Are Iran and Saudi Arabia Heading Toward War?
May 20, 2017
Relations across the Persian Gulf are deteriorating fast. Iran and Saudi Arabia are once again at daggers drawn and sounding highly menacing to each other. The last time they were on the verge of a showdown, which they eventually averted, was in early 2016 following the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a populist Saudi Shi’a cleric and political activist. Al-Nimr’s execution triggered the sacking of Saudi embassy in Tehran and Riyadh’s breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran. The latest round of war of words, sparked by Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, points to worsening hostility between the two countries – a situation fraught with the dangers of war.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in a widely circulated interview on May 3 last, accused Iran of harboring “an extremist ideology” and signaled a policy shift from the kingdom’s rivalry with Iran, so long played out by proxy forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, to a war to be fought on Iranian soil. He said Saudi Arabia is “a primary target for the Iranian regime” and declared: “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. We’ll work so that the battle is for them in Iran”. The bellicose words from the prince predictably provoked a harsher response from Iran. Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan, in an interview with Lebanon’s Arabic language Al-Manar TV, hit back at Riyadh and warned: “If the Saudis do anything ignorant, we will leave no area untouched except Mecca and Medina”.
