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Saudi Arabia and Iran: The Cold War of Islam

audessuscest 10y ago
Not so cold in Yemen...
- gotofritz 10y ago
  ..or Syria / Iraq for that matter
  - actionwords 10y ago
    not sure what you're attempting to imply without any evidences that saudi arabia and iran are 'hot' in this region..
  - leroy_masochist 10y ago
    ...but there were plenty of "hot" proxy wars in the "cold" war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact as well, so perhaps the term is well used?
    - audessuscest 10y ago
      Yes but very close to each other so... not exactly
FreedomToCreate 10y ago
To give people some context, the difference between the two (Shia vs Sunni Muslims) is that the Shia believe Mohammed's son-in-law should have been his rightful successor (and he eventually did become the leader) while Sunni's believe that Mohammed Father-In-Law was his rightful successor (too bad God couldn't have made that more clear). Also Saudi doesn't just follow plain old Sunni Islam. They practice Wahhabism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism) which has a more literal reading of the Quran (which explains the higher percentage of extremism). The royal family leveraged Wahhabism to gain and keep power of the region. As long as the countries remain governed by religious politics and inflict God's so called will on others, there cannot be an end to the conflict.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- fiatmoney 10y ago
  The supposed beliefs are not the best way to look at the distinction, especially sociologically - that's like examining Catholic / Protestant split through the lens of their position on transubstantiation. Far more interesting is the way in which they, eg, handle selection of clergy, or marriage patterns. Shia clergy for instance is far more hierarchical than Sunni, which arguably is better for social stability since it avoids as many random yahoos deciding they have a hotline to god, who incidentally wants them to go on jihad.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    > avoids [...] random yahoos Have you seen the video of an Iraqi Shia cleric claiming that eating rabbit meat is forbidden because rabbits are insects? Hierarchy can only take you so far. There will always be uneducated idiots. The best way for quality control is to educate clerics at the national level and allow only those certified to actually preach or lead in prayer.
- optforfon 10y ago
  Totally wouldn't dispute their support of Wahhabism, but can you elaborate on how Wahhabism helps them retain power? I've never really got that argument b/c it doesn't seem like there are moderate subversive elements. The subversive element seem to be all from the more extreme end.
  - FreedomToCreate 10y ago
    The royal family has an alliance with the clergy and basically the clergy helps the royal family maintain the support of the people while the royal family allows the clergy to spread Salafi (the nice way to say someone is a follower of Wahhabism) beliefs without much hinderance.
  - alricb 10y ago
    The royal family is really lacking in the pedigree department. They've married into the right families now, but originally the Sauds were a bunch of hicks. They allied themselves with religious outsiders on the understanding that the priests would legitimize the Saudis (vs. the much better pedigreed Hashemites [1] while the Saudis would give the priests preeminence over their rivals. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemites
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Iran and the Persian people have a long and illustrious history, with deep culture going back as far as human history and a (relatively) vibrant scientific community. They have a lot of natural resources and the firmament for a real long sustaining culture. Saudi on the other hand is very "new" to the world in terms of culture and influence, only coming into prominence since the 1940s oil boom. The harsh environment isn't hospitable to living there without extreme energy use. Both obviously have major regional economic power, but the Saudi society is built on sand (literally and metaphorically). In the very long term Iran's importance will come back so if anything the US and the broader world should be seeking to engage more with Iran and less with Saudi IMO. That's not getting into a lot of the political stuff obviously, more just an analysis of the "fundamentals."
- Retric 10y ago
  This assumes the past mirrors the present. Solar panels for example could make Saudi Arabia a major energy power for a very long time frame. Saudi Arabia benefits from a much lower population density and significantly higher GDP per person. Long term one of the largest questions is how cheap desalination can get. At ~100 gallons per cent both areas can effectively stop being deserts, but current prices of 3 gallons per cent act as a significant economic drain. PS: In the US the average person directly uses ~90 gallons per day @ 3 gallons per cent that's only ~100$ per year for desalination. However, people use vastly more water indirectly, one pound of beef takes ~1,847 gallons.
  - simonh 10y ago
    Solar power is very democratizing in this respect, nobody is going to have a real lock in. Sure it's sunny in Saudi, but there's nobody anywhere near them that needs large amounts of electricity and couldn't just lay out panels themselves. Their GDP is based on oil. In the long term that's going to dry up, and unless they institute major reforms starting right now they'll be in serious trouble.
