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| Volume X, Summer 2003, Number 2 |
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| EXCERPT: Saudi Arabian-Iranian Relations: External Rapprochement and Internal Consolidation |
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| Gwenn Okruhlik |
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Dr. Okruhlik is a visiting scholar in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin and a Fulbright research scholar at the King Faisal Foundation Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The author thanks Patrick Conge, Richard Norton, James Bill and Bahman Baktiari for their support and criticism.
Within the discipline of
sociology and the field of
international relations is
found a longstanding proposition that regimes in trouble at home create enemies abroad. The idea is that external conflict leads to internal cohesion. When a population perceives an external threat, its members coalesce to face the common enemy; they "rally around the flag." Creating an enemy is an effective means to boost the popularity of a regime and deflect attention from pressing domestic problems.1
By any measure, the 1990s were an enormously difficult decade for Saudi Arabia. Begun with the turmoil of the Gulf War, the decade was witness to opposition, Islamism, succession struggles, demonstrations, internal challenges and socioeconomic distress. Yet in a time of domestic uncertainty and instability, the regime nurtured a risky and innovative foreign policy. There were certainly other choices. Why risk rapprochement with an old enemy at a time of uncertainty at home? Why not maintain the status quo? Better yet, why not exacerbate the threat in order to solidify the position of the Al Saud family? More precisely, why did the leadership in Saudi Arabia think it would be better to moderate relations with an old enemy in the face of pressing domestic problems rather than painting Iran as the specter of evil?
In this paper, I examine the ongoing rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The symbolic and material context of this relationship is of critical importance. The Gulf region has 65 percent of the world's proven reserves of crude oil and 33 percent of its natural-gas reserves. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the first and second largest producers within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Given their strategic location, both have been the site of an intense arms race. They have been a key ally and an enemy of the United States. These two countries also claim leadership of the Sunni and Shia portions of the Islamic community (umma). At first blush, these appear to be strange bedfellows. On the surface, the ongoing rapprochement between old enemies does not seem to make much sense. Yet, if we dig deeper, we find multiple reasons, not least among them the prominence of the United States in the region.
1 See, for example, Patrick Conge, From Revolution to War: State Relations in a World of Change (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1956); Jack Levy, "The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique," Handbook of War Studies, ed. Manus Midlarsky (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Arthur Stein, "Conflict and Cohesion," Journal of Conflict Resolution, No. 20, pp. 143-72 and The Nation at War (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1980); and Michael Stohl, "The Nexus of Civil and International Conflict," Handbook of Political Conflict, ed. Ted Robert Gurr (New York: Free Press, 1980).
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