Juan José Escobar Stemmann & Gonzalo Arana
Saudi Arabia-Iran: A Long Pattern of Enmity
No bilateral relationship in the Middle East has played such a crucial role for the region as the one between Saudi Arabia and Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini took power after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The emergence of a regional power that challenged Saudi leadership among Muslims opened the door to one of the most important patterns of enmity in the region over recent decades, provoking a long sectarian conflict that has transformed societies and altered cultural and religious references in the Middle East.1
The transformation of Iranian foreign policy after the 1979 revolution, characterized by a mix of Islamic, nationalist, and revolutionary causes, was interpreted by the Gulf monarchies as an existential threat. Tehran’s calls to export the Iranian revolution to other territories and the description of the Gulf leaders as illegitimate increased the insecurity of Saudi Arabia, which feared that the new Iranian regime would seek regional hegemony. This led Riyadh to reorient its identity more toward Sunni Islam and openly oppose Iran. For its part, Iran has long nurtured a sense of civilizational superiority toward the Arab world, but its policies have also been conditioned by threats from its neighbors. The support of the Arab states for the Iranian anti-revolutionary forces and, above all, their assistance to Iraq in its war against Iran (1980-88) had a significant influence on the Iranian sense of insecurity. This explains the birth of the “forward defense strategy,” whose first component was the creation of Hezbollah in 1986 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.2
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