    - Retric 10y ago
      One of the 'solutions' to solar energy storage is to collect power from the east / west of you. Considering most grid scale storage is expensive and not that efficient ~5-10% transportation losses are viable which makes China, India and the EU well within range of Saudi solar electric power. Another option is manufacturing, cheap power means cheap aluminum. And there is significant research into synthetic fuels, even if significantly more expensive than Oil right now they are likely in demand for aircraft in the long term.
venomsnake 10y ago
> The Islamic Republic of Iran, a Shiite theocracy, claims leadership of the Shiites, which make up roughly 13 percent of Muslims worldwide. For both regimes, religion is an important tool of power. That is mightily misleading. It is more important what part of the shiites make out of Middle East muslims. Because large parts of the muslim populations live in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh - and from bird's eye - they don't seem to care much about sectarian struggles.
- tmptmp 10y ago
  >>Because large parts of the muslim populations live in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh - and from bird's eye - they don't seem to care much about sectarian struggles. Not so much anymore. With the Salafists/Wahabis spreading their hateful agenda against the Shias in these parts of the world in a very big way, there are numerous incidents of mainly Sunnis attacking Shias and a little bit of the other way round too.
pknerd 10y ago
I disagree. This is not a war related to a faith but past history. Arabs and Faras(Iranians) have grudges since ages.
x5n1 10y ago
I personally think it has to do with the low average IQ of of people inhabiting Muslim countries. I know it's racist and not politically correct and I am not about that, but Judaism starts out with the exact same premise that God created the law and he handed it to Moses through the tablets. Yet Jews have always held that humans interpret the law and therefore the law is under the control of people not God (despite even miracles and charismatic leaders that say otherwise), not God. Why is that. To me it's because Jews are smart and Muslims not as smart enough to understand that this is how it should be, that it's stupid for a plethora of reasons to think God created the law or God wants you to run the government according to his laws.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Just going to list cultures smashed to pieces by imperialism and then blamed for being too dumb and lazy to fix their own problems: India (British imperialism), pre-Communist China (forcible opium addiction, mercantile conquest), Native Americans (disease, conquest), West Africa (slave trade), freed American slaves (no acres, no mule, no vote), Middle East (Sykes-Picot, British Petroleum, Bush Administration). You get the idea.
  - x5n1 10y ago
    The people with high intelligence, say 100 average IQ, Chinese for instance recovered just fine. The people who could not adapt were the less smart ones and their history was problematic long before imperialism came. Imperialism was just the latest in a series of subjugations for most of these people, or they were lucky that no one tried to subjugate them as was the case for the Native Americans in the US, the same sort of luck the US had once it had conquered the continent. In Central and South America, because of civilization, the Natives were often brutal to each other before Imperialism and whatever empire was running the show they were running it similarly to the way the British did it. Right now if you look at GDP there is a definite correlation between GDP per capita and average IQ. Why is that? It's because the people with 125+ IQ are the ones intelligent enough to compete in the global market and not be subjugated by other people who want to exploit them. You want me to grow coffee and pay me .50cents/hour go screw yourself. Our country will sell coffee through our own brand of Juan Valdez coffee stores globally, and I will earn 20/hr to grow this stuff. It's black gold. How does that happen. It happens because of intelligence. You see anyone in the Middle East producing anything, whether cars, software, whatever. No. Well why is that? Is it because of the shitty government? India's got a shitty government, but in a country of a billion you have a few million people with high enough IQ to compete globally for that stuff. In the Middle East first of all you get paid no matter what if you are a local so you don't have to compete, and secondly your average IQ is 80 so very few people among you can do the work even if you had to. India has a similar average IQ, but a huge population so... and no free money so they can do it and have to do it. A more general point is those without power get screwed in human civilization and power is usually bought with money and money is usually gotten through intelligence. There are many other ways to get power, for instance the Saudis acquired it through the US by exporting them oil. The US basically did everything for them and gave them a ton of money to f* the world over.
eltronix 10y ago
What about the Turkey in the room?

