Foreign Policy:

President Donald Trump likely sees Mohammed bin Salman, who in June was named the new Saudi crown prince, as a Middle Eastern leader made in his own image. The young crown prince’s unrelenting hostility towards Iran and take-no-prisoners censure of Qatar is consistent with Trump’s emerging, aggressive posture towards Iran.

But by placing his thumb on the scale of intramural Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) squabbles and reinforcing the narrative that Iran is the primary source of instability in the Middle East, Trump could hand Tehran a strategic bonanza, much like former President George W. Bush did by taking down Iraq, a country that for good or bad had acted as a check on Iranian power since the Iranian revolution.

The Saudis will miscalculate if they take much solace from Trump’s support for their regional policies. Regardless of what the United States does, sharply increasing the vitriol towards Iran while at the same time laying siege to fellow GCC member Qatar will likely weaken the Saudi position and what is left of an already compromised Arab political order. Intended to take Iran down a notch, these actions instead will likely strengthen Tehran’s hand. In fact, Iranian policymakers would be forgiven for believing that Saudi Arabia had fallen prey to the judo move by which one’s opponents are unwittingly maneuvered to use their own strength to harm themselves.

How does Saudi Arabia undermine its own position by escalating the conflict with Iran and working to bring Qatar forcefully into compliance? While Saudi Arabia, through its security relationship with the United States, derives many military advantages over Iran, much of Saudi Arabia’s political strength in the region comes from the kingdom’s strong position within the Arab world. But the Arab order has become particularly fragile due to the corrosiveness of the civil wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Although Iran clearly represents a threat to Saudi interests, it is the weakness in Saudi Arabia’s own Arab ranks, caused by the effects of the Arab Spring and the civil wars, that poses the biggest challenge to Riyadh and the biggest opportunity for Tehran. Ratcheting up hostility towards Iran is likely to prolong these wars, running the risk of further weakening the Arab world, thereby compromising Saudi Arabia’s position relative to Iran. The longer the proxy battles between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the region’s civil wars continue, the greater the risk that the civil wars could spread to other Arab countries like Jordan and Lebanon, the more splintered the Arab world will likely become, and the more Iran gains in the regional power game.

What is incubating in Syria right now within the Sunni opposition to President Bashar al-Assad is a metaphor for how divisions between Arab countries pose a greater threat to Saudi Arabia than the challenge from Iran. In contrast to the disciplined, tightly consolidated, Iran-led Shia coalition supporting the Syrian government, the Sunni opposition is highly fragmented. Hundreds of different opposition groups, ranging from jihadist militant groups like the al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Nusra Front), to non-jihadist Salafist groups like Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-sham, and even some of the stronger factions of the secular Free Syrian Army, are busy shaping areas of Syria still outside government control, like Idlib province. Given the propping up of the Syrian government by Iran, Russia, and its Shia militias, it is unlikely that these Sunni opposition groups will pose an existential threat to Assad (or Iran) anytime soon. But with their Syrian base threatened by Russia and Iran tipping the scale towards the Syrian government, and the recent de-escalation efforts by Iran, Russia, and Turkey, these groups, particularly Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, could ultimately turn their sights to the Arab world, further weakening the Arab political fabric, and potentially posing security and political challenges to Saudi Arabia. In other words, battle-tested Sunni groups in Syria could spill over to other parts of the Arab world, further eroding the Saudi position on Iran...

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