Abu Aardvark

Qaradawi and MB followup

The other day I wrote about an important statement by Mohamed Mehdi Akef (supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood) strongly appealing for Sunni-Shi'ite solidarity and an end to the spiraling sectarian strife, and about Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had made waves with a tough statement against Iran and "Shia proselytization".   Well, to follow up:   in Friday's khutba, Qaradawi called for an end to Sunni-Shia strife (like Akef, he used the term fitna).  He announced that the International Union of Muslim Scholars (of which he is the President) is sending a delegation to Iran to confer with leaders there over how to prevent the spread of sectarian violence and fitna - suggesting that he continues to blame the Shia militias for the violence.   Yesterday, an article on Qaradawi's home page on the terms of Sunni-Shi'ite reconcliation argued that overcoming divisions in the Muslim umma should be seen as the highest obligation right now, overriding all other interests or concerns, but that such rapprochment should be based on clear and honest positions on both sides.  The article is a bit unsatisfying because it was assembled by the staff of Islam Online from Qaradawi's books and writings (and therefore likely reflects his long-held and well-known views on the subject rather than his recent surprising anti-Shia statements) but since it appears on his homepage it should have at least semi-official status as a statement of his views.   But taken together, these two statements suggest a palpable reoreintation in Qaradawi's position in tune with the  Muslim Brotherhood position as articulated by Akef:  intra-Islamic solidarity and an end to Sunni-Shia violence taking precedence for now.   We'll keep an eye on how this develops. 

Islamists struggling with the Shia question

Some prominent Muslim Brotherhood and related Sunni Islamists have been struggling publicly with the rising Sunni-Shia conflict recently.   At last week's Doha conference on Sunni-Shia relations, Yusuf al-Qaradawi caused a major stir with a forceful intervention demanding that the Shia stop their proselytizing in Sunni-majority countries and that Iran stop contributing to sectarian killing in Iraq.  This was distressing for several reasons.    It isn't just that he's extremely influential with mainstream Islamist-minded audiences.    It's that Qaradawi has always had exceptionally well-tuned political antennae - he's a political populist with a great ear for what is going to play well with his audiences.  That makes him a good barometer for trends in certain important sectors of Arab public opinion - when he decides to jump on an anti-Shia bandwagon, it probably means that he senses that this is going to be a popular position.   Qaradawi has long advocated good Sunni-Shia relations, and has been scathingly critical of efforts to promote anti-Shia attitudes (one of his ongoing arguments with the salafi trend) - which made his public lashing out against the Shia much more unsettling than similar outbursts from traditionally anti-Shia voices.

In this context, I wanted to draw attention to a very important intervention today by the Muslim Brotherhood's supreme guide Mohamed Mehdi Akef, who released a letter calling for Sunni-Shia unity in the face of common enemies.  The letter, entitled "The Sunna and the Shia between brotherhood in Islam and the schemes of its enemies", says that Islam considers the Sunni and Shia to be united by one doctrine and one faith, and that the Brotherhood rejects any effort to divide them or set them against each other.   Sunni and Shia live together peacefully, intermarry, and co-exist. He blamed the enemies of Islam and the activities of "foreign occupiers" for the divisions which have recently appeared and the spirit of hatred which has recently spread.   He called on all Sunni Muslim leaders and Shia Muslim leaders to understand who is spreading sectarian extremism and to work against it, and called on all Sunni leaders to condemn the aggression of takfiris against the Shia.

It will be interesting to see if Akef's strong statement against Sunni-Shia sectarian strife has any impact on the rapidly evolving popular tension.   I've heard from a few sources that today's mosque khutba (by government-approved imams) were just as aggressively anti-Shia as they were the last couple of weeks.   Fahmy Howeydi recently wrote, in an important article, that the Egyptian government's intense campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Shia campaign were part and parcel of a common agenda - an analysis which points directly towards what it appears Akef is trying to do:  dampen down Sunni-Shia tensions by redirecting anger towards the more typical enemies such as the United States, Israel, and the Arab regimes.   

Sunni-Shia: some other voices

You've heard me and Greg Gause on the emerging Sunni-Shia conflict.  Here are a few other perspectives worth seeing.   I respect all these people; I agree with some and disagree with some of their arguments here but won't say which just yet.

