iraq again became the scene of a proxy war.

  • In 2003 the US invaded Iraq and overthrew

  • Saddam Hussein.

  • Neither Saudi Arabia or Iran wanted this to happen, since Iraq had been acting as a buffer

  • between them.

  • But problems arose when the US struggled to replace Saddam.

  • The United States has no idea what it is doing in Iraq after 2003.

  • And it makes one mistake after another, that creates a security vacuum,

  • and a failed state, and drives Iraq into all-out civil war.

  • Without a government, armed militias took control of Iraq, splintering the population.

  • Sunni and Shia militias suddenly sprang up all over the country.

  • Many were radical Islamist groups who saw an opportunity to gain power amidst the chaos.

  • These militias were readymade proxies for Saudi Arabia and Iran, and they both seized

  • the opportunity to try and gain power.

  • The Saudis started sending money and weapons to the Sunni militias, and Iran; the Shia.

  • Iraq was suddenly a proxy war with Saudi Arabia and Iran supporting opposing sides.

  • That trend continued into the Arab Spring, a series of anti-monarchy, pro-democracy protests

  • that swept through the Middle East in 2011.

  • This had very different consequences for Saudi Arabia and Iran:

  • That is terrifying to the Saudis who are the

  • ultimate status quo power.

  • They want the region stable, and they don't want anbody

  • rising up and overthrowing a sclerotic, autocratic government,

  • for fear that it might inspire their own people

  • to do the same.

  • The Iranians are the ultimate anti-status quo power,

  • they have been trying for decades to overturn

  • the regional order.

  • Each country threw their weight behind different groups, all over the Middle East.

  • Just like in Iraq, the Saudis began supporting Sunni groups and governments while Iran helps

  • Shia groups rise up against them.

  • In Tunisia, the Saudi's backed a dictator while the Iranians stoked protests.

  • In Bahrain, Iran supported Shia leaders seeking to overthrow the government.

  • Saudi Arabia, in turn, sent troops to help quash the unrest.

  • Both got involved in Libya, Lebanon and Morocco

  • As Saudi Arabia and Iran put more and more pressure on these countriesthey began

  • to collapse.

  • Now the feud has gone a step further, with both countries deploying their own militaries.

  • In Yemen, the Saudi military is on the ground helping the central government.

  • They are fighting the rebels, called the Houthis, who are an Iranian proxy group.

  • The reverse is happening in Syria. The Iranian military is fighting side by side with militias,

  • some of them extremists groups like Hezbollah, in support of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

  • They are fighting rebel Sunni groups, who are Saudi proxies.

  • The more civil wars that broke out in the Middle East, the more Saudi Arabia and Iran

  • became involved.

  • Neither the government of Saudi Arabia nor the government

  • of Iran are looking for a fight.

  • But the problem is these civil wars create circumstances that no one could have predicted.

  • Both the Iranians and the Saudis feel that their vital national interests,

  • are threatened, are in jeopardy,

  • because of different things happening in these civil wars,

  • things they blame each other for.

  • Now the cold war is drawing in other countries.

  • The Saudi government is threatening Qatar, a tiny Gulf state that was developing ties

  • with Iran.

  • Meanwhile in Syria and Iraq, the terrorist group, ISIS is nearing defeat and both the

  • Saudis and Iranians are angling to take control of that territory.

  • It's a Cold war that's becoming incredibly unpredictable.

  • As the Middle East continues to destabilize, its hard to say how far these countries will go.

The Middle East is one of the most complex regions in the world:

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中東の冷戦を解説 (The Middle East's cold war, explained)

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    阜東伐 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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