The Sunni-

Shiite Divide:

2016 Outlook and

Beyond

THE INTER-UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR TERRORISM STUDIES

The Sunni-Shiite Divide:

2016 Outlook and Beyond

Table of Contents The Honorable Bijan R. Kian................................................................................................. 1

Scott Edelman ............................................................................................................................ 7

Alex Vatanka ............................................................................................................................. 11

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The Honorable Bijan R. Kian Highest ranking Iranian-American to serve two U.S. presidents. He also held other

senior government positions. In addition, he had a distinguished career in both business and academia

First, I sincerely wish you all a year that has more happiness in it than last year. I

know the focus of this panel today is to help understand the complexity of the age old Shia- Sunni conflict. However, this topic cannot be addressed without understanding the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran following, first, the Islamic revolution in Iran in February 1979 and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. I will start by commenting on the recent, most embarrassing capture of our naval vessels along with ten of our naval officers in the Persian Gulf.

Second, I would like to briefly touch upon a few pages of history going back to the

time of Prophet Mohammad in the sixth and seventh century and the beginning of Shia- Sunni divide but more importantly, the intensification and extreme politicization of the conflict during the reign of Safavid dynasty in early sixteenth century. The Safavid re-united Iran into an independent State in 1501 and adopted the Twelver (Ithna Al Ashary) branch of Shia Islam as the official religion of the country.

Third, I will address my reading on where we (The United States) are in this conflict

along with what we have and haven’t done to reduce the threat we face from the bastion of Shia Islam, The Islamic Republic of Iran. I will answer your questions at the end of my brief presentation.

So first, the capture of our naval officers just in the past 48 hours. Ten Officers from

the world’s most powerful naval force were captured by a small naval force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, forced to go on their knees with their hands behind their heads. The single female officer was forced to cover her head with a Palestinian Kafia and not just any head cover. They were filmed and the video clip of their capture was widely distributed on the Internet. There was a clear message in this act for a number of audiences. To the Iranian people under the tyranny of the Islamic Republic, the message was: “Give up your hope in the Americans. We brought them to their knees in Vienna diplomatically, and now, we brought them to their knees in the Persian Gulf militarily”. To the Arab states, specifically the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the message was: “Don’t count on your ally. They are on their knees. Surrender to hegemonic goals of the Islamic Republic.” Local, regional and global tyranny insured by terror is winning. Freedom fighters are on their knees. When I address my serious concern about the propaganda aspects of this embarrassing planned incident, my diplomat friends remind me that my concerns are exaggerated. They look at this as a diplomatic victory by saying that without the rapprochement, this could have turned into a much greater disaster. They praise our diplomats for getting our sailors out safely through such skillful surrender!

I was listening to Secretary Kerry yesterday at the National Defense University where

he publicly thanked the Islamic Republic for releasing our sailors quickly. So, this was to me a manifestation of extreme limits of diplomacy. We are now so desperate for a political win that we formally thank the revolutionary guard for capturing and humiliating our sailors and then quickly releasing them.

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Islamic Republic’s calculation was perfect. I have said this before that if diplomacy and politics were a game, they would be the winners. They keep what they want, they continue to terrorize the Iranian people, their neighbors and spread the wings of terror all the way to South Central America and Africa. We enrich their terror hoppers and thank them for humiliating our naval officers. Something is wrong with our calculations. We should have handled this differently. Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif were on the phone with each other. Our Secretary of State Kerry should have “diplomatically” request from FM Zarif that there be no propaganda or “show”. It would have been helpful to remind FM Zarif that the United States Navy had come to the aid of disabled Islamic Republic vessels and assisted them on numerous occasions. We cannot assess the Shia-Sunni conflict without an eye on our own role and responsibility in escalation or reduction in tensions. Our actions do matter in the conflict.

Second, let’s visit the pages of recorded history in the seventh century and review

the events of early Islam. Prophet Mohammad passed away in the year 632 at age 61. Before his death, he did not appoint a successor. Two of his closest supporters were also his relatives. AbuBaker was his father in law, the father of his young bride Aisha. Ali ibn Abi Taleb was his cousin and son in law, the husband of his beloved daughter Fatimah Al Zahra. There was a short debate on who should succeed the prophet as the leader of Islam but this did not result in a major dispute. The matter of succession was quickly resolved. Abu Bakr Abdallah bin Quhafah, senior companion of the prophet was chosen as the first Caliph in the year 632. Ali Ibn Abi Taleb did not ascend to the position of Caliph until the year 656 after Umar Ibn Al-Khattab (634-644) and Uthman Ibn Taib (644-656) succeeded Abu Bakr.

What is important to remember is that there was no major division in Islam

immediately after the death of Prophet Mohammad. There was no fighting between Abu-Bakar and Ali. They had a friendly relationship. The major eruption in conflict took place in the year 680 in Karbala during the reign of Umayyads where according to Shia historians Ali ibn Abi Taleb’s younger son Hussayn Ibn Ali along with 72 members of his family and closest allies were massacred by a large army led by Yazid, the Ummavi Caliph.