On Saudi Arabia, former NSC official and current New America Foundation resident  Flynt Leverett: 

I think it has several dimensions. One is just a classical balance of power. The Saudis have always attached a lot of importance to Iraq acting as a “balancer” to Iran in the Gulf. It was really the only Arab state that had the strategic potential to play that role. The Saudis have always thought that was an appropriate role for Iraq, and with the US invasion to overthrow Saddam you have completely taken Iraq out of that traditional role. It provides a tremendous strategic opening to Iran.

Then, as I said, you have overturned the traditional balance of power inside Iraq where you had Sunni elites in charge for many decades, and now because you have unseated those Sunni elites and instituted a more participatory kind of politics in Iraq the Shia are on the rise. They are 60% of Iraq’s population and the Islamist Shia forces have emerged by far as the most powerful political players in that community. Iran has considerable influence over ties to all of the major players in Shia politics right now, which gives them considerable advantage and influence on the ground, inside Iraq and that also provides them with a strategic opening.

If you look at the way that Hezbollah has emerged as such an important political force, not just a paramilitary force but a political force, in Lebanon since the Syrians, when Hariri was assassinated and the Syrians withdrew their troops, this has also helped to put Iran in a very influential position in Lebanon. It is problematic to the Saudis because, certainly since the Taif agreement that ended the Lebanese Civil War in 1989, the Saudis have seen themselves as the principal external player, the people who brokered the agreement, the people who were supporting reconstruction, all of this. Now Saudi Arabia is pitted in a competition for influence in Lebanon in ways that are problematic for the Kingdom. So you know Iran’s rise is a multi-faceted thing.

I throw in another dimension, which is important -- this has become more of a factor since Ahmadinejad was elected President in Iran. Ahmadinejad has proven very effective in playing to the Arab street, not just Shia Arabs but Sunni Arabs. You know he has been able to make the Iranian foreign policy agenda resistant to Israel, resistant to US influence in the region. He has been able to pitch that as a kind of pan-Muslim, pan-Islamic agenda in ways that it has real appeal to publics in the Arab world, including it would seem from this summer, including in the kingdom. This is something that is also very problematic for the Saudi regime, that US policy is not just empowering Iran, but it is also enabling Iran to conduct, if you will, public diplomacy against the United States, which further complicates the strategic challenge facing Saudi leaders right now.

On Jordan, Center for Strategic Studies (U. Jordan) researcher Mohammed al-Masri: 

The timing of the execution of Saddam Hussein on the first morning of Eid al-Adha, the video clips officially released by the Iraqi government and those from the cell phones documenting the execution triggered a wave of anger and provoked anti-Shi'ite and anti-Iranian sentiment among the Jordanian public. Jordanians interpreted the event as an act of Iranian/Shi'ite revenge against Sunnis in Iraq and throughout the Arab world.

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However, in spite of the obvious anger, there were no reported incidents of reprisals against the 200,000 or so Iraqi Shi'ite refugees in Jordan--thanks both to measures taken by the security services and precautions taken by some Iraqis to avoid certain areas of Amman for a few days following the execution. Columnists and op-ed writers in newspapers of different political and cultural leanings, including the Islamic Action Front, expressed anger and dismay and concluded that the execution itself demonstrated the sectarian, militant nature of the Iraqi government and revealed its servitude to American, Iranian and Israeli interests in the region.

Not surprisingly, the execution led to an upsurge in feelings against Iraqi Shi'ites in particular, Shi'ites at-large and Iran as a Shi'ite and Persian state determined to undermine both Sunni and Arab beliefs and aspirations. Twenty-two Jordanian MPs called for a severing of diplomatic ties with Iran.

The Shi'ite question does not assume the same level of importance in Jordan as in some Arab countries where there are significant Shi'ite communities. The overwhelming majority of Jordanian Muslims are Sunni; Jordanian Shi'ites number fewer than 4,000 according to the most generous estimate. The Jordanian public's lack of awareness of this small minority that has been part of Jordanian society for around 100 years signifies its assimilation. It has never been a focus of public debate.

