The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Iran had a hostile relationship that extended for long periods, the most important of which was the religious orientation at the forefront of the political scene in both countries, followed by several political and expansionist factors, as the effects of hostility began to become evident during the Iranian revolution in 1979. Both nation-states represent the two main Islamic sects, the Shiites. And the Sunnis, which contributed to fueling the dispute between the two countries. Both countries have supported opposing sides in various conflicts, including in Syria during its civil war and in Yemen as well as Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain.

The Arab Spring in 2011 caused political instability across the Middle East against the status quo. Iran and Saudi Arabia took advantage of this unrest to expand their influence, particularly in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. In Bahrain, where Shiites protested against the Sunni royal family, Saudi Arabia sent troops to quell the uprising and blamed Iran for fomenting the unrest. After the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011. In Syria, Iran supported President Bashar al-Assad and provided him with military forces and financing to fight Sunni rebels. Saudi Arabia initially supported the rebel groups but later joined a US-led coalition formed to fight ISIS since 2014. When conflict between the Houthis and the government began in 2015 in Yemen, Saudi Arabia launched an intervention in hopes of restoring a government that had been toppled by the Houthi rebels – Iran’s allies.

In 2016, after a stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite leader Nimr al-Nimr, a critic of the Saudi government. Rising tensions between the two countries escalated when a mob of Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in Mashhad. The embassy building was set on fire with Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs. Another territorial rupture occurred in June 2017 when Saudi Arabia and its allies in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar. The pretext was that Qatar was very close to Iran and supported terrorism, allegations Doha denied. These links were later fixed in early 2021.

The history of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran is one of increasing mutual suspicion. However, both countries may have realized that their rivalry hurt them more than their enemy, both politically and economically. Neither side could gain any real superiority over the other and perhaps this realization prompted them to seek a new stage in their relationship. In April 2021, Iran and Saudi Arabia held their first direct talks in Baghdad, likely with the tacit approval of the United States. Between April and September 2022, four rounds of talks were held, most of them mediated by Iraq and Oman but with no tangible result.

In March 2023, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish relations after four days of previously unannounced talks in Beijing. Tehran and Riyadh agreed to “resume diplomatic relations between them and reopen their embassies and missions within a period not exceeding two months.” This decision could have both regional and international implications as it marks a new phase in their relationship. The decisive indicator for the beginning of the new relations will be the efforts made in settling outstanding regional issues between the two powers. The most important factor emerging from the normalization of relations between the two arch-rivals is the mediation of China and the shifting of the balance of power in the Middle East from a US-centric to a now Chinese-dominated one. Many Western officials and analysts have expressed concern about both Beijing’s role and the risk that the Iranian government can use restored relations with Saudi Arabia to bypass intense US and European pressure related to its nuclear programs, suppression of domestic protests, and support for Russia in Ukraine. Although the China-brokered deal faces significant challenges, it could have significant implications for regional stability. It could lead to a reduction in tensions between the two countries and possibly pave the way for cooperation on regional issues such as the conflicts in Syria and Yemen. The deal indicates that both sides have made some progress in addressing critical areas of dispute. Saudi Arabia long ago restored normalized diplomatic relations based on an Iranian commitment to escalatory steps in Yemen. Restoring relations could be a prelude for Riyadh to even formally withdraw from Yemen.

However, it is important to note that there are still many challenges that must be overcome for this relationship to improve significantly and herald meaningful stability in the region. It is expected that this convergence may take some time to reach the stage of restoring confidence. Saudi Arabia in particular is likely to view the deal more as a hedging mechanism to protect itself from Iranian attacks than as a true strategic realignment. Iran’s leaders, for their part, want Riyadh to withdraw its support for the exiled Iranian opposition, thwarting mounting Western pressure by diversifying its relations with other Gulf monarchies. Saudi Arabia has been the only major steadfast. Finally, Tehran wants to neutralize potential Israeli cooperation with Arab states for a military attack on Iran. . It remains to be seen how much Iran can use Saudi Arabia to offset the sanctions – given that Riyadh is still pushing Europe and the US to put more pressure on Iran.

The deal signals China’s increased involvement in geopolitical challenges in the Middle East.

Chinese leaders understand that instability threatens important interests, particularly in the energy field. Riyadh, in turn, sees Beijing as an increasingly credible partner in countering US disengagement, but also as the only country with real leverage over Iran, which Saudi Arabia expects to exploit. China’s role in facilitating this agreement constituted a kind of real concern for Washington. This was largely intended by Saudi leaders, who hoped that the threat of growing Chinese influence would upgrade American security guarantees. There are wide prospects and fears for some, of the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Time will ultimately tell the final lines but it is certainly a diplomatic, not a military, path.

