If Iran is such a great threat that it justifies Saudi Arabia’s crude intervention in other Mideast countries’ internal affairs – see, for example Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s recent resignation – then why hasn’t Riyadh imposed sanctions on Pakistan? There are two answers to that. First, Saudi Arabia needs Pakistan in its “Sunni” coalition. But no less important, for the time being, it can’t do without Pakistani workers. Lebanon, in contrast, is just a pawn.
One could pose a similar question to Riyadh about its close ties with Turkey, another economic and strategic ally of Tehran. Two years ago, Turkey joined Saudi Arabia’s Sunni alliance (after initially being ostracized by it) without being required to sever its ties with Iran – something Riyadh has demanded of Qatar, though not of the United Arab Emirates, whose trade with Iran is even more extensive. Evidently, the Saudis recognize the limits of their war against Iran. [...]
Egypt, for instance, is Israel’s ally in the war against Sunni terrorist organizations in Sinai and the Gaza Strip, and it defines Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Yet it also opposes Saudi Arabia’s aggressive stance against Iran and Hezbollah. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri is visiting several Mideast countries this week in an effort to persuade Riyadh and its allies to use diplomacy rather than military threats. Egypt also “rebelled” against Saudi dictates last year when it supported a Russian United Nation resolution on Syria, to which Iran was a party, and suffered Saudi economic sanctions as a result. [...]
Thus the “Sunni axis” is really a “Saudi axis.” This isn’t a group of Sunni countries driven by religious hatred of a Shi’ite country; rather, the common denominator that unites its members is their dependence on Riyadh or their desire to be its economic ally. Moreover, the claim that there’s a risk of Shi’ite Islam spreading in Sunni states portrays Sunni countries as being weak and on the defensive – as if the sweeping Sunni majority, comprising some 90 percent of all Muslims, were actually afraid of the power of the Shi’ites, who comprise only about 10 percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.
No comments:
Post a Comment