The Shi'ite question becomes relevant to the Jordanian public and Jordanian elites only as a consequence of the American occupation of Iraq. It is political developments in Iraq and the region and the impact of Iraqi refugees in Jordan that have heavily influenced the formation of attitudes toward Shi'ites in recent times.
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King Abdullah's well known warning of the emergence of a Shi'ite crescent two years ago deepened Jordanian society's concerns about a possible Iranian threat, creating a corresponding unease over Shi'ite politics in Iraq. The Jordanian establishment warned frequently of the conversion of some Jordanians to Shi'ism. While the number of such converts is extremely limited and does not exceed hundreds by even the most generous estimate, the Jordanian state has followed a zero-tolerance policy toward the public practice of Shi'ism. Since the main concern of the Iraqi Shi'ites in Jordan right now is to keep their residency rights valid and intact, they practice their religious rituals in private.

In fact, the threat to the Jordanian state is not conversion to Shi'ism as such, but what may be termed political Shi'ism: support for Shi'ite political organizations and acceptance of their political paradigms. For example, the sweeping support for Hizballah during the war in Lebanon last summer was a clear manifestation of political Shi'ism. As much as events in Iraq and interaction with Iraqi communities within Jordan lead to Jordanian antipathy toward Iraqi Shi'ites and Iran, the Israeli factor and potential conflict between Israel and Hizballah still encourage support for Hizballah-style Shi'ite organizations. Therefore it might be misleading to assume that new anti-Iranian feelings in Jordan are sustainable, when the Israel factor in regional developments could dramatically undermine them.

On the overall Shia Rising thesis, Vali Nasr's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

Since 2003 Shia-Sunni conflict has emerged as a major divide in Middle East politics, and radically changed the regional context for U.S. policy. Sectarian violence is no longer just limited to Iraq, but has expanded in scope to influence regional development from the Persian Gulf to Lebanon, adding new complexity to the conflicts in the region and presenting a serious foreign policy challenge to the United States.

...

All this suggests that Iraq has introduced sectarianism to conflicts and rivalries the Middle East. The Shia-Sunni rivalry in religious as well as secular arenas will likely be an important factor in the near future. This trend was clearly evident during the war in Lebanon last summer when Hezbollah’s growing influence elicited a sectarian reaction from Arab capitals as well as a number of extremist jihadi web sites. The condemnation of Hezbollah as a Shia organization indicated that although the conflict itself was not new, the response to it was not decided by the Arab-Israeli issue alone but sectarian posturing.

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Sectarianism will play an important role in deciding regional alliances in the Middle East and how various states and sub-state actors will act. Sectarianism will compete with as well as interact with other concerns such as the Arab-Israeli issue, political and economic reform, and support for U.S. policies, most notably the global war on terror. This will complicate the management of U.S. interests.

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Sectarian conflict is a radicalizing force. Shia and Sunni militias will inevitably gravitate toward more radical ideas to justify their actions. In Iraq, the greatest violence against Shias was perpetuated by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda forces. In the Arab world and Pakistan violent anti-Shiism is the domain of radical pro-al-Qaeda clerics, websites and armed groups. Sectarianism—especially among Sunnis—is a driver for radical jihadi ideology. Among the Shias in Iraq sectarian violence has had a similar effect. It has shifted power within that community to the radical forces of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. The specter of U.S. confrontation with Shia militias and Iran will likely accelerate this trend.

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What is evident in the aftermath of the Lebanon war is that the sectarian rivalries that first surfaced in Iraq now compete with the Arab-Israeli conflict to determine regional alliances and political attitudes of ordinary people. Hezbollah and Iran would prefer to focus the region on the Arab-Israeli issue and to gain support as champions of the Palestinian cause. However, they have faced resistance in pursuing this agenda from regimes and radical Sunni groups who see Iran and the sectarian issue as more important. In this environment the intensification of sectarian conflict in Iraq and its growing regional dimension has led Hezbollah and Iran to intensify their campaign against Israel in the hope of diverting attention from the divisive role that Iraq is playing in the region.