Iran – Part III. After the Islamic Revolution

1. In 1979, the country formerly known as Persia became the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic Revolution opposed the Western secular policies of the authoritarian Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, and after his overthrow the country is run by an authoritarian Islamic theocracy. The head of state is the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who exercises ideological and political control over the state, controls the armed forces and makes decisions on security and important issues of foreign policy.

The head of government and executive power is the president, who is elected by popular vote for a four-year term and cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. There were regular elections in Iran after the Islamic Revolution and until the last presidential elections in June 2021 thirteen elections were held. The president’s power is curtailed by the Supreme Leader’s decisions, and the influence of Islamic clerics and conservatives in Iran’s coercive apparatus and judiciary.

Immediately after the Islamic Revolution, in November 1979, 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage after a group of Iranian university students took control of the embassy in Tehran. A diplomatic confrontation followed for 444 days until the hostages were released on January 20, 1981. This crisis led to the severing of US-Iranian relations and the imposition of sanctions on Iran.

Since the Shah’s era, Iraqi-Iranian relations have witnessed border problems related to border demarcation, smuggling operations, sheep grazing, and so on. (We would like to draw attention to the fact that the smuggling route across the Iraqi-Iranian borders, especially across the borders of Diyala Governorate, is an old route and has evolved over time.) Things stabilized during the rule of President Abd al-Rahman Aref after his visit to Tehran in 1967, and after the 1968 revolution, things returned to a state of progress and decline.

In September 1980, relations witnessed a rapid escalation of border demarcation problems, accompanied by Iranian bombing of some border areas, especially in Diyala governorate, which led to Iraq launching a massive attack towards the Iranian borders. The Iran-Iraq war had multiple causes and included religious divisions, border disputes, and political differences. The protracted fighting continued for eight years and ended in 1988 with a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire, although normal diplomatic relations were resumed and troops were withdrawn in August 1990. The war was one of the most devastating conflicts of the late 20th century. Casualties on both sides are estimated at 500,000 with Iran suffering even greater losses. The war added to the spread of Iranian influence and ideology in neighboring countries.

After the Islamic Revolution, to enhance its ideology and influence, Iran supported armed organizations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Hamas who are working against Israel. The United States designated Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in January 1984.

In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal negotiated with the six major world powers to benefit from uranium enrichment leading to a nuclear weapon. The United States canceled this agreement under the Trump administration in May 2018 arguing that the deal did not adequately limit Tehran’s nuclear program or address its missile program, human rights abuses, and support for terrorism. Washington reimposed sanctions as part of “maximum pressure” to change Tehran’s behaviour. In January 2020, Iran recalculated its strategy after a US strike killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. In 2021, the Biden administration launched a new diplomatic effort to get both Tehran and Washington to fully comply with the 2015 nuclear deal. The indirect talks began in the final months of former President Hassan Rouhani and have continued under current President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric who took office in August 2021, but negotiations collapsed in the fall of 2022.

In September 2022, protests erupted across Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was being held for indecent clothing. Unrest has been boiling over the years against the imposition of strict Islamic laws, the ongoing economic crisis, lack of freedom of expression, violation of women’s rights etc. and the death of the girl sparked the process.

The largest demonstrations in decades quickly evolved into calls for the overthrow of the supreme leader and an end to the Islamic Republic. Security forces responded with lethal force, killing at least 234 people, including 29 children. There were previous instances of unrest in Iran in 2009 when millions of people took to the streets after a disputed presidential election in 2017, and in 2019 due to economic hardship but the current unrest is the real revolution against the policies of the Islamic regime.

Needless to say, these protests have been fueled by Israel and other Western countries hostile to the power in Iran. The stalemate continues today and it is likely that the situation will not return to normal and there will be a regime change in Iran.

In continuation of the discussion about the Islamic Republic of Iran, we will discuss in this part the Islamic Revolution with several focal points that formed the current face of the regime in Iran and contributed to the formation of the current political features in the region, and it is :

1- The Iranian Revolution of 1979, or the Iranian coup, was a series of events that led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty and is considered the pivotal year in the contemporary era for refocusing attention away from the Cold War era. The revolution affected the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in dozens of countries over the decades that followed, and unlike most other uprisings that toppled dictators, the outcome of the Iranian struggle was not the establishment of a liberal democracy but rather a new form of expansionist authoritarian regime in the region whose effects extended beyond the borders of the Islamic Republic. intellectually and politically.

2. After the Iranian coup d’état in 1953, Reza Shah Pahlavi allied with the United States and the Western bloc to consolidate his rule in that period, and relied heavily on American support to remain in power for another 26 years. This led to the launch of the “White Revolution” and the dismissal of Parliament in 1963. It was the White Revolution that cheered many up and constituted a vigorous modernization program that overturned the wealth and influence of the landowners and clergy, further disrupted rural economies, and prompted rapid urbanization and Westernization which sparked series of concerns about democracy and human rights,

The program was economically successful, but the benefits in practice were not evenly distributed.

