The first point has to do with the division between Sunnis and Shiites, the two major branches of Islam. Worldwide, the Sunnis are the vast majority, with around 90% of the population, but looking more specifically at the Middle East, things are not so clear-cut. Iran is the great Shiite power and has a theocratic regime that uses religion to legitimize itself. But then there are several countries in the region that have significant minorities or even majorities of Shiites.
Sunnis, on the other hand, are in the majority in almost every country in the Middle East, except Iran, of course, and Iraq. The major Sunni powers are Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Turkey on the other – already outside the Middle East but on the border and increasingly looking east.
The great rivalries in the region, excluding Israel, are between Sunni and Shiite countries and sometimes between the forces of these two currents of Islam within the countries, acting at the behest of external powers. Thus, Saudi Arabia is currently in conflict with the Houthis in Yemen, who are Shiites and act under orders from Tehran, and Turkey supports the rebel groups in Syria, who are mostly Sunni and have a jihadist tendency, while the Syrian government is dominated by the Alawites, who are a branch of Shiism.
Until now, only one thing seemed to be able to unite the two branches: hatred of Israel and, by extension, its Western supporters, namely the United States. But even that now seems to be in question.
ISRAEL’S WINNING BET?
For years Israel has been the favorite target of Iran’s rhetoric. However, the two countries share no borders, so it was just rhetoric. Meanwhile, Hezbollah, the Shiite force in Lebanon, has started attacking Israel, and Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear country, which poses a serious risk for Tel Aviv. Worse, Iran has become one of the main sponsors of Hamas.
When Israel fought back against Hamas, invading Gaza in an operation that has already caused tens of thousands of deaths and is leaving the territory practically uninhabitable, it was thought to be making a strategic mistake, turning the rest of the Middle East-and a good part of Western public opinion-against it.
However, what we are witnessing now may indicate a winning bet for Israel, as the tension between Shiites and Sunnis isolates Hamas, which is dependent on Iran, and isolates Iran itself in the region.
It should be noted that following the war in Gaza, no Sunni country came to the aid of Hamas. Still, on the contrary there were two attacks inside Iran promoted by radical Sunni forces, one based in Idlib, Syria, the other in Pakistan. It was the targets of these groups that Iran supposedly attacked.
Of course, this begs the question: why did these groups attack Iran precisely at a time when the Shiite state was using the groups it supports and controls to attack Israel and Western targets through attacks on ships in the Red Sea? Was there any encouragement from these Western governments, or from Israel, to do so?
What we do know is that Saudi Arabia said a few days ago that it might recognize Israel, provided that the Palestinian problem is resolved. It seems an impossible condition, but the Saudis haven’t said what they consider to be a fair resolution either, so everything is open.
This approach by Riyadh clearly shows that the Sunni countries are realizing that it is not Israel that is their great enemy in the region, since it does not threaten them directly, and that they no longer have anything to gain from appeals for Muslim solidarity with Palestine since Iran has overtaken them on the right and taken up the cause for itself.
The coming period could, therefore, reveal a new balance of power in the Middle East, with Sunni countries accepting a truce and even collaborating with Israel and, by extension, with the Western world in the face of a common threat.
WHAT IF IRAN “FLIPS”?
Half a century of a fundamentalist and backward regime in Tehran has managed to turn a large part of the population against those same ideas. In Iran’s big cities, people don’t care about religion, Shiism or rivalries with the Sunnis. Despite all their anti-Western talk, ordinary Iranians are deeply Westernized and are increasingly feeling the weight of their lack of freedom.
Iran is therefore a powder keg that has already been put to the test several times but which, sooner or later, may actually explode and see the Ayatollahs’ regime disappear, to be replaced by a new, much more westernized reality that recovers the place Iran once occupied in the world, in terms of culture and development. But that hasn’t happened yet, nor is it known whether it will, so the Ayatollahs are still there and it is they who are close to obtaining nuclear weapons.
