Winter is Coming: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the execution of Nimr Al-Nimr

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Saudi Arabia executed the prominent Shi’ite cleric Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr on 2^nd January 2016. The execution, aimed at preventing domestic instability and warning Tehran against expanding its influence, has rapidly escalated tension with Iran. The two countries have severed diplomatic relations and will intensify their geostrategic competition. Relations between the countries should be stabilised as quickly as possible to prevent an increase in sectarian violence. Stabilisation will be difficult.

ANALYSIS

Introduction

On 2^nd January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed forty-seven people. Amongst them was a Shi’ite cleric, Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr. The Supreme Leader of Shia-majority Iran, Ayatollah Ali Al Kamenei, warned that Saudi Arabia would suffer “divine vengeance” for the execution (Wilkin & McDowall 2016). The following day, Iranians protesting against Al-Nimr’s execution stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and set it ablaze. On the 4^th, Saudi Arabia expelled the Iranian ambassador and stopped direct flights to Iran. Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia, and Djibouti also severed diplomatic ties with Iran, while Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait recalled their ambassadors. On the 7^th, Iran accused a Saudi-led military coalition of bombing the Iranian embassy in Yemen, a claim denied by the Saudis (Browning 2016). On the 9^th, the Saudi foreign minister announced there were “additional measures to be taken against Iran if it continues with its current policies” (Public Affairs 2016).

The rapid escalation of rhetoric and action on both sides has even caused speculation over the possibility of war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Fawaz Gerges, Middle East expert at the London School of Economics (LSE), notes that “this really could get very ugly and very dangerous in the next few weeks and next few months”, while Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi royal adviser, says the situation has “the ingredients for a major confrontation” (Shoichet & Castillo 2016, Al Jazeera 2016). War remains unlikely, but Saudi Arabia accepted considerable damage to its relations with Iran when it carried out the execution. One motive for the execution was anxiety over Shia unrest in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. Secondly, the Saudis perceive a significant threat from Iran, and may have escalated tensions partly in response to the Iran nuclear agreement signed on 14^th July 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As noted by Heffron (2015), the JCPOA gives Iran greater resources to influence the Middle East and improves Iran-US relations, further increasing the perceived threat from Iran to Saudi Arabia.

Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr

Nimr Al-Nimr was born and grew up in Awamiya, in Saudi Arabia’s Shia-majority Eastern Province. His political activism was motivated by what he viewed as the discriminatory treatment of Shias in Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia. Up to ninety percent of Saudi Arabia’s population is Sunni, including the ruling House of Saud itself (US State Department 2009). Shia face restrictions on religious practice, and were formerly banned from celebrating Shi’ite festivals such as Ashura. Nimr Al-Nimr demanded political representation for the Shia community but was arrested in 2004 and in 2006, and claimed that he was beaten during his second detention. He increased the scope of his demands as his popularity rose, calling in 2009 for parts of the Eastern Province to cede from Saudi Arabia and join Shia-majority Bahrain. This was a dangerous demand. The Eastern Province is strategically crucial to Saudi Arabia, as it accounts for the majority of Saudi oil and gas production (EIA 2014). However, Al-Nimr did not advocate violence, claiming that “the weapon of the word is stronger than the power of bullets” (BBC News 2016). He also endorsed self-determination for other minority groups, such as the Kurds of northern Iraq. He distanced himself from Iranian foreign policy in a 2008 interview with a US diplomat, and was “disarming” in his discussion of US foreign policy. His knowledge of US foreign policy was extensive and his assessment of it positive. Nonetheless, his actual or potential relationship with Iranian agents remained a source of suspicion for the Saudis (Wikileaks 2010). The Saudis were particularly alarmed by his support for protests in the Eastern Province during the 2011 Arab Spring. In 2012 he made comments celebrating the death of a Saudi royal, the former interior minister Prince Nayef. Al-Nimr was then detained for the third and final time. He was shot four times in the leg while allegedly resisting arrest. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2014 on charges including sedition and participation in protests (Loveluck 2016). Although the Saudi government described Al-Nimr as a “convicted terrorist” (Saudi Embassy 2016), he is not known to have used terror or violence as a means to a political end. Rather, he posed a threat to the Saudi government as a focus of opposition to the Saudi state, especially the House of Saud, and as a potential conduit for Iranian influence.

Iranian Protests

As predicted by his brother, Mohammed Al-Nimr, Nimr Al-Nimr’s execution caused Shi’ite protests outside Saudi embassies from Turkey to Indonesia (Xinhua). In Tehran, protesters created a diplomatic crisis when they stormed the Saudi embassy. A Saudi consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad was attacked. The incidents were breaches of the 1961 and 1963 Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations and Consular Relations. Under these agreements, a host country must “take all appropriate steps to protect the premises” of a diplomatic or a consular mission, respectively. Iran has a history of violations of the Vienna Conventions. Examples include the 2006 firebombing of the Danish embassy and the 2011 attack on the British embassy. In the latter case, diplomats were briefly seized and the building was ransacked by protesters. The Saudi and Kuwaiti embassies were attacked in 1987. Most infamously, during the course of the 1979 Iranian revolution the American embassy was seized and fifty-two Americans held hostage for 444 days. 