After this significant event, tension was reduced and intensity of conflict slowed

down. By the time the sixth Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (descendent of Ali Ibn Abi Taleb) took his place as the Imam of the Shi’a Islam, The Shi’a sect of Islam went into a quiet period, and not much took place all the way until the Safavids dynasty took power in 1501 after the fall of Sassanid dynasty. The Safavid reunited the Persian Empire and adopted the Twelver (Ithna Ashary) branch of the Shia sect of Islam as the official religion of the country. Prior to this, the majority of Iranians were Sunnis. It is important to note that Shia Muslims are mainly divided between the Ismaili and Ithna Ashary or Jafary

(Twelver branch) of Shia Islam. This was a time of competing ambitions between two imperialistic powers. The Persians and the Ottomans. And of course, the Ottomans, another established empire, had their own political roles and ambitions, and the confrontation was there, but the conflict did not last thirty years like the Catholics and the Protestants conflict. It was a very short conflict and things went into quiet. There were some periods when the Sunnis and the Shiites actually began an academic dialogue. In the sixties, there were actually some exchanges between Ayatollah Qomi from Qum, and a senior cleric in Egypt and they started to come to some understandings. And the Jaffary sect of Islam, the Shia sect of Islam, actually became

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more of a subject of study in institutions of higher learning, so the academic exchanges calmed down the tensions until the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

The Islamic revolution in Iran marks the revival of the conflict with its imperialistic

ambitions. From the early days, the leaders of Islamic Republic declared their goal of exporting their revolution. Their targets were not exactly London and New York in the first instance, although they were not excluded. In fact, a mile in a half from where I live, there is a very active Islamic center, and I can read the sign in Farsi so while I do not know who exactly the supporters are I am sure The Islamic Republic has a strong role in supporting such presence. The Islamic Republic set a goal to spread Shia Islam in far away lands. Targets were vulnerable countries attracted to financial support from Tehran.

We talked about our role in rising tensions between the Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

An example of our actions and policies is the period during which we adopted a “Dual Containment” policy when Iraq invaded Iran and during the eight year war. I am not going to spend time on this policy but it is important to measure the impact of U.S. policies on disturbing the balance of power between the two sects. This is where the expression “some roads to failure are paved with good intentions”. I can say with confidence that our policies in the region have not been helpful in reducing sectarian tensions. In fact, one could argue that we have unintentionally fanned the fire. There is also little doubt in my thoughts that we did so because of our poor understanding of the dynamics of history and philosophy that separates the two sects.

On further assessing the impact of our dual containment policy, we need to recall

an important event on April 18 1988. Following an incident involving an act of arson on an oil rig in the Persian Gulf by the revolutionaries in Iran, The United States Navy almost sank the Islamic Republic’s Navy in “Praying Mantis” operation. U.S. Marine pilots sank one destroyer and let a second badly damaged Destroyer limp to shore as the Marine pilot did no longer consider it a threat. Some believe that this incident may have contributed to ending the eight year war between Iraq and Iran on August 20, 1988.

To continue on this examination of the impact of our policies on the rise and fall

of the flames of tension between Shia and Sunni in Iraq, we also recall the 2003, invasion of Iraq. Iraq is a country with a majority Shiite, minority Sunni population. It is often said that the United States helped the rise of Shiite to power in Iraq. It is hard to deny our role in this shift in power. The unintended consequence of this shift was the extreme influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Iraq and the ensuing brutal treatment of Sunnis at the hand of Shia leadership.

So as our presence in Iraq increased, so did the presence of the Islamic Republic. I remember in 2008, I asked a friend who holds a senior position in Iraq a naked question. I asked him: Do you think Major General Qaasem Suleiman calls the shots downtown Baghdad? From the expression on his face, I could tell that this was not the impression the Iraqi Shia held. They saw Suleimani, who heads the Quds Force as a helping hand from the neighboring Shia Iran.

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Similar to our policies and actions in Iraq, we made decisions that empowered the Islamic Republic of Iran in Afghanistan. Another action worthy of careful assessment in studying the rise of sectarian tensions between Shia and Sunni sects.

Moving on, we drew some red lines for Bashar Assad in Syria. The red lines were

crossed but ignored by Washington. This as a clue for Russia to raise its presence in Syria. Our signal to the world was not to take our redlines too seriously because we don’t! Russia read that signal all too clearly. Diplomacy scored a win for Russia and by default the brutal Assad regime. The losers did not sit idle. The flames of conflict between Shia and Sunni rose with the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia insisting on their support for Assad’s regime.

And so it is in the name of diplomacy that we are now where we are. We are in a

conflict where hundreds of thousands of people are displaced, and the number of dead are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands and it is a consequence of our decisions.