Not so cold in Yemen...

gotofritz 10y ago
..or Syria / Iraq for that matter
- actionwords 10y ago
  not sure what you're attempting to imply without any evidences that saudi arabia and iran are 'hot' in this region..
- leroy_masochist 10y ago
  ...but there were plenty of "hot" proxy wars in the "cold" war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact as well, so perhaps the term is well used?
  - audessuscest 10y ago
    Yes but very close to each other so... not exactly

To give people some context, the difference between the two (Shia vs Sunni Muslims) is that the Shia believe Mohammed's son-in-law should have been his rightful successor (and he eventually did become the leader) while Sunni's believe that Mohammed Father-In-Law was his rightful successor (too bad God couldn't have made that more clear). Also Saudi doesn't just follow plain old Sunni Islam. They practice Wahhabism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism) which has a more literal reading of the Quran (which explains the higher percentage of extremism). The royal family leveraged Wahhabism to gain and keep power of the region. As long as the countries remain governed by religious politics and inflict God's so called will on others, there cannot be an end to the conflict.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fiatmoney 10y ago
The supposed beliefs are not the best way to look at the distinction, especially sociologically - that's like examining Catholic / Protestant split through the lens of their position on transubstantiation. Far more interesting is the way in which they, eg, handle selection of clergy, or marriage patterns. Shia clergy for instance is far more hierarchical than Sunni, which arguably is better for social stability since it avoids as many random yahoos deciding they have a hotline to god, who incidentally wants them to go on jihad.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  > avoids [...] random yahoos Have you seen the video of an Iraqi Shia cleric claiming that eating rabbit meat is forbidden because rabbits are insects? Hierarchy can only take you so far. There will always be uneducated idiots. The best way for quality control is to educate clerics at the national level and allow only those certified to actually preach or lead in prayer.
optforfon 10y ago
Totally wouldn't dispute their support of Wahhabism, but can you elaborate on how Wahhabism helps them retain power? I've never really got that argument b/c it doesn't seem like there are moderate subversive elements. The subversive element seem to be all from the more extreme end.
- FreedomToCreate 10y ago
  The royal family has an alliance with the clergy and basically the clergy helps the royal family maintain the support of the people while the royal family allows the clergy to spread Salafi (the nice way to say someone is a follower of Wahhabism) beliefs without much hinderance.
- alricb 10y ago
  The royal family is really lacking in the pedigree department. They've married into the right families now, but originally the Sauds were a bunch of hicks. They allied themselves with religious outsiders on the understanding that the priests would legitimize the Saudis (vs. the much better pedigreed Hashemites [1] while the Saudis would give the priests preeminence over their rivals. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemites

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Iran and the Persian people have a long and illustrious history, with deep culture going back as far as human history and a (relatively) vibrant scientific community. They have a lot of natural resources and the firmament for a real long sustaining culture. Saudi on the other hand is very "new" to the world in terms of culture and influence, only coming into prominence since the 1940s oil boom. The harsh environment isn't hospitable to living there without extreme energy use. Both obviously have major regional economic power, but the Saudi society is built on sand (literally and metaphorically). In the very long term Iran's importance will come back so if anything the US and the broader world should be seeking to engage more with Iran and less with Saudi IMO. That's not getting into a lot of the political stuff obviously, more just an analysis of the "fundamentals."

Retric 10y ago
This assumes the past mirrors the present. Solar panels for example could make Saudi Arabia a major energy power for a very long time frame. Saudi Arabia benefits from a much lower population density and significantly higher GDP per person. Long term one of the largest questions is how cheap desalination can get. At ~100 gallons per cent both areas can effectively stop being deserts, but current prices of 3 gallons per cent act as a significant economic drain. PS: In the US the average person directly uses ~90 gallons per day @ 3 gallons per cent that's only ~100$ per year for desalination. However, people use vastly more water indirectly, one pound of beef takes ~1,847 gallons.
- simonh 10y ago
  Solar power is very democratizing in this respect, nobody is going to have a real lock in. Sure it's sunny in Saudi, but there's nobody anywhere near them that needs large amounts of electricity and couldn't just lay out panels themselves. Their GDP is based on oil. In the long term that's going to dry up, and unless they institute major reforms starting right now they'll be in serious trouble.
  - Retric 10y ago
    One of the 'solutions' to solar energy storage is to collect power from the east / west of you. Considering most grid scale storage is expensive and not that efficient ~5-10% transportation losses are viable which makes China, India and the EU well within range of Saudi solar electric power. Another option is manufacturing, cheap power means cheap aluminum. And there is significant research into synthetic fuels, even if significantly more expensive than Oil right now they are likely in demand for aircraft in the long term.

