The ongoing turmoil in the Middle East is actually a battle for influence that is gathering momentum in the region between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and all powers will have to deal with it soon.
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is on the run. Despite all the imponderables ahead, it is now clear that Libyans have managed to free Tripoli of a dictator that had ruled their lives for more than four decades. Sporadic fighting still continues and there will be no reconciliation till Gaddafi is captured. But Libya has turned a new page in Middle Eastern history as Gaddafi becomes the third dictator to be toppled since Arabs across the region began to rise up against their rulers in January. This was also the first outright regime change of the Arab Spring. Although people power forced Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali to step down, their regimes remained largely intact, with military leaders from the old order stepping in to oversee the transition to a still-undefined new one.
But the Middle East continues to boil and no one is quite sure where the region will end up as the implications of these far reaching developments become apparent after some time. The Nato allies began the air campaign after the United Nations Security Council authorised military intervention on March 16 to protect civilians — a decision that Western leaders say spared the rebels looming defeat as pro-Qaddafi forces closed on Benghazi. And now Libya has become the first case of regime change since the start of the popular unrest that broke out in the Arab world this past January and February.
Meanwhile, the situation in Syria continues to pose its own set of challenges. A high-level UN human rights team has said that Syria’s crackdown “may amount to crimes against humanity” and should be referred to the International Criminal Court. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has asked the Security Council to refer Syria to the permanent war crimes tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands. The West is seeking an arms embargo and other sanctions aimed at stopping the Syrian government’s ongoing crackdown on the opposition. But Russia and China are not keen on any Security Council move against Syria, even as protestors in Syria have been emboldened by the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.
The ongoing turmoil in the Middle East is actually a battle for influence that is gathering momentum in the region between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Since January, the Islamic republic has seen its largest regional rival — the government of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak — toppled by protesters, while the Iranian-backed Hezbollah has strengthened its grip on Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, another regional bulwark against Iranian expansion, has been distracted by uprisings on its borders, particularly in Yemen, Oman and Bahrain.
Meanwhile, US influence in the region has plummeted with the loss of allies and prestige. The Obama administration is having to rethink an Iran strategy that relied on Middle Eastern allies to counterbalance Tehran’s conventional forces and prevent cheating on economic sanctions. Though the Iranian government inevitably is vulnerable to the same forces that toppled repressive regimes among its neighbours, Iran will gain in the short-to-medium term as US influence declines in the region and as the West’s attention is temporarily diverted from Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Saudia Arbia sent troops to Bahrain earlier this year where they backed up a violent crackdown on unarmed protesters by Bahrain’s own security forces. For Saudi Arabia, the issue in Bahrain is less whether Bahrain will attain popular rule than whether Iranian and Shiite influence will grow.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have sparred on many fronts since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 — a Shiite Muslim theocracy in Tehran versus a deeply conservative Sunni Muslim monarchy in Riyadh — in a struggle for supremacy in the world's most oil-rich region. The animosity was evident in Saudi Arabia's support for Iraq during its war with Iran, and it still shows in Iran's backing for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Now, after a decade that seemed to tilt the regional balance toward Iran, Saudi Arabia decided that Bahrain was the place to put its thumb more heavily on the scale. It sent troops under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council to help crush pro-democracy demonstrations because most of the protesters were Shiites challenging a Sunni king.
The brutal crackdown in Bahrain posed the greatest Middle East democracy dilemma yet for the Obama administration, deepening a rift with its most important Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, while potentially strengthening the influence of its biggest nemesis, Iran. Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have chilled to their coldest since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saudi Arabia was miffed that President Obama had abandoned President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the face of demonstrations, ignored American requests not to send troops into Bahrain to help crush Shiite-led protests there. The United States has long viewed Saudi Arabia as a last bulwark against an ascendant Iran in a crucial region, and does not want Tehran stepping in to back Shiites in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia.
But where the United States and the Saudis are split is over how to prevent Iran from gaining traction. While American officials say the Saudi and Bahraini governments can head off trouble by making political reforms, the Saudis believe that political reforms would only open the door to greater instability.
As the US struggles to come to terms with the rapidly evolving ground realities in the Middle East, it is clear that Libya is likely to appear a sideshow very soon — simply because there are at least half a dozen major crises likely to dwarf it now emerging. The real issue in the region today is about the emergence of a new balance of power in the region and all powers, including India, will have deal with it soon.
The author is Reader in International Relations, Department of Defence Studies, King’s College London
