Iran and Saudi Arabia Battle for Supremacy in the Middle East

Over the past decade, the struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for dominance in the Middle East has insinuated itself into nearly every regional issue, fracturing international alliances and sustaining wars across the region, while raising fears of a direct conflict between the two powers that could involve the U.S. Now both sides seem to be seeking a diplomatic offramp to confrontation, amid a broader shift toward lowering tensions across the region.

Saudi Arabia ramped up its regional adventurism after Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful son of King Salman known as MBS, was appointed crown prince in 2017. From the Syrian civil war to the Saudi-led war in Yemen, that has meant proxy conflicts with Iran-backed regimes and nonstate armed groups that have on several occasions veered dangerously close to direct hostilities between the two rivals. A precision missile and drone strike on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 was widely blamed on Iran. And the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to Tehran brought the U.S. and Iran to the brink of war in January 2020, with direct implications for Riyadh.

President Joe Biden has now reengaged diplomatically with Iran in an effort to revive the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal that the Trump administration withdrew from. That coincides with broader moves across the Middle East to mend ties that had been frayed by the region’s various arenas of conflict and competition. Biden has also promised to make respect for human rights a central pillar of his foreign policy. The potential implications for U.S. partners in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, are significant, although to date Biden has not radically changed America’s policies in the region, and more recently he visited the kingdom and met with MBS, despite having promised to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state.

Despite a recent cease-fire, the ongoing civil war in Yemen continues to fuel one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Syria’s 11-year civil war has now entered an extended endgame that, though less bloody, remains every bit as volatile. Libya has seen a respite in its civil war since a cease-fire was implemented in October 2020 and a transitional government named in March 2021, but its political transition to elections has now hit an impasse. Above all, the absence of fighting in these countries by no means guarantees the establishment of lasting peace.

Meanwhile, the most recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in May 2021 served as a reminder that the conflict between Israel and Palestine cannot be simply wished away by regional powers and the U.S. Like everything else in the region, this conflict has become entangled in the larger Saudi-Iran power struggle, with Saudi-allied leaders willing to remain silent on the Palestinian issue in return for Israeli support in containing Iran. The U.S.-brokered diplomatic normalization deals Israel signed in the final months of the Trump administration with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain simply formalized a strategic realignment that had until then been an open secret in the region. The question now is whether Saudi Arabia will follow suit. But normalization with Israel without a final settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict no longer seems as tenable a position as it did before.

WPR has covered the Middle East in detail and continues to examine key questions about what will happen next. Will the Biden administration significantly reorient U.S. policy in the Middle East, and what will that mean for the region? Will the move toward diplomatic engagement succeed in tamping down the Middle East’s various conflicts? And will the most recent Israel-Hamas war move the Israel-Palestine conflict higher up the list of priorities in Washington and regional capitals? Below are some of the highlights of WPR’s coverage.

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Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy

The political situation in the Middle East is in flux. Mass protests in 2019 ousted a long-time ruler in Algeria and rattled governments in Lebanon and Iraq, sparking speculation about a new Arab Spring, before the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to those popular movements. The pandemic also initially drove a decline in global energy prices that has further undermined the sustainability of many Gulf states’ oil-based revenue models, although the war in Ukraine has caused prices to once again rise. Meanwhile, regional powers are taking advantage of great power competition to diversify their portfolio of international partnerships.

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• Why Iraq’s long-stalled government formation process could be heading for a showdown, in A New Pick for Iraqi Prime Minister Could Spark Conflict
• Why Algerians have little to celebrate on the 60th anniversary of independence, in At 60, Algeria’s Aging Regime Shows No Sign of Letting Go
• What’s driving the latest wave of popular protests in Iran, in Iranian Protesters Are Angry About More Than Just Food Prices

U.S. Policy

The Trump administration’s Middle East policy was dominated by support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, and attempts to undermine Iran. But his bellicose rhetoric notwithstanding, former President Donald Trump had little appetite for an actual war with Tehran—or for America’s military presence in the broader region. Biden has sought to reassert American leadership, but so far Washington’s regional partners have refused to simply fall in line.

• Why Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East was driven by the one country he’ll never visit, in Biden’s Middle East Trip Was All About Iran
• What Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia revealed about his administration’s policy toward the region, in Biden’s Middle East Visit Captures the Incoherence of U.S. Policy
• What Biden should try to get from Saudi Arabia in return for engaging with Riyadh, in Like It or Not, Biden Can’t Ignore Saudi Arabia Any Longer
• Why Washington’s new approach to stabilizing fragile and post-conflict states might be too little, too late, in Libya Will Put Washington’s New Peacebuilding Strategy to the Test

War and Conflict

Ongoing conflicts and the threat of new clashes continue to overshadow the region, as hopes for negotiated settlements to the wars in Syria and Yemen have been repeatedly dashed. A cease-fire in Libya has been more effective at silencing the guns for now, but its political transition has now been sidetracked, and lasting peace is still far from guaranteed. Meanwhile, although the battlefield defeat of ISIS fighters—culminating in the death of the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and more recently his successor—has reduced violence in Iraq and Syria, that has not spelled the end of the movement.

