The currently ongoing war involving the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States, and the State of Israel has been a long time in the making and is the direct result of the long-standing ideological challenges that the regime in Tehran has posed to the Middle East and the world. Iran’s revolutionary zeal has driven a variety of aggressive foreign policy initiatives over the past decades that destabilized neighboring countries, planted the seeds of terror around the world, and threatened other nation-states with nuclear annihilation. And while the US, Israel, and Arab states of the Gulf find themselves joining efforts to address what has clearly become a common enemy, an uncomfortable reality is that the Wahhabist lens through which Saudi Arabia peers at the region and the world, which has been long tolerated and simultaneously feared by Washington, may very well re-emerge as the next ideological challenge that the international community faces in the Middle East.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini’s radical ideology of exporting extremism sought for decades to reshape the Middle East and position Iran as a transformative power on the international stage of geopolitics. This has positioned Tehran as a natural foe of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and brought about an ever-deepening sectarian rift between the Sunni and Shia worlds of Islam. On the other hand, the US and the camp that represents “Western values” have been outright identified as enemies of the Islamic Republic, while their utter and complete destruction was explicitly advocated for by Iran. This view directly led to the financing of proxy militias from Lebanon to Yemen, the enrichment of uranium, the production of ballistic missiles, and threats of producing nuclear weapons. As the joint US-Israeli strikes continue and Gulf states are preparing for potentially intervening, anti-Iran actors must grapple with the endurance and tenacity of Islamic Republic ideology.
Paradoxically, Saudi Arabia is a US ally with its own ideological project and a history of deploying extremist ideology as a strategic instrument in its own way. Just as revolutionary ideology was embedded in the foundations of the Islamic Republic, Wahhabism is deeply intertwined with the historical identity of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom emerged as an alliance between the Al Saud family and clerics who promoted Wahhabism as the monarchy’s guiding doctrine. Wahhabism has been criticized for its teachings that allow radical interpretations of Islam, promote a strict version of social conservatism, and fervently reject many other peaceful and moderate forms of Islam that some other Gulf countries practice. Strict monotheism, takfir—the practice of declaring other Muslims to be unbelievers—and rejecting moderate versions of Islam have been adopted from Wahhabi teachings by the terrorist groups that have become household names in the 21st century, the most notorious of which are Al-Qaeda and numerous iterations of the Islamic State (also known as Daesh).
Another parallel between Iran and Saudi Arabia’s ideological histories has been their foreign dimension. The discovery of oil transformed Saudi Arabia into an economically powerful actor, and as the direct challenge of Iran’s ideological rise emerged, the road was open for Riyadh to engage in its own influence campaign. For decades, Saudi Arabia invested billions of dollars in the promotion of Wahhabism by means of religious outreach, the construction of mosques, and the founding of schools and institutes in the Middle East, Asia, and parts of Africa and Europe. Saudi Arabia has branded itself as the custodian of Islam’s holy sites and the leader of the Muslim world and built one of the most extensive ideological networks in support of this. This strategic posture, especially against rival Iran, played a key role in the radicalization of countless Muslims across the world, many of whom were radicalized in institutions built and supported by Riyadh.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia seemingly wished to break with overly conservative and radical elements of its past in recent years and introduced a series of government initiatives aimed at social reform, in addition to ambitious development projects that gave the impression Riyadh was opening up to the world. Nevertheless, as Saudi megaprojects are failing and Riyadh is beginning to reassess its reliance on the US, resisting joining regional initiatives aimed at peace and security, its conservative Wahhabist core is reemerging. Previous hopes that Saudi Arabia would become a next United Arab Emirates of sorts, promoting regional peace and representing a moderate version of Islam, have slowly but surely dissipated.
If Iran’s extremist Islamist revolutionary project is subdued, or at least extensively weakened, the Middle East might find itself confronting an ideological force that never truly vanished but only hid in plain sight. While the US and Israel are vehemently focused on achieving their strategic goal of regime change in Iran, power dynamics suggest that the vacuum this would create in the region after over four decades of influence is unlikely to remain empty. Saudi Arabia’s long-standing role in the global promotion of Wahhabism raises an uncomfortable question about the region’s future. Already mired in years-long wars against the Taliban, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and a range of other Iranian proxies, not to mention Iran itself, Western-aligned nations may continue to remain on the defensive if Saudi Arabia continues to find new strength in its ideological past. If Iran’s revolutionary fire is extinguished, the next, perhaps unforeseen, ideological challenge may come from an ally rather than an enemy.