Our uninformed and somewhat naïve reactions began with us repeating the

propaganda of this savage group who call themselves the Islamic State. Without thinking about the consequences, we simply repeated their self-proclaimed name. By repeating this lofty lie, we actually helped them gain some measure of legitimacy. As I have said before, if an insane person calling himself Abraham Lincoln sets fire to a building downtown, the Washington Post is not going to write an article that says Abraham Lincoln set fire to a building just because that guy calls himself by that name!

Some of my friends comment on my thoughts that I see all problems in the Middle

East somehow connected to the Islamic Republic of Iran. There are others who have completely surrendered to the notion that he Shia-Sunni conflict is 1400 years old and won’t go away regardless of what policies and actions are enacted by others. I disagree with this notion. We must learn more about Islam and change our ways of dealing with the ideology. It is a common practice to measure our military preparedness continuously. The question is: how good are we in measuring our diplomatic preparedness? Let’s study major points in the recent history of the Middle East in general and the Shia – Sunni conflict in particular over the past three decades. How prepared were we diplomatically for such events? How did we read events in Iran in 1979? How did we respond diplomatically to a series of aggression, terror and killing of our servicemen by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah? How did we interpret the events in Cairo in 2011? Did we see the Islamist take-over of Egypt? How are we reading the events unfolding in Syria? Did we see Russia entering the Syrian battlefield so strongly? What were our diplomatic plans for such a significant shift in Russian policy?

We have a poverty of imagination currently in our diplomacy—that is the best way,

most polite way, I can refer to this. I believe we pick popular slogans such as “diplomacy is better than force” in place of thoughtful and creative solutions carefully balanced with enough leverage to earn us a steady seat at the negotiations table. There is another observation. Our adversaries don’t follow the same rules as we do. Our own laws and our respect for international norms act as chains on limiting our options. Our adversaries don’t have such limits. The arrest of our naval officers in the Persian Gulf is a good example. Do we have a diplomatic plan for the next incident? Do we have a

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plan to avoid or better manage the next embarrassing show of humiliation? Do we have a plan to better measure the impact of our own actions on the rise and fall of the intensity of the sectarian conflict?

I believe we need to be serious about realizing the significance of our own role in this

conflict. It is not enough to say things like “military option is on the table”. The world is not taking us seriously. Not on military options and not on diplomatic options. We have not demonstrated credibility on neither.

We must stop looking at the world and defining it as we would like it to be versus

the way it is. If we are seriously interested in reducing tension around the world, we must get off the firefighting mode and better understand the cause of arson! It is naïve to reward the arsonist for putting out the fire they started. Our declarations must be viewed as really believed by ourselves. We cannot order chaos into calm. We cannot kill our way into changing ideologies. On the other hand, we need to understand economic realities better. We need to understand the diminishing supply of “hope” in the Middle East. Corruption, lawlessness, tyranny and terror are all realities contributing to the dangerous and explosive situation we face in that part of the world. We need to use our convening powers and take full advantage of our position in the world in a way that we are perceived as honest brokers in a conflict. Preparing the table for diplomacy goes beyond simplistic preparation for compromise. We must recognize that the adversary may see no net benefit in ending conflict. We need to play our diplomatic role equipped with adequate tools in the exercise of diplomacy. What were our levers of negotiation with the Islamic Republic of Iran on the so called “Iran Deal”? Were they adequately selected to lead to a mutual win? Did we achieve at least a part of the goals we set before we began the negotiations?

Shia-Sunni conflict will continue to rise as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran

continues its role in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Islamic Republic of Iran’s ambitions don’t start and end in the Middle East. Tehran has its imperialistic eyes on the Americas and Africa. It seems that out of necessity, Tehran has become very good at planning and strategy. Their ambitions go beyond protecting the Shia sect of Islam. Tehran and Qum have their eyes on dominating the Islamic world. It matters not how realistic this goal may be. What matters in Iran’s determination on its hegemonic goals in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

Tehran needs to have enough incentive to stop their imperialistic behavior, and this

is not just the issue of the bomb. It goes well beyond the issue of becoming a threshold nuclear state. So, one would reasonably ask the question: What is the needed shift? How would you approach the right path in reducing the tensions? My quick answer is a brief one. Stop the supply of fuel to this fire. The fuel is coming from multiple sources

with varying volume and effectiveness. I will focus on Tehran, and I will focus on Revolutionary Guard IRGC and their grip on power in Iran. IRGC owns the Islamic Republic of Iran. Back in 2012, a young American businessman along with his economist friend and colleague were arguing with me that there is a vibrant private sector in Iran. That my views on the iron grip of IRGC on the Iranian economy are grossly exaggerated. The young man is currently in prison in Iran. He must have encroached on the economic interests of IRGC. I just heard that his father was arrested too. There are plenty of strong reasons to believe that there is no such private sector in Iran. IRGC will continue to amass wealth and feed their terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen

