Nuclear Iran and the future of the Arab world

The rise of Iran as a nuclear power is seen in the Arab world as greater threat than Israel. Iran, with its regional ambitions is trying to influence policy making process in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. As a nuclear state, Iran will no doubt use enhanced regional power status to establish its hegemony over the Arab world and south Asia including a dominating role over the vital energy supply routs through witch forty percent of global supply of crud oil transit daily.  While Saudi Arabia views Iran\'s influence over Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian issue with increasing alarm, experts say, Riyadh acts less out of sectarian motives than concern over the regional balance of power.

The recent sectarian uprising in Saudi Arabia and the demand Shia community for their political and social rights is seen as a future national security threat in the Kingdom. Two years ago, King Abdullah of Jordan spoke of the emergence of a \"Shia Crescent\"; more recently commentators have referred to Shia revival. The clash between Sunni and Shia Muslims is the greatest cause of strife across the Arab world. There are concerns about the future of Shia minorities in the Gulf region, especially those in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bahrain has already concerns about the political demand of Shia community in the country.

There is a growing view in Tehran that Iran has more to lose than to gain from such clashes. The emergence of some new underground powers in Saudi Arabia can be predicted as an unending civil war in the kingdom in near future. Some extremist groups from Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Somalia and Middle Eastern countries have a strong underground network in the Kingdom.

Elsewhere in the Middle East and Gulf region, some powers have established secret links with the opposition groups of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to use them as tool of supremacy in the region.
 In the summer of 2004, The Washington Quarterly argued that the sectarian implications of US intervention in Iraq would be more significant than “any potential example of a moderate and progressive government in Baghdad.” In his article, Wali Nasr predicted a Sunni extremist backlash phrased in sectarian, rather than strategic terms. The Iranian leaders are preparing to compete with Saudi Arabia for supremacy as the guardian of Islam and leader of Islamic world, becoming the mail sponsor of separatist movements in the region. It would launch a race across Saudi Arabia to expel the Wahabi ruling class from Mecca and Madina.

The increased sectarian phrasing of the shift in the balance of power in the Persian Gulf had the dual effect of supporting the Saudi government’s ongoing persecution of their own Shia minority in the Eastern provinces of Qatif and Al Ahsa. The Saudis, in turn, criticise the treatment of the oppressed Sunni minorities in Iran. Given that most Iranian Sunnis are Kurds, Balochis, or Turkmen, groups who the Saudi have shown little previous interest in, it seems that their plight has been politicised without any real sympathy for their predicament. Sunni scholar Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi is leading the anti-Shia, anti-Iran drive in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, triggering hostility and an internet cyber war between Sunnis and Shia.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of developments that have contributed to fears of a revived threat of attacks from Saudi Arabia. Key among them is the Saudi decision to publish a list of 85 jihadist fugitives on Feb. 3, 15 of whom are former Guantanamo Bay inmates, and most of whom are believed to be residing in Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. No doubt, Saudi dissidents are being trained in the Taliban camps in Pakistan. In fact, at the height of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Saudis had their own insurgency underway. In near future Pakistani style sectarian and Taliban alike war in Saudi Arabia cannot be ruled out, as the network is getting stronger. If the cycle of violence and prosecution in the kingdom is continued in near future, regional interference in support of Shia community there is expected.

The secret Jihadi network in Saudi Arabia and its links with regional sectarian groups can put the security of the kingdom in danger. The struggle of Barelvis and Shias to liberate Madina and Mecca from the Wahabi sect, their worldwide network and their support from the anti government forces is becoming a constant security threat in the country. Barelvis are getting stronger day by day with the help of international community.

The Taliban and al-Qaeda opposition to the Saudi Kingdom and developing war fronts of the Barevi-Shia forces will put the entire region into the flame of sectarian war. Saudi Shias have petitioned King Abdullah with pleas for prisoner releases and equal opportunities. Last month Iranian Foreign Minister ha visited Saudi Arabia and discussed the issue with the King. As BBC reported tensions between Sunni and Shia in the Middle East have escalated to full-scale crises in the past few years in countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, and, most recently, in Saudi Arabia. Shias in Saudi Arabia have close relations with the Shias in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan and Bahrain.

The Saudis, having already felt the full force of American fury -- and now trapped between them and their own radicals -- faced another challenge. If the U.S. policy in Iraq remained on track, the power of Iran and the Shia would surge through the region. According to the US library of congress sources, Shia are a minority in Saudi Arabia, probably constituting about 5 percent of the total population, their number being estimated from a low of 200,000 to as many as 400,000. Shia are concentrated primarily in the Eastern Province, where they constituted perhaps 33 percent of the population, being concentrated in the oases of Qatif and Al Ahsa.

With the hanging of Saddam Hussain at the hands of Moqtada al-Sadr’s partisans on the day of Eid al-Adha, he has unimaginably been reinvented as a Sunni martyr. This grisly execution demonstrates that the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad is too closely involved with the Shia militias to rein them in. The Sunni-Shia war started after the fall of Iraq now spread to the other parts of the Arab world. This war however will disrupt the future security system in the region.

Shia occupies the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in the Saudi state. They are excluded from the upper levels of the civil bureaucracy and rarely recruited by the military or the police; none was recruited by the National Guard.

Shias complain of being marginalised in every department in the country by a government closely attached to religious conservatives. Yet when Iranian politicians recently sniffed that Bahrain used to be an Iranian province, Bahrain’s main Shia parties were quick to reaffirm their Arab identity, joining a chorus of Arab protest.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information affirmed that demanding equal citizenship rights between Shia and Sunni is a legal and just undertaking and that those making such demands must be respected and not be liable to punishment.

Recently, http://www.instablogs.com/ in its comprehensive comment posted on 16 March 2009 has revealed that Saudi King Abdullah recently made some reforms in, but one area where reform is needed but has not be meet is mandating tolerance on behalf of the clerics. Relations have long been tense between Saudi Arabia’s majority Sunnis and the Shias, who make up a small minority of the country’s 22 million people. Shias, who are considered infidels under the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam widely followed in the kingdom, routinely complain of discrimination.

The writer is Executive Editor of Daily Outlook Afghanistan and author of 156 books on terrorism, extremism, and human trafficking, Afghanistan, drug trafficking and foreign policy studies and is based in London, Director Centre for Terrorism, Sectarian Violence and Organized Crime Studies in UK.