venomsnake 10y ago

> The Islamic Republic of Iran, a Shiite theocracy, claims leadership of the Shiites, which make up roughly 13 percent of Muslims worldwide. For both regimes, religion is an important tool of power. That is mightily misleading. It is more important what part of the shiites make out of Middle East muslims. Because large parts of the muslim populations live in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh - and from bird's eye - they don't seem to care much about sectarian struggles.

tmptmp 10y ago
>>Because large parts of the muslim populations live in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh - and from bird's eye - they don't seem to care much about sectarian struggles. Not so much anymore. With the Salafists/Wahabis spreading their hateful agenda against the Shias in these parts of the world in a very big way, there are numerous incidents of mainly Sunnis attacking Shias and a little bit of the other way round too.

pknerd 10y ago

I disagree. This is not a war related to a faith but past history. Arabs and Faras(Iranians) have grudges since ages.

x5n1 10y ago

I personally think it has to do with the low average IQ of of people inhabiting Muslim countries. I know it's racist and not politically correct and I am not about that, but Judaism starts out with the exact same premise that God created the law and he handed it to Moses through the tablets. Yet Jews have always held that humans interpret the law and therefore the law is under the control of people not God (despite even miracles and charismatic leaders that say otherwise), not God. Why is that. To me it's because Jews are smart and Muslims not as smart enough to understand that this is how it should be, that it's stupid for a plethora of reasons to think God created the law or God wants you to run the government according to his laws.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Just going to list cultures smashed to pieces by imperialism and then blamed for being too dumb and lazy to fix their own problems: India (British imperialism), pre-Communist China (forcible opium addiction, mercantile conquest), Native Americans (disease, conquest), West Africa (slave trade), freed American slaves (no acres, no mule, no vote), Middle East (Sykes-Picot, British Petroleum, Bush Administration). You get the idea.
- x5n1 10y ago
  The people with high intelligence, say 100 average IQ, Chinese for instance recovered just fine. The people who could not adapt were the less smart ones and their history was problematic long before imperialism came. Imperialism was just the latest in a series of subjugations for most of these people, or they were lucky that no one tried to subjugate them as was the case for the Native Americans in the US, the same sort of luck the US had once it had conquered the continent. In Central and South America, because of civilization, the Natives were often brutal to each other before Imperialism and whatever empire was running the show they were running it similarly to the way the British did it. Right now if you look at GDP there is a definite correlation between GDP per capita and average IQ. Why is that? It's because the people with 125+ IQ are the ones intelligent enough to compete in the global market and not be subjugated by other people who want to exploit them. You want me to grow coffee and pay me .50cents/hour go screw yourself. Our country will sell coffee through our own brand of Juan Valdez coffee stores globally, and I will earn 20/hr to grow this stuff. It's black gold. How does that happen. It happens because of intelligence. You see anyone in the Middle East producing anything, whether cars, software, whatever. No. Well why is that? Is it because of the shitty government? India's got a shitty government, but in a country of a billion you have a few million people with high enough IQ to compete globally for that stuff. In the Middle East first of all you get paid no matter what if you are a local so you don't have to compete, and secondly your average IQ is 80 so very few people among you can do the work even if you had to. India has a similar average IQ, but a huge population so... and no free money so they can do it and have to do it. A more general point is those without power get screwed in human civilization and power is usually bought with money and money is usually gotten through intelligence. There are many other ways to get power, for instance the Saudis acquired it through the US by exporting them oil. The US basically did everything for them and gave them a ton of money to f* the world over.

eltronix 10y ago

What about the Turkey in the room?