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and elsewhere. IRGC owns the country and controls its resources. In return, they protect the continuity of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They are simply following the edict of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini who said: “When it comes to protecting the revolution, even the most sacred Islamic laws can be dismissed.” So, no matter who are interlocutors are, and no matter what rank they hold in the government of the Islamic Republic, we are not speaking to principals if we are not engaged with the IRGC. IRGC calls the shots. Without any doubt. They have little interest in change that will reduce their grip on economic power. Diplomatic preparedness on our side includes careful study of the central question “what does the IRGC do after resumption of relations between Washington and Tehran?” What is the incentive for IRGC to play a tension reduction role in the Shia – Sunni conflict?

Let me conclude by saying that the Shia- Sunni conflict cannot be assessed without

assessing the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be assessed without examining the realities of power in the structure of the Islamic Republic. Bribing IRGC with promises for more power is not an option. Our laws are set to punish all who will engage in corrupt business practices. We can’t provide an incentive for the arsonist to stop starting fires as long as we reward them to put out the fire they started.

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Scott Edelman Former State Department advisor to U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command, in the Gulf

Many years ago, back when I first worked at a junior intelligence analyst, I

participated in the production of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the conflict during the early 1980’s between Ethiopia and Somalia. Now it was — I believe it still is — customary in NIE’s to project forward 5 years, so the draft contained the usual boilerplate language to the effect that the conflict between the two nations was “unlikely to be resolved within the next 5 years.”

The chair of the session — I believe it was the assistant NIO — noted that the

Ethiopians and Somalis had been at it at that point for roughly a millennium. He suggested we be bold in our analysis for a change: “The problem WILL NOT be resolved in the next 5 years.”

I was reminded of that when I saw the title of this program. Although it has waxed

and waned in intensity over the centuries, the divide within the Islamic world between Sunni Muslims and Shi’a Muslims — and among the various subdivisions of each group, as well as other offshoots such as the Alawites who don’t properly belong to either — has been ongoing for a millennium-and-a-half now. So I’m pretty confident in starting out with this prediction: It WILL NOT be resolved during 2016. (Nor in the next 5 years, for that matter.) If anything, the question before us is whether it will remain at its present level of intensity or will flare into something more violent in the coming year.

Destabilizing Factors:

That dangerous potential presents itself because, beyond theological disputes over

who shot Hussein, etc., at present the Sunni-Shi’a divide is intensified by the fact that two well-armed nation-states — Iran and Saudi Arabia — aspire to represent, respectively, each of these two major sects and, in a larger sense, aspire to leadership of the entire Muslim world as the champion of their respective sects.

They do so in extremely close proximity to each other — glowering across a narrow

and shallow body of water, and in the context of a region undergoing the biggest upheaval it has experienced in a century — with states around them disintegrating in the absence of any mechanism for the creation of a new regional order.

They do so with larger and more capable armed forces than either has ever possessed

in the past. They do so with leaderships increasingly assertive in foreign affairs, yet each in its

own way nervous — even paranoid — about potential internal challenges to their rule, and sensitive to internal accusations that they are insufficiently aggressive against the other.

They do so at a time when the single resource upon which both their economies

depend is being sold for plunging prices world-wide — well below the price each needs to sustain its own economy at the level to which they and their populations aspire — and is doing so in part because the virtual monopoly they and countries aligned with

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them enjoyed for decades has crumbled in the face of an explosion of alternate sources of supply.

They do so at a time when the major outside power — the guarantor of regional

stability for nearly half a century (after having replaced an earlier outside guarantor of a century’s duration) — had made clear its desire to retreat from the region, and sends increasingly uncertain, even unreadable, signals regarding its short term intentions. The Religious Dimension:

And those are just the conventional destabilizing factors which outsiders find relatively easy to understand. They all exist within a context in which the respective leaderships of the two countries utterly despise each other. Each is inclined to attribute the worst of intentions and the greatest immorality to the other. Both underestimate the determination of the other. Which means each is likely, when in confrontation, particularly with fast-moving events, to miscalculate the responses which it can expect to their own actions.

We in the post-religious secular 21st-century West (esp. in Europe and coastal

America) tend to dismiss or devalue the impact of religious convictions in the calculations of peoples in the Middle East. (Heck, in America, elites on the two coasts even have trouble understanding their impact in the Middle West.) Years ago Bernard Lewis cautioned against trying to impose Western modes of political analysis on cultures which have different — in this case, religious — assumptions, famously comparing it to listening to a baseball announcer trying to describe a cricket match.

It is well to remember that one of the foundation stones of the Saudi Kingdom —

perhaps even its central one — is the Wahhabi variant of Sunni Islam. And that the very foundation — the entire raison d’être — of Wahhabism from its beginning in the 18th century is the intense, even violent rejection of Shi’ism: The belief that “pure Islam” is being corrupted by Shi’ite influence and practice, that Shi’ism must be rejected, and that Shi’ites are virtual heretics.