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In 2005 Iran elected a hard-line president, who invigorated Iran’s determination to pursue its nuclear program just as he escalated tensions with the United States and Israel. This confident and provocative attitude is reflective of change in the strategic environment in the region, and Iran’s belief that it enjoys a stronger position than it did in 2003. Iran benefited from regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq. The fall of the Taliban and the Saddam regime provided Iran with greater space to assert its influence in the region, and the destruction of the Iraqi army removed a significant bulwark against Iranian ambition and influence in the Persian Gulf. The occupation of Iraq has depleted American power and prestige, making it harder to contain Iran, which has seized the opportunity to spread its wings. Rising Iranian clout has fed and been fed by the Shia revival that swept across the Middle East in the wake of the Iraq war. Iran today has hegemonic ambitions in the Persian Gulf and sees itself as a great-power, and it views nuclear capability as the means to attain that goal. What Iran seeks is for the United States to accept Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf as Iran’s “near abroad”—a zone of influence in which Iran’s interests would determine ebbs and flows of politics –and to recognize Iranian presence in Syria and Lebanon.The specter of Iranian hegemony has been a source of concern for Iran’s neighbors. Saudi Arabia in particular has viewed Iran’s gains in Iraq and its growing influence in Lebanon and over the Palestinian issue with alarm. Intensification of the rivalry between the two threatens regional stability, and more importantly can fuel pro-al-Qaeda jihadi activism.

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The United States must take steps to discourage regional actors from using sectarianism as a foreign policy tool. Investment in sectarian voices and especially radical Sunni organizations of the al-Qaeda type most closely tied to sectarian ideology and violence will not only intensify the conflict but promote extremism to the detriment of the broader U.S. interests in the region. As great a challenge as Shia ascendancy and Iranian aggressiveness is to the United States and its allies strengthening the ideological and organizational bases of Sunni extremism will only further threaten U.S. interests.

More from the Arab public debate later, hopefully, and some of my own developing thoughts.

 

Gause: balance of power, not sectarianism

Since my trip to Cairo I've been really mulling over the causes and implications of the rising anti-Shia trend in the region.   So I'm delighted to present this guest post on the regional politics of the Shia question by occasional contributor Greg Gause, a political scientist and Gulf specialist at the University of Vermont.  I will refrain from mentioning where I agree and disagree at this point. 

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Guest Post
Anti-Shia or Anti-Iran? Balance of power politics, not a new sectarianism
Greg Gause, University of Vermont

Many observers too easily slide over the distinction between "Shia influence" and "Iranian influence".  I think that the distinction is important both in terms of how Washington is developing its strategy and how events are playing out in the region.

I do not think that Washington sees its strategy as containment of "Shia influence" in the region.  I do not think that decision-makers think in these sectarian terms.  The Bush Administration wants to contain and roll-back Iranian influence.  That includes Iranian-supported Hamas in Palestine, not a Shia organization.  That includes the influence of the Syrian regime, which might be sociologically Alawi but is not Islamist or Shia in any political sense.  If the Administration thought in sectarian terms, it would be moving away from the Maliki government in Iraq, trying to put together some kind of Sunni Arab-Kurdish coalition.

While Amb. Khalilzad spent much of his time in Baghdad trying to reach out to Sunnis, I do not see that as evidence of an American effort to distance itself from the United Iraqi Alliance or from Maliki specifically.  If the Administration were consciously running a policy aimed at rolling back Shia influence, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim would not have been a visitor to the White House last month.  If anything, the Administration seem to want to provide "moderate" Shia in Iraq (Da'wa, SCIRI) with an alternative to exclusive reliance on Iranian patronage, to actually contest with Teheran for influence in the Iraqi Shia community. Undoubtedly, some amount of Iranian influence in the region is accomplished through its ties to Shia political groups in the Arab world (Hizballah, Iraqi Shia parties).  But that does not seem to be at the center of the Administration's thinking.

Rather, this is a return to the kind of regional balance of power politics that America has played in the region for decades.  In the past these efforts were aimed against the Soviet Union and its clients/allies (Nasser's Egypt, or the twin pillars in the Gulf against pro-Soviet Iraq in the 1970's).  In the 1980's they were aimed against Iran - support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.  In the early 1990's they were aimed against Saddam's Iraq - Syria, Egypt, the Gulf states and Israel in that uneasy wartime alignment.

The new effort at an anti-Iranian front is a return to old American tactics.  The fact that the democracy rhetoric has been shelved and the minimal pressure on America's allies for political reform set aside (evident most clearly in relations with Egypt) is the best indication of the return to classic balance of power logic in American regional policy.

The Regional Partners:  Anti-Iran or anti-Shia?