Opposition to the Shah’s policies intensified in the 1970s due to heavy government spending, high inflation, diminished iranian prchase power and low living standards.In addition to the economic problems and the increase in social and political repression by the Shah’s regime and the marginalization of the opposition parties, followed by political arrests and censorship on a large scale.

This feeling of disenfranchisement led to the movement of diverse segments of society, including secular thinkers, Shiite scholars and figures from the rural economic community on one platform under the populist influence of Ayatollah Khomeini. who was a former professor of philosophy in Ghavam, and was exiled in 1964 after he spoke frankly against the Shah’s alleged reforms at the time,

In the midst of the civil unrest, members of the National Front and the Tudeh Party also joined the scholars in broad opposition to the Shah’s regime.

Khomeini continued to preach in exile about the evils of the Pahlavi regime, accusing the Shah of irreligiosity and submission to foreign powers.

Which was reinforced at that time by the Shah’s dependence on the United States, his close relations with Israel and the Unstudied economic policies of his regime, which contributed to fueling the power of opposition discourse among the masses. The most widespread and most common slogan that united the various revolutionary parties and their supporters was “Let him (the Shah) go and then let it be a flood”.

3. In January 1978, thousands of young students from religious schools took to the streets due to slanderous statements directed at Khomeini in a Tehran newspaper. They were joined by thousands of unemployed youth, accompanied with the shah being exhausted from cancer and stunned by the sudden escalation of open hostilities against him, he wavered between concessions and repression.

At that time many protesters were killed by government forces which led to martial law on 8 September and further killings.

In that period and during his exile, Khomeini coordinated the escalation of opposition, first from Iraq and after 1978 from France – demanding the Shah to step down.

In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled Iran, and the regency council established to run the country failed to function or control civil strife.

A crowd of more than a million people demonstrated in Tehran, proving a wide appeal to Khomeini, who arrived in Iran on February 1.

Ten days later, the Iranian armed forces declared their neutrality, practically overthrowing the Shah’s regime.

4. On April 1, through a overwhelming ruling in the referendum, Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic Republic.

The clergy moved immediately to exclude their former intellectual left-wing nationalist ally from the position of power in the new regime and imposed a return to conservative social values.

The Family Protection Law (1967 and amended in 1975), which provided guarantees and rights for women in marriage, was declared invalid.

Revolutionary gangs stationed in mosques, known as komitehs, patrolled the streets to enforce Islamic codes of dress and behavior and administer impromptu justice to the imposed revolution.

The militias and the clergy did their best to suppress Western cultural influence. In the face of this persecution, many of the elites educated in the West fled the country.

These anti-Western sentiments eventually led to the taking of 66 hostages at the US Embassy in November 1979 by a group of Iranian protesters who demanded the extradition of the Shah, who was at the time undergoing medical treatment in America.

The Assembly of Experts formed by Khomeini ( al-Khabeerjan), dominated by the clergy, approved a new constitution through a referendum that gives broad powers to the leader, the first of which was Khomeini himself.

5. From early 1979 to 1983, Iran remained in a “revolutionary crisis mode”.

After the autocratic monarchy was overthrown, the economy and the apparatus of government collapsed and the military and secular forces were in disarray.

However, by 1983, Khomeini and his supporters had crushed the rival factions, defeated the local insurgency and consolidated their power.

The major events that shaped the crisis and its revolution were the Iran hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, and the presidency of Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr through the elections.

There is a widespread belief that what began as an authentic, anti-dictatorial popular revolt soon turned into an Islamic fundamentalist takeover of power.

Khomeini was more of a spiritual leader than a ruler. Khomeini in the mid-1970s had never held public office, walking out of Iran for a decade and telling interviewees that “religious figures don’t want to rule.”

The most important bodies of the Iranian Revolution were the Revolutionary Council, the Revolutionary Guards, the Revolutionary Courts, the Islamic Republican Party, and the Revolutionary Committees.

At its core, the Iranian Revolution of February 1979 was a revolt of society against the state, which represented not just an ordinary dictatorship but an absolutist and arbitrary regime that lacked political legitimacy and social base in almost all parts of society and subsequently ended with a more tyrannical and dictatorial regime than before with boundless expansionist ambitions.

The crisis situation in Iraq continues without a real way out of the current crisis, which brings the scene back to square one with the continuation of the existence of many proposed scenarios, which in total predict the existence of a real crisis. In this summary, we will try to summarize what is happening in the country today with several points:

1- Demonstrators stormed the Green Zone and the Republican Palace, and what happened during the storming of a clash between the armed factions, which showed the depth of the dispute between all the militias, and the breaking of the bone, so to speak, is only a simplified picture of the depth of the real dispute.