For their part, the various sects of Shi’ism all have in common their origins as revolts

against the authority of established Sunni Muslim elites. Often through the centuries these were less doctrinal disputes than revolts against power, but nonetheless different varieties of Shi’ism all have in common a tradition of revolt and repression, and all nurture a profound resentment against Sunnis.

For much of the past century, these differences were repressed — or, more

accurately, bottled up — in the Gulf region as Shi’ites in Iraq and the Arabian peninsula

resentfully endured the domination and repression of Sunni regimes. The Iranian Revolution of 1979, however — with its assertion of revolutionary élan in the name of Shi’ite Islam — inspired the Shi’a and rekindled old animosities.

Tensions between Iran and the Saudi Kingdom have risen in fits and starts ever since

then. The Saudis have reacted to real and perceived attempts by Iran to subvert their regime and those of their GCC allies, and to assert more aggressively the Iranian and Shi’ite presence, including during the annual Hajj. (Indeed, tensions arising from Iranian efforts to politicize the Hajj led to a previous break in relations between the two

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governments in the late 1980’s, not coincidentally occurring in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war and Iranian efforts to widen the field of battle to include oil shipments through the Gulf.) Iran has pushed back, both with escalating demands for a more visible presence at the Hajj, criticisms of Saudi management of the pilgrimage and, of course more widely, with its aggressive cultivation and even creation of subversive Shi’a militias in previously Sunni-dominated territory.

Every briefing I ever gave included the phrase “it’s not that simple,” and that’s the

case here as well: At the same time that both Saudi Arabia and Iran claim international leadership of their respective sects, the members of those sects outside their own borders are far from enthusiastic followers. Iran’s “revolutionary doctrine” of wilayat al-fakih or leadership by a self-proclaimed clerical elite is not, in fact, accepted by most Arab Shi’a. Iraqi Shi’a have been willing — in the absence of effective allies and facing determined hostility from a Saudi leadership incensed by the very idea of Arab Shi’a

actually CONTROLLING a state — to accept Iranian assistance while resisting religious and political direction from Iran. Most Iraqi Shi’a follow the guidance of their own Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who rejects the doctrine of wilayat al-fakih and the authority of the imams of Qom in Iran. Beyond that, on a personal and ethnic level, most Iraqi Shi’a, being ethnically Arab, regard themselves as more truly and originally Muslim than their Persian co-religionists, and view the Persian imams as doctrinal arrivistes.

Meanwhile, on the Sunni side, Egyptian clerics — particularly those at Al-Azhar —

are generally regarded as far more authoritative than their Saudi counterparts. Even within the Arab world, Saudi money buys a measure of grudging acceptance, but not respect. To be blunt, most non-Gulf Arabs also see the Saudis as primitives who somehow came into a lot of money — “the Clampetts without the charm.” Outside the Arab world, it is undeniable that Saudi financial support for the construction of mosques and for the training and hiring of clergy is spreading its more fundamentalist outlook among Sunni Muslims, but the effect is far from universal. Potential “Austrian Archdukes”:

So — what does all this mean, esp. in the context of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry as the

most prominent flashpoint in the Sunni-Shi’a divide? Even before this month’s events, the Gulf situation was very tense. After all, it’s not that long ago that the open hostilities of the so-called “tanker war” of the late 1980’s took a very violent turn, albeit one quickly ended in 1988 when the United States destroyed much of the then-existing Iranian navy.

More recently, during the time earlier in this decade when I was serving as the State

Department advisor to the Fifth Fleet in and around the Persian Gulf, American naval officers all seemed to have recently re-read Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August,”

and were all intensely sensitive to the possible unexpected appearances of “Austrian archdukes” at a moment’s notice. Even the Iranians appeared aware that miscalculation could lead all too easily to rapid escalation of activities, and at times seemed to exercise caution and discretion as well.

There is evidence, however, that such restraints are now fading, and the potential

for an unexpected flare-up will be great in the next several years. Both Iran and the Saudi Kingdom appear to believe, each in their own way, that the United States is on a path to gradual withdrawal of military forces from the Gulf region. Tehran, of course,

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would like to hurry that process along, although for the moment its new aggressiveness in the region — one example being the recent live-fire exercise of missiles just under a mile away from the USS Truman as it was transiting the Strait of Hormus — remains tempered by a desire not to slow the process.

For its part, Riyadh’s sense of abandonment and concerns about Iranian as well as

even-more-radical Sunni subversion within the Kingdom, combined with what appears to be an invigorated new assertiveness possibly attributable to the rise of King Salman’s ambitious 30-year old son, Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, is leading it to try to demonstrate a new toughness in cracking down on internal dissent while asserting itself more vigorously than ever in the past within the region — particularly where it believes it needs to act on its own or in concert with a small number of regional partners such as the UAE in countering the advance of Iran and its proxies.