I would venture to say that the regional leaders of the 6 + 2 states (GCC, Jordan, Egypt) are also seeing the Iranian "threat" more in balance of power terms than in sectarian terms, although here I am extrapolating a bit further from the evidence.  Neither the Egyptian nor the Jordanian governments have to worry about domestic Shia populations.  Saudi Arabia does, but it has been on a (minor, but interesting in the Saudi context) charm offensive toward its Shia population in the last few years: publicly including Shia leaders in the National Dialogue, municipal elections.  I think that these leaders are worried about Iran for classic balance of power reasons, perhaps with a little bit of worry about domestic Shia discontent in the Gulf states (and more than a little in Bahrain).  This emphasis on an Iran-centered threat rather than a sectarian Shia threat has been manifested in establishment Saudi editorial writers' takes on recent events.  They have gone to great lengths to say that it is Iran, not the Shia, that are the problem.

However, the leaders of all of these states are willing to play to the baser instincts of their own constituencies in allowing anti-Shia rhetoric to develop, and even encouraging it in a number of cases.  From our own experience in the US, we know that mobilizing public support for a foreign policy based on cold, realist, balance of power considerations is a tough sell.  Just ask Henry Kissinger about détente.  It would be an even harder sell for these Arab leaders, whose populations basically like the idea of Iran getting the bomb and cheered Hizballah in its confrontation with Israel this summer.  You cannot sell the policy on the basis of balancing Iran, so you sell it on a sectarian basis.  Thus, we hear these outlandish stories about Shia proselytization efforts in Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, wherever.  Maybe there is some truth to them, but very little real results that I have seen.  It is scare tactics to sell a policy that is based on classic balance of power considerations.

What is somewhat surprising to me is how readily this line has been bought.  I am not surprised that Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia have bought it.  It fits exactly into their ideological frameworks.  I am much more surprised about more mainstream Sunni figures like Yusif al-Qaradawi playing this card.  We are even seeing some liberal and Islamist public intellectuals playing the anti-Shia card. This is interesting, disturbing and deserves more analysis than I can give it.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, the country I know best in this anti-Shia/ anti-Iranian front, we see at least some effort to maintain lines of communication to "the Shia." Hizballah sent some emissaries to King Abdallah a few weeks ago and Larijani was received by the King last week. The Saudis worry about Iranian power, no doubt.  On my recent trip to Saudi Arabia I got an earful about Iran from all sorts of quarters.  I was told by someone in a position to know that King Abdallah is "over the top" about growing Iranian influence in the region.  This can help to explain Prince Bandar's secretive trips to Washington in recent months.  But the Saudis do not have an interest in an open confrontation with Iran.  They lived through that in the 1980's and did not much like it.  I think that Riyadh, at least, is looking to check Iranian power without direct confrontation.

Can This Alliance Be Maintained?

One of the women's magazines in the U.S. used to run a feature called "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" in which experts dissected a failing relationship and came down yes or no on the question.  Each of the parties in the anti-Iranian alliance are being asked to make certain contributions if the strategy is going to work.  I wonder if they are up to the task, on a number of fronts:

1.  "The US will have to push harder on the Arab-Israeli front if the alliance is to be maintained."  Yes.  The Arab parties cannot be even tacit partners with Israel without some sense of movement here.  But I doubt that such movements can be achieved.  We have a weakened Israeli government and a Palestinian side absolutely split in half.  Can those parties move forward?  Is the U.S. willing to put a large amount of pressure on Israel?  I think the answer to both questions is no.

2.  "The U.S. strategy in Iraq will be to keep attention focused on Iran."  I think that is only part of it.  The Administration seems to have adopted a very American mind-set on the current Iraqi situation.  There are "moderates" in both the Sunni Arab and Shia Arab camps.  I am not sure who those Sunnis are (al-Hashemi and anybody he can bring along, I guess); among the Shia they are SCIRI and Dawa.  We are going to support the "moderate center" and isolate the "extremists" on both sides:  Muqtada and the Sunni insurgents.  This looks great in a Power Point, undoubtedly.  I wonder if we can pull it off.  I kind of doubt it.

3.  The Gulf states are supposed to "bring down the price of oil" to make life difficult for Iran.  Well, if they bring it down too much, they will make life difficult for themselves as well.  Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have gotten very used to the nice level of oil revenues over the last few years.  How much of that they are willing to sacrifice in the name of an American-driven strategy against Iran remains to be seen. Remember, one of the things that helped to break the Saudi-Iranian ice back in the 1990's was cooperation to bring oil prices up after the Asian financial crisis.  We will have to see how the Saudis act in OPEC in light of the recent decline in prices.