2- The resignation of the Shiite authority, Kazem Al-Haeri, in what was announced in the resignation statement, that it came because of his old age and illness. In fact, the resignation shook the political street entity, especially the Sadrist movement, headed by the leader of the movement Muqtada Al-Sadr, where the legitimate cover of the leader of the movement was derived from the presence of the Haeri authority, of course,

Al-Haeri’s resignation came to belittle the status of Najaf and the movement’s leader Muqtada Al-Sadr and direct his supporters to follow the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, especially after Al-Haeri recommended his followers to imitate the Sistani’s reference.

3- After more than ten months have passed since the elections without any signs of political consensus, which will lead us, sooner or later, to the collapse of the parliamentary system and the re-election, which will bring us back to the main point of contention.

4- The timing of the appearance of the audio leaks of many politicians and what was revealed in those recordings of two very important things for the Iraqi street. The first matter is the size of the real dispute between politicians of the same sect if the phrase is correct to use. The other matter is the extent of corruption practiced by the political class over the resources of the Iraqi people And they are betting on the silence of the people, which I do not think will last long after today.

Of course, the observer of the Iraqi affairs knows that the leaks that have been published are really intended to show the weakness of the current political class. The important question here is who owns all these recordings and ordered their publication.

5- The continuation of the political position of the coordination framework to proceed with the formation of the government without the participation of the Sadrist movement, which drew attention to the demonstrations that took place on the first of this month, which were not as large as the announcement circulated before.

6- The resignation of Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi, which in fact is a political maneuver with a redirection of attention to Parliament, whose matter has not yet been decided, and a kind of personal propaganda that the Speaker of Parliament currently needs.

7- The statements of the UN envoy to Iraq, Plasschaert, who declared the failure of the political class to manage the country in the required manner and to get out of the crisis

Biden’s visit to the Middle East comes as an embodiment of the consistent American strategic policy for our region, which he summarized as follows:

1/ Israel’s security

2/ Control and domination of oil, gas and energy sources in the region

3 / Minimizing (not ending) the Iranian role in the Arab region

Later, other objectives can be added to this strategic policy according to the development of the situation in the world and the region, which are:

1/ Putting pressure on the Arab Gulf states to increase their oil production and reduce their prices to compensate for the shortage of Russian oil and gas due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, which America is striving to prolong its duration to drain and destroy Russia

2/ The American fear of Russian and Chinese expansion in the region and filled with the American vacuum, which Biden admitted, saying, “We made a mistake when we neglected the Middle East.”

We will discuss in this study from Biden’s visit its impact on Iraq’s crisis situation along the line, and here we must mention the most important thing in this visit is what Biden personally announced linking Iraq to the electrical system of the Arab Gulf states through Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and here I want to clarify the following:-

1/ Why does America not obligate its major companies to reconstruct, rehabilitate and build the electrical stations that were destroyed by its military forces and missiles during its abhorrent, illegal, immoral occupation, contrary to the independence and sovereignty of states and contrary to human rights!!!! Instead of linking us once to Iran and at other times to the neighboring countries and the Gulf

2/ Why doesn’t America allow major companies from other countries to build and rehabilitate electrical stations in Iraq like what these companies did in Egypt!!!

3 / What will be secured from the Gulf connection is 1500 megawatts, while Iraq’s actual need exceeds (20) thousand megawatts, and thus it will be a temporary prosthetic solution and a media gain that is nothing but

4 / The Iraqi agreement on the electrical connection took place 4 years ago and did not advance a single step and remained ink on paper, because the economic, security and political decision is in the hands of Iran, which opposes and prevents any Iraqi rapprochement with the Arabs

5 / The connection requires infrastructure that can only be secured by exceptional efforts and continuous and continuous work from one year to a year and a half at least.

The most important question remains

Will Iran and its tails remain idle, and it is the one who considers Iraq’s need for electric power its important market and lung from which it breathes in order to obtain billions and to circumvent the international sanctions imposed on it, even if they are in fact formal sanctions?

In order to reach the truth and understand the Iraqi situation, in light of the violent waves of wishes for change in Iraq, it is necessary to answer the following questions:-

1/ Is America really dissatisfied or upset with what is happening in Iraq?? She is the one who founded and supervised the failed political process in it!! She is the one who has supported and supported the political parties and personalities of this process until now!!

2/ Does America really want a developed, prosperous, stable, sovereign, independent and democratic Iraq that will be a model in the Middle East….

We leave the answer to these questions for the days, and the silent majority has the final say in the end.