Why we should back Iran over Saudi Arabia

Why we should back Iran over Saudi Arabia.

In this whole embassy fiasco, we can see that Saudi Arabia is clearly to blame. There is a strong moral case for choosing Iran over Saudi Arabia, as well as a practical one.

Ever since the signing of the framework for the nuclear deal in 2013, Saudi Arabia has been opposed to the deal for two reasons. Firstly, with sanctions being lifted, they will lose quite a bit of their share in the international oil markets and lose much significance and influence in the west when it comes to oil. Secondly, Saudi Arabia appears to be using the nuclear issue as a smoke screen to shield its illegal activities sponsoring terrorism.

The West’s denial concerning Saudi Arabia is remarkable: It praises the autocratic regime yet turns a blind eye to the fact that Saudi Arabia is the chief ideological sponsor radical, ultra-conservative Islamic culture. ISIS is a perfect manifestation of this attitude. In the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the backing came with the thumbs up from those administrations. Often Saudi royal family members bypassed money laundering protection systems to contribute funds to ISIS directly. The regimes of Qatar and Saudi Arabia have indeed half-heartedly passed laws to limit the flow of illegal resources to ISIS, but many supporters still operate with minimal secrecy.

Saudi Arabia is Daesh. They both slits throats of gay people, kill, mame. They both despise archaeology, look down on women view the west with contempt. However Saudi Arabians are better dressed and neater but do the same things. The Islamic State= Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia spreads and spurs the puritanical ultra-conservative version of Islam throughout the Middle East. Even though Saudi Arabia itself is a target for Daesh terrorist attacks, using this as a point to discount the deep relationship between Saudi Arabia and Daesh would be wrong. This shallow notion does not account for the Saudi ruling elites close ties to the clergy, and the clergy’s close ties to other radical elements.

If the West is serious about destroying ISIS, it must get to the root of the problem; Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, in a rather provocative manner executed a government critic and a Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr-al-Nimr, and 47 others. They were either “terrorists” (according to Saudi state TV) or government opponents. In response, Iranians stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and then escalating things further, the Saudi government bombed the Iranian embassy in Riyadh. Now this might seem like an even response by the Saudi’s, but it is not. Iran took immediate safety precautions to assure the security of every Saudi diplomat. Iranian authorities have condemned the attack and have caught many of the perpetrators. Iran’s government did not support the attacks.

But Saudi Arabia responded with a government bombing of the Iranian embassy, indicating that actual government policy is at play here. This is institutionalised, official aggression by the Saudi’s towards Iran, as opposed to Iran’s less aggressive official policy towards Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian authorities refused to return the bodies from the hajj stampede in Mecca to the grieving families. They have directly targeted Iranian nuclear scientists and Iranian diplomats in Yemen and Lebanon. Iranian pilgrims in Medina have often had to endure systematic abuse. Saudi Arabia’s government appointed preachers preach hate towards Shia minorities. The bias in the media is clearly displayed in the lack of reporting of these events. If Iran had been committing all these acts, I am sure that fox news would have seized on the opportunity to criticise the Iranian nuclear deal.

It is difficult to see why morally, the West would even consider an alliance with Saudi Arabia over Iran. Iran had no desire to escalate tensions in the region, as opposed to Saudi Arabia’s constant inflammatory rhetoric and hateful actions, its support (official or unofficial) of Sunni terrorist groups and its immoral executions of innocent people. Although Iran does this as well, true, Iran’s actual population is very liberal and progressive, and the government’s official attitude towards the west and liberal views are shifting in response to this, as opposed to Saudi Arabia’s new king, Salman, an ultra-conservative who is committed to keeping the old way of doing this. The USA really should stop trying to justify its alliance with the House of Saud, and shift it slightly to Iran.

Being allies with Iran also has practical value. Iran and the United States share the same enemies in the current conflict. They both want to eradicate ISIS; Iran to halt the threat of Sunni Islam and to keep Assad in power (one of Iran’s only ally), and America to prevent more terrorist attacks. In a bizarre situation, the Iranian militias are fighting alongside the United States to defeat ISIS, one of the largest current threats to Western civilisation. Iran provides a useful and practical base for the United States attack from, as well as providing the USA with useful intelligence networks in the region. Iran and United States have a history of friendship and cooperation in the Middle East, up until 1979, the Islamic Revolution. The pool of revolutionary fervour among ordinary Iranians has certainly dried up, and so I believe that ordinary Iranians will work with the United States in a helpful manner.

Before 1979, the Middle East was a very stable and prosperous place. Essentially, before the revolution the Iranians and Israeli's had a special bond in the Middle East. They were the two superpowers in the region backed by the United States. Israel and Iran’s very strong presence in the region allowed them to keep the region stable and secure. Without this mutual cooperation between the two major powers in the Middle East, power vacuums were not allowed to form along the lines of ethnic tensions. Eventually, when the revolution happened and the bond between Israel and Iran broke, the strong bond or “glue” holding this very volatile region together, simply disintegrated. This is what we see today, with Shia’s fighting Sunni’s and Kurds fighting whoever!!! 

I am not saying that Iran and Israel will become best friends again, but demographics hint at an alliance potentially being reformed. 60% of the population in Iran is under 30, and this percentage is on the rise. This suggests that, with time, the more liberal-minded youth Iran can and will reach positions of power within Iran, or drag the Islamic religious clerics to become less anti-western and more open to mutual cooperation with the west, and more importantly, cooperation with Israel!

The future for Iran is bright. Although Iran really is still a “rogue” nation in that sense, Iran has real potential to come out of trade sanctions and effective Western isolation and become more integrated into the international community. And as they become more economically intrinsically linked the rest of the world, they will slowly become less radical and extreme, as they will be so reliant on Western trade and business that they will be deterred from doing anything stupid or re-ignited their inflammatory rhetoric by the risk of a cut-off. And as the rest of the society will be exposed more towards Western values, the whole country will inevitably become more western-friendly (to tell the truth, it is already one of the most liberal and progressive country in the Middle East!) It has real potential to become a western-friendly, a useful regional ally, and that is why we should do more to work with Iran, be it working with them against IS or Al-Qaeda, promoting intercontinental trade and business, or promoting diplomatic ties with Israel. Iran has potential, yet Saudi Arabia is a joke, the kind of state which denounces chess and is more of a threat to basic civil liberties than Iran. Saudi Arabia is just moving backwards into the past, and glossing over their blatant sponsoring of terrorism and their radical, immoral fundamentalist ideology with shiny new luxury malls and a fresh batch of tasty oil.