The bottom line is that it will be difficult to maintain this disparate alliance over the long haul.  As long as Iran is pushing in Lebanon, it will not be hard to get all the parties to coordinate there, but how long will Hizballah maintain its current position of driving the Lebanese crisis?  As long as the Iraqi situation is unsettled, there will be incentives to block Iranian influence there, and that is a longer-term prospect.  But I wonder if the local parties, except for Israel, are on board for a long-term confrontational strategy with Iran.

Is There a "Shi'a Threat"?

I certainly think that Iran is making a play for greater regional influence, perhaps even regional dominance.  However, I am not convinced by the arguments that this is best understood as being driven mostly by an awakening of Shia sectarian identity in the region. 

Undoubtedly the fall of Saddam's regime has allowed Iraqi Shia to have political voice for the first time in decades.  That is a huge change in Iraqi politics.  I do not deny that.  But I wonder how much ripple effect this change will have in the region as a whole.  First, an analysis that emphasizes the transnational sectarian character of this political phenomenon does not give enough attention to the state.  It does not recognize that Iranian foreign policy is a major element in the regional fears about a "Shia crescent."

Iranian foreign policy could change.  Teheran tried to export the revolution in the 1980's.  It failed, and then pursued a foreign policy based more on decent state-to-state relations with its Arab neighbors (for the most part).  Now, with the specific circumstances of the last few years and Ahmadinejad coming to power, there seems to be a bit more leaning-forward in Iranian policy, not back to full-fledged revolutionary export but more emphasis on challenging the status-quo.  But that could change, as Ahmadinejad is already having problems back home.

Such an analysis also leaves out the Arab states, which are not so weak as many think.  The two places where Shia social movements have had the most political success are Lebanon, where the state has always been weak, and Iraq, where the U.S. destroyed the state.  But other Arab states have quite a few resources, both coercive and cooptive, with which to deal with Shia minorities (or, in Bahrain, the majority).  The "rise of the Shia" must be interpreted through the lens both of Iranian state foreign policy and Arab state structures.

Second, if there is a rising Shia social-political movement in the Arab world, I think it has peaked:

a)  Iraqi Shia groups have taken the power that their numbers give them in the new Iraq, but they have not been able to consolidate that power. There are differences among them that will be submerged as long as they are in a civil war, but will undoubtedly surface from time to time, and will become more prominent as they eventually consolidate power (which I think they will, eventually).  As Iraqi Shia do consolidate their power, they will need their ties to Iran less and less, and frictions in what are now fairly stable patron-client relations will arise.

b) Hizballah has ridden a wave in Lebanon, but I think it has reached the high-point of its power.  It cannot "take over" the Lebanese state, given demographic and regional realities.  I do not think it can long sustain its ongoing crisis with the Lebanese state.  And, once Gen. Aoun gets what he wants, Hizballah loses its only cross-sectarian ally.  I think Hizballah has peaked.

c) Iran undoubtedly has regional ambitions, but it does not have the power to be a regional hegemon.  If the United States cannot pull that off, Iran - with all its domestic economic problems and political divisions - cannot pull it off, either.  Iran will overplay its hand, much as the United States has, if it makes a hegemonic play.

d) Finally, where does the "Shia wave" go from here?  There is only one more state in the Arab world with a Shia majority - Bahrain.  But there is a fairly effective state in Bahrain that will prevent a Shia takeover there, and if it cannot, there is that long bridge connecting the island to Saudi Arabia.  The Shia minority in Kuwait seems to be fairly well integrated into Kuwaiti politics.  The Shia minority in Saudi Arabia, as I mentioned above, does not seem to have much revolutionary potential right now.

My bottom line:  I can understand why the United States and regional players want to check Iranian power.  But I do not see any reason why there should be any exaggeration in the United States about a potential "Shi'a threat" to U.S. interests.