To date, all military confrontations between the Kingdom and Iran have been outside

their respective borders and through proxies. There continue to be powerful incentives on both sides for this pattern to continue: While both are more capable militarily than in the past, both leaderships are well aware of their limited ability to sustain combat beyond their own borders, as well as the overwhelming costs both domestically and militarily such combat would impose.

But given the psychological atmosphere of mutual contempt combined with new

insecurities by two leaderships which, at the same time, are tempted to act more aggressively than they have in the past, miscalculations are increasingly possible. It is not difficult to envision Iran, for example, escalating a confrontation by shooting off a “warning” missile or two near a Saudi oil processing facility (many of which are temptingly located right on the Gulf coast) or the Saudis deciding that the time has come for a “warning” flyover of Iranian territory or a challenge to Iranian military flights. Iran has a record, as well, of threatening to harass shipping through the crucial Strait of Hormuz — the mere threat of which could cause international insurance rates to skyrocket, with their ripple effect on oil prices and the world economy (albeit modified at a time of low prices and supply glut overall.)

There remains enough mutual rationality that such incidents might not escalate out

of control, but they would certainly cause nervousness world-wide. And in the heat of a crisis, rationality — especially between adversaries already inclined to challenge each other and with little regard for each other’s perspective — is not guaranteed.

To sum up: There is no reason to believe that this divide will narrow or ease any

time in the foreseeable future. For the next few years at least, we are in for a bumpier ride than has been the case so far. The apocalypse is not just around the corner. But,

as it has for thousands of years, the region will continue to provide a steady source of employment for both military leaders and diplomats.

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Alex Vatanka Senior Fellow at Middle East Institute and at the US Air Force Special Operations School

(USAFSOS) Thank you very much first for inviting me, thank you all for being here today. I am

going to skip my prepared remarks, and I am just going to talk for a few minutes, and I very much look forward to your questions.

When I was thinking about today’s topic—and I will first confess I am no theologian,

so you will not hear me talk about the evolution of Islam and how the various branches came about—I just thought to myself, since I recently last year published a book on the history of relations between Iran and Pakistan, the issue of the Arabs and Iran’s relations with the Arabs is really at the heart of that book. When I was thinking about today, I thought about what lessons does history have that might be relevant for today’s discussion about this whole Sunni-Shi’ite divide.

And I could not help thinking about some of these dates when I was listening to all

of you this afternoon and to me there is definitely a sectarian divide of sorts, but I would agree we should not exaggerate. I would tend to say that there is more of a civilizational divide, certainly dividing the Arabs from the Persians/the Iranians. I say that based on the history of Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular, but also the other Gulf States.

It is actually when the British decide that they are going to pull out of east of Suez

in 1968 that you see excitement building up in the kingdom of the Persian Gulf. Who is going to be the guardian of the Gulf? And it is very interesting to see how the Arabs react, because the Shah made it very clear he wants to be the guardian of the Gulf. And he sends people out there to the various Sheikhdoms and he says, look, give me money, and I will be the guardian, and I will make sure the Soviets do not show up here messing with you. They do not like it, they do not trust the Shah. Remember, this is the Shah of Iran, pro-Western, certainly no Islamist, Shi’a, Sunni, or otherwise. But the Arabs just did not like the idea of Big Brother coming down from the north, and saying, I am going to protect you.

My point in telling you this story is that this happened 47 years ago, over a decade

before Ayatollah Khomeini showed up from Paris – and it was an issue then. So, when we are thinking about this Iranian-Arab divide, sure, the Sunni-Shi’a divide is a real one, and certainly has been built up not just by the Islamic Republic, but I would say the Saudis are equally guilty in this.

Everybody talked about the February of 1979, the coming of the Ayatollahs to Iran,

but we forget what happened at the Siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca and what impact that had on Saudi foreign policy. That is the beginning when you see the Wahhabi establishment, as part of this great bargain with the House of Saud, says, we will keep quiet about what you do in southern France, but we want the billions so that we can go to Pakistan and elsewhere and build the madrassas.

So, this is a two-way traffic here, and I will not defend the Islamic Republic of Iran.

You are looking at a guy who will be arrested on the spot if he showed up in Tehran. I am not defending it but academic neutrality makes me want to say that. It takes two to tango.

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That aside, let me quickly turn to today. I do not want to repeat what has been said,

but let me quickly turn to three points I want to make. One is I admire that clarity of assessment, I really do, and I see a lot of the same

things Bijan sees, but my conclusions have not yet developed. And certainly in the case of Rouhani and Zarif, and whether they are powerless or not, I have to say, I tend to believe they have more power than some people think they do.

