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1
IRAN, IRAQ, AND SAUDI ARABIA IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY
As seen, a state is considered threatening by another if it is perceived as different, if its intentions are perceived as aggressive, and if it possesses greater power than the first. These variables—namely identity, an estimate of intentions, and relative power—elucidate the sense of threat Saudi Arabia has perceived from Iran since the 1970s. Being by far the largest state of the Persian Gulf region, Iran has traditionally stoked the anxiety of its neighbors. Moreover, in the 1970s, the Saudi leadership exhibited concern over a massive military build-up Iran was then pursuing, although the threat the Saudis perceived at that time was mitigated by the fact that both states were conservative monarchies allied to the United States.
By contrast, following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when the Shah’s conservative regime was replaced by Shiʿa revolutionaries, Iran appeared to become highly threatening to the Saudis. The Iranian revolutionaries not only stated their intention to export the revolution abroad, but also became embroiled in an eightyear war with Iraq. During this period, Saudi leaders began to view their neighbor through the lens of an enemy image, inferring that revolutionary Iran harbored malign intent, namely to impose its hegemony on the region at the expense of the existing Gulf regimes, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This episode is of the utmost importance, as the beliefs that were established among the Saudi leadership during this period—specifically, that the Islamic Republic was expansionist—would continue to shape their perception of it thereafter. The second half of this chapter reveals that Saudi leaders continued to assess Iranian intentions as hegemonic in the 1990s, and subsequent chapters will demonstrate that they adhered to this view in the 2000s, which in turn shaped their perception of Iraq’s post-2003 Shiʿa ascendance. Indeed, the beliefs established among the Saudis in the 1980s about Iranian expansionism have continued to shape their perception of Iran to the present day.
But the Saudi leadership regarded not only revolutionary Iran as highly threatening during the tumultuous 1980s; they also felt threatened by their ostensible ally in the war with Iran—Baʿthist Iraq. The Saudis had suspected since before the Iranian Revolution that Saddam Hussein himself sought to project his dominance onto the region, and their fears were realized when two years following the conclusion of the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq invaded and annexed its tiny neighbor, Kuwait. Having considered Iran as the bigger threat in the 1980s, the Saudis saw Saddam Hussein as their primary enemy following the invasion of Kuwait. Indeed, during the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the Saudis sought Saddam’s removal from power. Critically, however, what they wanted to take place in Iraq was a palace coup, not the empowerment of the country’s Shiʿa majority, as would occur after 2003.
Saudi Perceptions of Iran in the 1970s
Saudi anxieties about Iran predate the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In 1968, Britain, which had been the predominant power in the Persian Gulf since the nineteenth century, announced its plan to withdraw from the Gulf by 1971. Iran, then under the leadership of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, immediately sought to fill the power vacuum that would thereby be created. The Shah’s ambition was supported by the Nixon administration, which was itself concerned about Soviet penetration into the region following the British departure.1 In order to establish Iran’s regional primacy, the Shah invested heavily in developing his military capabilities, with Iran’s defense expenditure increasing more than tenfold over the course of the 1970s, from $779 million in 1970 to $7.9 billion seven years later.2 The Shah, with the support of the Nixon administration, also purchased American weapons on an enormous scale: Iranian arms imports, amounting to $264 million in 1970, rose to $2.6 billion in 1977.3 At this time, Iran’s armed forces stood at more than five times the size of those of Saudi Arabia.4
Identity, however, actually mitigated the sense of threat the Saudis perceived from Iran in this period. Although Iran was predominantly Persian and Shiʿa, in comparison to predominantly Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia, its “otherness” in the eyes of Saudi leaders was tempered by the fact that both states were conservative, pro-U.S. monarchies. Iran and Saudi Arabia generally regarded themselves as aligned, therefore, against their radical, pro-Soviet neighbors, such as Iraq, which had fallen under the control of the Arab nationalist Baʿth Party as a result of a 1968 coup. In fact, the Baʿthists were then providing support to subversive groups in the Gulf monarchies, leading the Saudis to regard Iraq as more threatening than Iran at this point.5 As the British were preparing to depart the Gulf region, the Shah and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia therefore reached an accommodation over the new regional order, whereby the Shah recognized the Arab side of the Gulf, including the newly independent states of Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence, while Faisal recognized Iran’s role as guardian of Persian Gulf waters.6
Nevertheless, Iran’s massive military buildup still produced significant concern within the Saudi leadership over its intentions, especially after the Shah began to deploy his power in the Gulf. Most significantly, Iran occupied the strategic Gulf islands of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb, located near the Strait of Hormuz and claimed by the UAE, in 1971. Such maneuvers created anxiety on the part of the Saudi leadership, as well as in the ruling circles of the smaller Gulf Arab states.7 According to a 1975 U.S. diplomatic cable, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz reported that the Saudi leadership was “increasingly disturbed by the Iranian arms buildup,” which he said was provoking “suspicion” among them that “Iran really did have aggressive intentions on the Arab side of the Gulf.”8 Iranian intervention on the Arab littoral would violate the Shah’s agreement with Faisal, whereby he had recognized this zone as the Saudi sphere of influence. During the Shah’s reign, therefore, the Saudi leadership cooperated with him, but remained wary that he harbored intentions to expand into what they regarded as their own backyard.9
Thus, the Saudi leadership began to perceive threat from an increasingly powerful Iran following Britain’s departure from the Persian Gulf, even though the identities that the two states shared as conservative monarchies and allies of the U.S. reduced, for the time being, the degree of threat they detected. Nevertheless, with the fall of the Shah in 1979 and the rise of an anti-U.S., revolutionary Shiʿa regime in Tehran, Iran would truly become the “other” in Saudi eyes. Moreover, the new Iranian regime would explicitly assert an intention to export its revolution abroad and even to overthrow Iraq’s Baʿthist regime. From 1979, therefore, the sense of threat the Saudi leadership perceived from Iran would rise dramatically.
The Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq War
In early 1979, the Shah fled Iran as a result of popular protests that had escalated over the previous year, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who would become the foremost leader of the Iranian Revolution, returned to the country in triumph after fourteen years in exile. During his period of exile in the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf, Khomeini had formulated an Islamist political philosophy known as velayat e-faqih in Farsi, or wilayat al-faqih in Arabic, meaning guardianship of the Islamic jurist and calling for a government under the supreme authority of the leading Islamic scholar. In late 1979, the Iranian public voted to adopt a constitution enshrining Khomeini’s doctrine for the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. Moreover, from early 1980, Khomeini declared that Iran would export its revolution throughout the world; he proclaimed that the revolution was not meant for Iran alone, but was intended for all peoples everywhere.10 These events had significant repercussions throughout the Gulf region. In Iraq, the Baʿthist authorities responded by initiating a severe crackdown on the Iraqi Shiʿa religious community in the spring of 1979. Brutally suppressed by the Baʿthists, members of this community would take positions of power in post-2003 Iraq. Then, in September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, leading to a devastating eight-year war between the two countries. For their part, the Saudi leadership blamed the Iran–Iraq War on Iran, even though it had been initiated by Iraq. During this period, the Saudi leadership even began to perceive revolutionary Iran through the lens of an enemy image, inferring that it sought to expand throughout the Gulf at the expense of Iraq and the Gulf Arab monarchies. Iraq’s response to the Iranian Revolution is addressed first, before turning to that of Saudi Arabia.
Iraq and the Iranian Revolution
Saddam Hussein, who formally took power as president of Iraq in 1979, regarded the revolution in Iran as a source of both threat and opportunity, and his fear and ambition impelled him to order the invasion.11 Identity lay at the heart of the new Islamic Republic’s threat, as perceived by the Baʿthists, while a momentarily favorable balance of power between the two countries informed the sense of opportunity they detected. The Baʿthists perceived threat from revolutionary Iran principally because of its “otherness”—as well as its apparent commonality with Iraq’s own restive Shiʿa religious establishment. Indeed, the revolution took place at a time when the Baʿthist regime’s relations with the Shiʿa religious community were already fraught. Relations had deteriorated since the Baʿthists took power in 1968. The following year, in the wake of a crisis with Iran over the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway that separates southern Iraq from its neighbor, the Baʿthist regime sought to exploit the tensions with Iran to implement measures to constrict the clerical community’s traditional independence, for instance expelling some 20,000 members of the community from Iraq, alleging they were Iranian.12 Five years later, detecting the growth of Shiʿa Islamist opposition, the regime executed five members of the Daʿwa Party, an organization of Shiʿa ulama and educated laymen established in Najaf in the late 1950s. In 1977, a massive confrontation took place between the Baʿthist authorities and the Shiʿa religious establishment during a religious procession from Najaf to Karbala. Some 30,000 pilgrims, defying an official ban on the procession, were intercepted on their way to Karbala by Iraqi army units; some 2,000 pilgrims were arrested, 16 were reported killed, and 8 of the participants were later sentenced to death.13
The revolution in Iran then led to an escalation in the ongoing crisis between the Baʿthists and the Iraqi Shiʿa Islamists.
Days after Khomeini’s return to Iran, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr, a leading Iraqi cleric based in Najaf, declared a public holiday to celebrate the revolution. Al-Sadr had helped establish the Daʿwa Party and served as its principal ideologue, and that spring al-Sadr’s followers in the party traveled to Najaf and openly pledged their allegiance to him. In response, the Baʿthist authorities initiated a harsh crackdown on the Daʿwa Party, arresting some 5,000 members, of whom about 200 were executed or killed under torture. A substantial number of the Daʿwa members who were released fled abroad.14 Nevertheless, the domestic crisis continued to escalate. While the remnants of the Daʿwa Party left inside Iraq were no longer able to stage any sort of mass challenge to the Baʿthists, in early 1980, they began to instigate a series of small-scale bombings to continue their resistance.15 That March, Daʿwa Party membership was made a capital offense, and the following month a Shiʿa militant made an assassination attempt on Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. In the wake of that incident, the Baʿthists executed Ayatollah al-Sadr, which sent shock waves through the wider Shiʿa population of the Gulf. A massive popular protest was mounted in Bahrain to protest the execution, while the Iranian revolutionaries called for a “jihad” against the Iraqi regime.16 Following al-Sadr’s execution, Khomeini himself exhorted Iraqis to take up arms against Saddam Hussein to overthrow his regime.17 Thus, the Iranian Revolution began to undermine the basis of the Baʿthists’ power. The revolution in Iran impelled the Iraqi Shiʿa Islamists to mobilize, which in turn impelled the Baʿthists to crack down o...