F. Gregory Gause III is Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont. 

Surveying the Sunni-Shia question

The other day I reported from Egypt my surprise at the remarkable rise of the "Shia question" there.  Since then, it's only gotten more prominent.  Just look at what's going on at a conference on Sunni-Shia relations being held in Doha.  A few days ago, Yusuf al-Qaradawi - who has long preached tolerance towards the Shia - made waves by accusing Iran of instigating sectarian strife.  Yesterday, Ahmed al-Tayib of al-Azhar complained about the profusion of pro-Shia books in Egypt, accusing Shia of proselytizing among the Sunni.  (The idea that a lot of Sunnis are converting to Shi'ism is bizarrely widespread given that I haven't been able to track down even a single documented case of it.)  Hazem Saghiye noted a couple of weeks ago the growing use of "Persian" as a descriptor in Arab discourse - which should set off alarm bells.  Saudi Arabia has always had a nasty anti-Shia undercurrent, but its language and obsessions seem to be going mainstream in the Arab public discourse - we're seeing it as far afield as Algeria.

Last summer, I dismissed the 'Shia menace' trend as largely driven by regimes rather than by real popular enthusiasm:

The much-hyped communal dimension (Sunni-Shia) is probably a red herring, though. Arab arguments about Lebanon today fall along regime-popular conflicts rather than Sunni-Shia. Despite the sharp Sunni-Shia clashes in Iraq, and the anti-Iranian rhetoric coming out of Arab capitals, the appeal to the wider Arab public of the Shia Hezbollah movement seems to have only increased. Egypt’s very Sunni Muslim Brotherhood has strongly backed Hezbollah, while al-Jazeera (often described by disaffected Iraqi Shia as a “Sunni network”) has given largely sympathetic coverage.

But a lot has transpired since then.  Even if it was governments which fanned the flames, that doesn't mean that they can control the fire they unleashed.   The scenes out of Iraq - from the daily violence to  that accursed Saddam video - do seem to be sparking some real popular anti-Shia sentiment, regionalizing what started as an Iraqi civil war.   A number of Arab commentators - including many who dislike American foreign policy and have in the past been sympathetic with Iran - now blame Iran and Ahmednejad for overplaying their hand in Iraq.  The other day I mentioned Fahmy Howeydi as one example of this;  today, the thoughtful Jordanian liberal Mohamed Abu Roman argues that Iran has revealed its true agenda against Arabs and Sunnis.   Finally, as the Washington Post reports, the new Arab media appears to be contributing to the Sunni-Shia strife.   

Combine all this, and we've got the makings of something very ugly. It isn't just the pro-American governments or Saudi media anymore:  in an important recent essay published on the al-Jazeera website, the influential pan-Arabist journalist like Yasir al-Za'atra (no friend of American foreign policy) highlighted the historical and religious roots of the Shia threat to the Sunni Arab world.  Quite a few other pieces on al-Jazeera and in al-Quds al-Arabi explore similar themes recently - often linking the anti-Shia trend to American foreign policy even as they support some if its main complaints.  An al-Jazeera online survey (all usual caveats apply) found 73% blaming Iran for the deterioriating security problems in Iraq.  In other words, now we're seeing something which goes well beyond the government-led campaign against Iran and Hezbollah which we saw last summer.

The American response to this trend seems to be best described tacit encouragement (it is being driven almost exclusively by pro-American 'moderate Sunni' regimes - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia).  The popular idea out there, true or not, is that the US and its Arab allies hope to prepare the ground for a confrontation with Iran by turning Arab public opinion against the Shia (Edward Luttwak, for one, sees this as a positive trend).  The official American position seems to be that that its concerns are all about Iran, not about the Shia, but that's not how it's playing out on the ground.

There's a very clear and obvious precedent for this anti-Shia/anti-Iranian mobilization, by the way:  in the 1980s, Saddam Hussein rallied the Arab world against the Persian and Shia threat as part of his eight year war with Iran.  'Moderate Sunni' pro-American regimes - especially in the Gulf - rallied to the cause, and a lot of Arab journalists (whether on Saddam's payroll or not) happily raged against the Persian / Shia menace.  Today, the United States and its Arab allies are seemingly replicating Saddam's Arab strategy against Iran, right down to the media campaigns.  The mobilization also draws strength from the mainstreaming of the virulent anti-Shi'ism of the jihadists, which might rather bizarrely mean that American strategy is trying to reap what al-Qaeda has sown.  Are Saddam and Zarqawi now America's role models and allies for dealing with the Iran question?  That just can't be good. 

Back to that Doha conference on Sunni-Shia relations.  Ali Gumaa, the mufti of Egypt, for his part called on Sunni and Shia leaders to issue a joint apology and to work together to stem to the rising sectarian strife.  I'd say that this is a good idea, albeit unlikely to make much difference at this point.