Everybody is talking about the embassy attack and the detention and the capture of

these ten American sailors. Compared to what the reaction was in Tehran – the Saudi embassy was attacked in the last few days – when the Saudi embassy was attacked, we see Rouhani, the Presidential Palace, the Foreign Ministry panicking and coming out very quickly saying this is the wrong thing to do, you are undermining everything we have done with this nuclear agreement, trying to get the country back into the international mainstream. And what do you guys do, you go out there and you show everyone that we have not really learned the lessons from being hostage takers. But very quick reaction. You see that split within the regime, and it is not a show they are putting up, it is a real schism on how do you go about behaving in terms of foreign policy.

And compare that to what happened with the sailors. Silence from the Rouhani team.

First, I am looking, I want to be fed, what is their reaction, what are they saying. Rouhani, Zarif, nothing, everything is silent. But, apparently, Javad Zarif was on the phone eleven times with John Kerry saying do not worry, we are going to have them released.

Only five did you say? Only five, you see, there are people in the room, and now you

are going to make me blush. I am just quoting the Washington Post, I think that is what I read, but anyway, more than what he had done, apparently, with the Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir.

The point I am trying to make is – and I do not have a conclusion – what does Javad

Zarif think he has got to play with when he is making pledges like that, because I suspect that those pledges were pretty firm. Because otherwise maybe President Obama would have had to mention that in his State of the Union speech. Maybe someone would tell the President, look, the Iranians are telling us, one hundred and ten percent, they want to make a point, but tomorrow at dawn, they are going to be let go. And again, if Zarif had that kind of message for the American counterpart of his, that tells me that yes, I absolutely agree that the Revolutionary Guards are the third most important center of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran today. You have the Office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and you have the President Hassan Rouhani, and then you have

the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps]. And there is no doubt in my mind that the IRGC right now are scared. They are scared that this world that Rouhani wants to introduce to the Iranian people and take the country toward is world in which the IRGC would be, at the end of it, the weaker party. It will lose influence. But I do not know if the IRGC has the kind of clout to go out there and basically say to Javad Zarif, say to Rouhani, and everyone else that look, it is our way or the highway. I do not think the system in Iran operates on that level.

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But at the same time, I clearly see, since we are talking about the Sunni-Shi’a divide, that President Rouhani came in with the promise of two things he wanted to deliver. I am going to get you a nuclear deal, which in turn will result in the sanctions being lifted, which in turn means that you are going to have more money in your pocket. That has been his focus. And to be fair to Hassan Rouhani, the Saudis gave him nothing in the first two years in office. He came out on the pledge that I want to work with Saudi Arabia, I am going to try and work and deal with Saudi Arabia, exactly the way his mentor Ayatollah Rafsanjani had done twenty years earlier in the early 1990’s.

Because people forget, we talk about this Iranian-Saudi split today as if it has never

happened before. It has happened at least three times before, since the Islamic Republic came to be. We fixed it then, there is a way to fix it now, but Hassan Rouhani does not want to do it right now. He is focused on the economy, and this new Saudi leadership that has come in since early 2015, they certainly have no time for Rouhani because they believe that it is the IRGC that is really calling the shots, why bother talking to Rouhani.

Let me just say something, I mentioned Adel al-Jubeir because we are talking about

the regional implications of this. This last week we had the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia and the guy who some people are worried is going to be the next king of Saudi Arabia, the Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, visiting Pakistan. Visiting Pakistan, with a simple plea to the Pakistanis, you are a hundred and ninety-two million people, you are the only Islamic state that is nuclear armed, side with us.

So yes, I think this Iranian-Saudi rivalry is going to put a lot of these countries in

the region in a dilemma and make life uncomfortable for them because they have to decide. But what I take from the visit to Pakistan is the Pakistanis turned it down, and the ones that have actually cut relations with Iran because of this are the ones that really, in the grand scheme of things, do not really matter that much. Djibouti and Sudan, no disrespect, are not the heavyweights here.

And that is where I am going to hopefully leave you with a bit of optimism here. I

want to point out that Iran-Saudi relations have been here before, when they have had conflicts in the past, predating 1979, had nothing to do with Shi’a-Sunni; it is geopolitical and hard, oftentimes, which tells us it can be solved. You can find common ground. Maybe ISIS is going to be the common ground, I do not know, but you might be able to find common ground.

At the end of the day, if I am the Iranian official, I am going to sit in Tehran and

think alright, let me, for a second, fantasize that the House of Saud is digging itself into this hole in Yemen that it is never going to get itself out of; great, that is their Vietnam, they are going to destroy themselves. But what comes after the House of Saud? It is not

going to be something pro-Iranian, I mean, Saudi society, if anything, is more anti-Iranian than the House of Saud. So, in many ways, if I am the Islamic Republic of Iran, I want to give the House of Saud a way out, I want to look for compromises with them.

