End proxy wars

Democracy bug is travelling fast in the extended Middle East. Within a short time has it reached Bahrain from the Mediterranean tip of North Africa. While public uprisings are changing the political landscape, forces of status quo have also spun into action to halt the healthy trend. As Iranian government bluntly spells out its conflicting positions about various uprisings in its Middle Eastern neighborhood, the Saudi troops have driven into Bahrain to silence predominantly Shiite population. Yemen offers a complex challenge to the United States, which has fully backed the trigger-happy ruling family so far.

Most protests may be resulting from a snowball effect after Ben Ali’s humiliating exit from Tunisia; the biggest challenge to these self-respecting people comes from within. Since its own revolution in 1979, Iran has perceived the United States as a sworn enemy that supported an unpopular monarch in Tehran and still continues to do so in Saudi Arabia and other nations stretching up to Morocco. Saudi Arabia finds Iran as an intrusive state with an agenda to export Shiite Islam elsewhere in the Middle East and Central Asia while the Islamic republic denies due rights to its own Sunni population. Riyadh too is struggling to deal with its restive oil-wealthy eastern province.

Whereas Israel’s illegitimate stockpiling of nuclear weapons ring no alarm bells in Washington, Brussels and Riyadh, Iranian nuclear program irks its influential opponents. Saudi Arabia-Iran enmity is rooted in centuries ancient Arab-Persian tensions further complicated with Sunni-Shiite tussle. Saudi Arabia has stood firmly with the United States not only during and after the Cold War but also decade-long War against Terror.

Since January 2011, the two heavyweights of Muslim world have stretched their proxy wars of influence from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Morocco. Emergence of the Shiite Iraq after the invasion of the United States too has proven challenging for Saudi Arabia. Over the last three decades, Iran has been maintaining close ties with the opposition leaders.