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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
Saudi Arabia's postwar concerns about Iraq led to a
rapprochement with Iran during 1991. Historically, relations with
non-Arab Iran had been correct, although the Saudis tended to
distrust Iranian intentions and to resent the perceived arrogance
of the shah. Nevertheless, the two countries had cooperated on
regional security issues despite their differences over specific
policies such as oil production quotas. The Iranian Islamic
Revolution of 1979 disrupted this shared interest in regional
political stability. From a Saudi perspective, the rhetoric of
some Iranian revolutionary leaders, who called for the overthrow
of all monarchies as being un-Islamic, presented a serious
subversive threat to the regimes in the area. Political
disturbances in the kingdom during 1979 and 1980, including the
violent occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni
religious extremists and riots among Saudi Shia in the Eastern
Province, reinforced the perception that Iran was exploiting,
even inciting, discontent as part of a concerted policy to export
its revolution. The Saudi government consequently was not
displeased when Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980.
Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia remained officially neutral throughout
the Iran-Iraq War, even though in practice its policies made it
an effective Iraqi ally.
The thorniest issue in Saudi-Iranian relations during the
1980s was not Riyadh's discreet support of Baghdad but the annual
hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, that took place in the twelfth
month of the Muslim lunar calendar
(see
Tenets of Sunni Islam;
Pilgrimage
, ch. 2). Contention over the participation in hajj
rituals of Iranian pilgrims, who numbered about 150,000 in this
period and comprised the largest single national group among the
approximately 2 million Muslims who attended the yearly hajj
rites, symbolized the increasing animosity between Saudi Arabia
and Iran. Tehran insisted that its pilgrims had a religious right
and obligation to engage in political demonstrations during the
hajj. Riyadh, however, believed that the behavior of the Iranian
pilgrims violated the spiritual significance of the hajj and
sought to confine demonstrators to isolated areas where their
chanting would cause the least interference with other pilgrims.
Because the Saudis esteemed their role as protectors of the
Muslim holy sites in the Hijaz, the Iranian conduct presented a
major dilemma: to permit unhindered demonstrations would detract
from the essential religious nature of the hajj; to prevent the
demonstrations by force would sully the government's
international reputation as guardian of Islam's most sacred
shrines. Tensions increased yearly without a satisfactory
resolution until the summer of 1987, when efforts by Saudi
security forces to suppress an unauthorized demonstration in
front of Mecca's Grand Mosque led to the deaths of more than 400
pilgrims, at least two-thirds of whom were Iranians. This tragedy
stunned the Saudis and galvanized their resolve to ban all
activities not directly associated with the hajj rituals. In
Tehran, angry mobs retaliated by ransacking the Saudi embassy;
they detained and beat several diplomats, including one Saudi
official who subsequently died from his injuries. These incidents
severed the frayed threads that still connected Saudi Arabia and
Iran; in early 1988, Riyadh cut its diplomatic relations with
Tehran, in effect closing the primary channel by which Iranian
pilgrims obtained Saudi visas required for the hajj.
Although Iran began to indicate its interest in normalizing
relations with Saudi Arabia as early as 1989, officials in the
kingdom remained suspicious of Tehran's motives and did not
reciprocate its overtures for almost two years. The Persian Gulf
War, however, significantly altered Saudi perceptions of Iran.
The unexpected emergence of Iraq as a mortal enemy refocused
Saudi security concerns and paved the way for a less hostile
attitude toward Iran. For example, Riyadh welcomed Tehran's
consistent demands for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and
interpreted Iran's strict adherence to neutrality during the
conflict as a positive development. Despite their lingering
doubts about Tehran's aims vis-à-vis the Shia population of
southern Iraq, the Saudis recognized after the war that they and
the Iranians shared an interest in containing Iraq and agreed to
discuss the prospects of restoring diplomatic relations. The
issue that had proved so vexatious throughout the 1980s, the
hajj, was resolved through a compromise that enabled Iranians to
participate in the 1991 pilgrimage, the first appearance in four
years of a hajj contingent sponsored by Tehran. In effect, once
Saudi Arabia and Iran decided that cooperation served their
regional interests, the hajj lost its symbolic significance as a
focus of contention between two countries that defined themselves
as Islamic. The reopening of embassies in Riyadh and Tehran
accompanied the resolution of the hajj and other outstanding
issues.
Data as of December 1992
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