• Why it’s a mistake to assume the Syrian civil war is all but over, in Syria’s ‘Cold’ Civil War Could Easily Get Hot Again
• What a Turkish incursion in northeastern Syria would mean for that country’s still-smoldering civil war, in Turkey Is Playing With Fire in Syria—Again
• How Libya’s peacebuilding process has gone off the rails, in Libya’s Transition Out of Civil War Has Stalled
• What the recent cease-fire in Yemen means for international crisis intervention, in Yemen’s Cease-fire Is Challenging Popular Notions of How Wars End

Human Rights

Protections for human rights remain relatively fragile across the region, particularly when it comes to political dissidents, women and minority communities. Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have cracked down on civil society groups and political opponents. Most recently, several countries have used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to limit or ban political protest movements that had already brought down the government in Algeria and threatened others. Biden has said he’ll make human rights a priority of his foreign policy, potentially setting up a showdown with America’s regional security partners, but so far any shift in approach has been limited to rhetoric.

• What the recent conviction on spurious charges of a prominent Turkish philanthropist reveals about Turkey’s democracy under Erdogan, in Dissent Is Getting Even More Dangerous in Turkey
• How the imprisonment of an Egyptian dissident activist underscores Washington’s complacency on its regional partners’ human rights records, in Washington’s Middle East Partners Are Getting Away With Murder
• Why repeated abuses targeting human rights activists and dissidents won’t be enough to sink Israel’s spyware sector, in Israel’s Spyware Sector Will Survive the NSO Pegasus Scandal
• How the Middle East’s socio-political problems made their way back to the U.S., in The Middle East’s Crisis of Democracy Is Inseparable From the West’s

The Israel-Palestine Conflict and Israel-Arab Relations

The long-standing flashpoint of the Israel-Palestine conflict was downgraded as a priority in Washington and the Gulf during the Trump presidency. Instead, Israel’s strategic partnership with the Gulf Arab states to counter Iran became formalized with the establishment of diplomatic ties with the UAE and Bahrain—with the potential for more normalization deals to follow. The Biden administration promises to be more conventional in its approach to the issue, but whether a change in U.S. policy will have a meaningful impact remains to be seen. If last year’s fighting between Israel and Hamas is any indication, however, hoping the conflict will simply remain on the backburner is no longer a viable option.

• What the unprecedented involvement of an Israeli Arab party in government means for Israel’s democracy, in Ra’am’s Stint in Power Raises Tough Questions for Israel’s Arab Voters
• Why a recent move by Israel targeting Palestinian NGOs is so destabilizing, in Israel’s ‘Terrorism’ Designation of Palestinian NGOs Is a Dangerous Escalation
• Why Palestinians shouldn’t hope for much from Israel’s new coalition government, in Israel’s New Coalition Changes Nothing for Palestinians
• How the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas heightened Palestinian divisions, in Palestinian Politics Are More Divided Than Ever

Regional Diplomacy

After a period of conflict and heightened tensions, the region’s competing powers have begun to engage diplomatically. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both recently engaged in talks with Iran aimed at easing their tensions. Similarly, Turkey has begun a rapprochement with Egypt that could lead to a normalization of relations, while also thawing relations with the UAE and Saudi Arabia. And the Saudi-allied Gulf states put an end to their blockade of Qatar. But the hostility between Israel and Iran has been an outlier to this trend, with the two sides engaging in covert tit-for-tat attacks that run the risk of escalating into open conflict.

• Why Turkey is dusting off its old conciliatory approach to regional diplomacy, in Erdogan Is Giving Turkey’s ‘Zero Problems’ Strategy Another Try
• What’s driving Turkey’s recent engagement with Israel—and what could torpedo it, in A New Thaw in Israel-Turkey Ties Still Faces an Old Obstacle in Ankara
• Why Morocco’s hopes for European recognition of its sovereignty claim over Western Sahara have been disappointed, in The Western Sahara Issue Is Souring Morocco’s Relations With Europe
• What’s driving France’s closer ties with the UAE, in Macron’s Middle East Ambitions Increasingly Pass Through the UAE

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in May 2019 and is regularly updated.