1. 7/01/2016 1:23 pmExecution becomes a trigger in complex Middle East conflict | HeraldSun
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Execution becomes a trigger in complex Middle East conflict
An Iranian woman holds up a poster showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Picture: AP
IF 2015 was a bloody and turbulent year in the Middle East, it nevertheless ended
with glimmers of hope.
After almost five years, more than a quarter of a million deaths and five million
refugees, a negotiated end to the civil war in Syria and the promise of a concerted
effort to overcome IS were finally in sight.
That was due in no small measure to Iran, a key backer of the Assad regime in Syria,
rejoining the community of nations and beginning to play a constructive role in
regional affairs.
Sadly, 2016 began with a new threat to those hopes. Before his execution last
Saturday, few people outside the Middle East were familiar with Sheik Nimr al-Nimr.
A second-tier Shia sheik regarded as non-violent but politically outspoken, Nimr was
an increasingly popular figure among youth in Saudi Arabia’s overlooked Shia
minority community.
Nimr’s execution, together with three of his followers, came as 43 Sunni extremists
linked to IS were also put to death.

2. 7/01/2016 1:23 pmExecution becomes a trigger in complex Middle East conflict | HeraldSun
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Last weekend’s killings bring to a total of 200 those executed in the kingdom since
King Salman ascended the throne a year ago, representing a twofold increase.
They are clearly intended as a warning to all dissidents who threaten the Saudi royal
family and the status quo in this increasingly precarious kingdom.
The implications of the executions, however, go well beyond Saudi domestic politics.
They play into a decades-old rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a contest that is
played out in a series of proxy conflicts including the ongoing civil war in Yemen,
conflict in Iraq and Syria and tensions in Lebanon.
Iraqi Shiite protesters chant slogans against the Saudi government as they hold posters showing Sheikh Nimr
al-Nimr. Picture: AP
International media coverage tends to present this as a story of age-old rivalry
between Sunni Muslims, who represent about 85 per cent of the world’s 1.6 billion
Muslims, and the Shia.
While it is true that the Sunni-Shia schism developed 14 centuries ago, in the
decades immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the current tensions
are the product of modern rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran since its revolution.
The dispute about who should lead the community led to the Shia developing a view
of political and spiritual authority that is somewhat analogous to the notion of
apostolic succession found in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian tradition.

3. 7/01/2016 1:23 pmExecution becomes a trigger in complex Middle East conflict | HeraldSun
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Nevertheless, over the centuries Sunni and Shia communities have largely coexisted
without conflict and have frequently intermarried.
In recent decades, however, both Saudi Arabia and Iran have exploited sectarian
sentiment and used proxy militia to counter each other. The 1979 revolution in Iran
began as a popular uprising but was hijacked by Islamic extremists aligned with
Ayatollah Khomeini.
In 1980 Iran was attacked by neighbouring Iraq, the world’s other large Shia-majority
nation.
The brutal eight-year war that followed saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Arab, Sunni-led
but largely Shia forces, supported by Saudi Arabia, fighting Iran’s Persian Shia
military.
The 20th century’s longest conventional war cost both sides dearly. More than a
million lives and a trillion dollars were lost in a conflict that served only to consolidate
Islamist extremism in Iran, entrench the Saudi-Iranian cold war and lay the
foundation for Iraq’s current problems.
IT was only in 2015 that Iran began to break free of the legacy of that past. The
nuclear accord agreed to in July that made this possible was supported by the UN
Security Council and the EU but was vehemently opposed by Saudi Arabia. Last year
may have been good for Iran but it was a disastrous year for the kingdom.
The collapse in the price of oil cost Saudi Arabia dearly. By the end of the year the
budget deficit blew out to 100 billion dollars while the Saudi military became bogged
down in a hapless campaign against Yemen’s Shia Houthi insurgency.
Like the rest of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has a very young population — half are
under the age of 25 — but, despite substantial investment in education, it has failed
to emulate the achievements of other Gulf states in transitioning beyond the oil
economy and faces an increasingly restive population.
That is manifested in part in the rise of, first, al-Qaeda and now IS, groups that owe
their ideological origins to offshoots of the particular kind of Islamic fundamentalism
that has underpinned the authority of the House of Saud but which now threatens to
destroy it, combined with Egyptian Islamism.
A dozen years ago, in an infamous meeting with dissidents, the late Crown Prince
Nayef, long-serving interior minister and brother of King Salman, warned that, “What

4. 7/01/2016 1:23 pmExecution becomes a trigger in complex Middle East conflict | HeraldSun
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we won by the sword, we will keep by the sword”.
In the years that followed he oversaw the arrests of many Saudi activists linked to
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Despite supporting Wahhabi fundamentalism, the
Saudi elite is deeply allergic to Islamist politics of the kind championed by the
Muslim Brothers.
That explains why Saudi Arabia has bankrolled the authoritarian regime of President
el-Sisi and supported his repression of the Brothers following the July 2013 military
coup in Egypt.
In the wake of the collapse of diplomatic relations, Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesman Hossein Jaberi-Ansari said: “Saudi Arabia, gripped by crises inside and
outside its territories, follows the policy of increasing regional tensions.”
The same could equally be said for Iran. A lot more is at stake here than Saudi-
Iranian relations. What is needed will not come from the sword.
GREG BARTON IS PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL ISLAMIC POLITICS AT THE ALFRED
DEAKIN INSTITUTE AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE AUSTRALIAN INTERVENTION
SUPPORT HUB AT DEAKIN UNIVERSITY AND THE ANU