So, maybe I should say, that was the optimistic part of the remarks. The less

optimistic part and where I have a question mark is, it is anyone’s guess what this new ruling government in Saudi Arabia plans to do in years to come because what we are faced with is a very young generation of Saudi rulers. There is still speculation as to whether that Crown Prince is twenty-nine or thirty, but he is young. And his dad is

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eighty, so you can just imagine if he stays around and if he stays passionate about his anti-Iran stance, this does not bode well for the future. But, he could go back and visit some of the old videos in the palace, where his dad King Salman used to dance for the Shah of Iran, as a Saudi gesture of hospitality when he used to come and visit. And so, maybe that will give him some alternative ideas about how to go about posturing against this country called Iran to the north.

Because, at the end of the day – and that is the tragic reality of all this – Iran and

Saudi Arabia are the two big guilty parties in the Middle East today for fueling fires across the world. And this is a fire that could easily come and start hitting them at home. They both have a significant Sunni minority in Iran and a significant Shi’a minority in Saudi Arabia, they are not immune to this. So, maybe I am being very naïve, but let us hope that we will see sense sometime very soon. Thank you very much.

Academic Centers

Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies (IUCTS)

Established in 1994, the activities of IUCTS are guided by an International Research Council that offers recommendations for

study on different aspects of terrorism, both conventional and unconventional. IUCTS is cooperating academically with

universities and think tanks in over 40 countries, as well as with governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental bodies.

International Center for Terrorism Studies (ICTS)

Established in 1998 by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, in Arlington, VA, ICTS administers IUCTS activities and

sponsors an internship program in terrorism studies.

Inter-University Center for Legal Studies (IUCLS)

Established in 1999 and located at the International Law Institute in Washington, D.C., IUCLS conducts seminars and research

on legal aspects of terrorism and administers training for law students.

International Advisory and Research Council Honorary Chairman

Prof. Edward Teller * Hoover Institution

Prof. A. Abou-el Wafa Cairo University Prof. Asher Maoz Tel Aviv University

Prof. Jayantha W. Atukorala Sri Lanka Prof. Serio Marchisio Instituto di Studi Giuridcic sulla

Prof. Paolo Benvenuti Universita Di Firenze Communita Inernazionale

Prof. Edgar Brenner * Inter-University Center for Legal Studies Prof. Dr. Herman Matthijis Free University Brussels

Prof. Ian Brownlie Oxford University Prof. Jerzy Menkes Poland

Prof. Abdelkader Larbi Chaht Universite D-Oran-Es-Senia Prof. Eric Moonman City University of London

Prof. Mario Chiavario Universita Degli Studie Di Torino Prof. Yuval Ne’eman * Tel Aviv University

Prof. Irwin Cotler McGill University Prof. Michael Noone The Catholic University of America

Prof. Horst Fischer Ruhr University Prof. William Olson National Defense University

Prof. Andreas Follesdal University of Oslo Prof. V.A. Parandiker Centre for Policy Research

Prof. Gideon Frieder The George Washington University Prof. Paul Rogers University of Bradford

Prof. Lauri Hannikaninen University of Turku, Finland Prof. Beate Rudolf Heinrich Heine University

Prof. Hanspeter Heuhold Austrian Institute of International Affairs Prof. Kingsley De Silva International Center for Ethnic Studies

Prof. Ivo Josipovic University of Zagreb Prof. Paul Tavernier Paris-Sud University

Prof. Christopher C. Joyner * Georgetown University Prof. B. Tusruki University of Tokyo

Prof. Tanel Kerkmae Tartu University, Estonia Prof. Amechi Uchegbu University of Lagos

Prof. Borhan Uddin Khan University of Dhaka Prof. Richard Ward The University of Illinois at Chicago

Prof. Walter Laqueur CSIS Prof. Yong Zhang Nankai University, China

Francisco Jose Paco Llera Universidad del Pais Vasco *Deceased

Director Professor Yonah Alexander

Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 Internship Program Matthew Brenner University of Maryland Daniel Marfurt- Levy George Mason University

Brandon Cordero University at Albany SUNY Veeravaroon Mavichak American University

Caitlin Davis Duquesne University Nicholas Norberg Georgetown University

Patrick Devereux University of California, Los Angeles Faith Pollard University of Mary Washington

Jacob T. Fuller The University of Oklahoma Tyler J. Townes Central Michigan University

Matthew Leger University at Albany SUNY Joel Wickwire University of Oregon School of Law

Ruben Lopez Chavez University of California, San Diego

Please contact the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 901 North Stuart Street, Suite 200, Arlington, VA 22203. Tel.: 703-525-0770 Email: yalexander@potomacinstitute.org, ICTS@potomacinstitute.org

Senior Advisors Senior Staff Technical Advisor Michael S. Swetnam Sharon Layani Mary Ann Culver

CEO and Chairman, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

Prof. Don Wallace, Jr.

Max Stalhberg Alex Taliesen

Chairman, International Law Institute