The Iranian state bore some responsibility for the breach of the Saudi embassy, if only because it failed to provide adequate police protection. Either local officials, a volunteer militia, or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) may have gone further and incited protesters to attack the embassy, or even arranged the attack themselves (Esfandiari 2016).  The attack did not have the undivided support of the Iranian state; it was condemned by President Hassan Rouhani as “totally unjustifiable”. In response, a number of protesters were arrested, and a local security official was fired (Al Mousily 2016).

The attack on the embassy, as a violation of international law, shifted attention from Saudi Arabia’s treatment of political prisoners like Al-Nimr. Seven states including Saudi Arabia severed or downgraded diplomatic relations with Iran. Their response was precedented; the UK severed diplomatic relations with Tehran after the 2011 attack on the British embassy. The most recent attacks were “condemned in the strongest terms” by the United Nations (UN) Security Council, and the Arab League demanded that Iran “stop activities that cause instability in the region” (El-Gobashy et al 2016). Iran’s claim that Saudi Arabia bombed its embassy in Yemen on the 7th has not been confirmed (Browning 2016), and is likely an attempt to distract attention from its own embassy violation.

The Saudi-Iranian Cold War

Background

Saudi Arabia and Iran have a long history of diplomatic conflict, a consequence of competition for influence in the region and of stark religious disagreement. Saudi Arabia’s Wahabbist religious doctrine, a form of puritanical Sunnism, has hampered relations with Iran’s Shi’ite theocracy since the 1979 revolution. Saudi Arabia’s decades-long alliance with the US also contributes to Iranian suspicion over its intentions. Ayatollah Khomeini, the first Iranian Supreme Leader, distrusted the US partly as a result of the 1953 CIA-backed coup against Iranian prime minister Mossadeq. Khomeini described the US as “the Great Satan” (Omer-Man 2011), a term still occasionally used in Iranian diplomacy (the ‘Lesser Satan’ has variously been identified as the USSR or Israel). 

In response to the 1979 revolution, Saudi Arabia funded Iraq during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. Relations with Iran were damaged further during the 1987 Hajj, when hundreds of Iranian pilgrims were killed in clashes with Saudi security forces in Mecca (Kiffner 1987). Relations improved in the 1990s, but deteriorated after 2003 as Iran increased its influence in Iraq and developed its nuclear programme. In 2008 King Abdullah privately asked the US to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and thereby “cut off the head of the snake” (Wikileaks 2010). Despite this history of diplomatic conflict, Saudi-Iran relations have never been worse than at present.

The Military Balance

The intense rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran might be taken to imply that the two countries are evenly matched militarily and economically. In fact, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies have military superiority. Saudi Arabia’s military expenditure was $80.8 billion USD in 2014. Iran’s military expenditure is difficult to assess. It is divided between a number of organisations including the IRGC, the Basij militia, and the AJA (the regular military), and not all spending is made public. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has not estimated Iranian military expenditure since 2012. A plausible estimate for 2014 was $15 billion USD (Parsia & Cullis 2015). For a direct comparison, Saudi Arabian 2012 military expenditure was $56.5 billion dollars, as against $12.7 billion for Iran. Saudi Arabia’s  military spending is not only four or five times that of Iran, but Riyadh has been increasing its spending rapidly in recent years (SIPRI 2015). 

Military spending alone is an unreliable indicator of military capabilities, but Saudi Arabia has further advantages. Unlike Iran, it is not burdened by the expense of training, equipping and paying conscripts, and has focused exclusively on conventional capabilities rather than funding a nuclear programme (Bahgat 2006). It has access to advanced Western technology, including British and American fighter aircraft and sophisticated air-defence systems. Saudi Arabia’s lead is bolstered by the military spending of other members of the GCC. The UAE alone spent $22.8 billion on its military in 2014 (SIPRI 2015), 50 percent more than Iran. The Saudi economy, at $1.6 trillion purchasing-power parity (PPP) in 2014, is larger than that of Iran, at $1.4 trillion PPP in 2014 (CIA 2015). The Saudi population is smaller, at 30.7 million rather than 81.8 million (CIA 2016, Saudi government 2015). Yet unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran’s access to Western military technology has been restricted since 1979. Its attempts at developing a domestic arms industry have met with limited success, and Russian and Chinese imports are inadequate. Much of its current weaponry was acquired by the Shah (Cordesman 2015). 

Iranian Grand Strategy

Iran is playing a weak hand very well. As Poole (2016) notes, Saudi-Iranian competition mobilises support using sectarian division. Proxy conflict has been most intense in the countries where Sunnis and Shias live alongside each other in large numbers. Iranian influence has greatly increased in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, as the Sunni-dominated Saddam government has been replaced by one dominated by Shias, the majority sect of the country. In Syria, a Sunni-majority country, Iran sponsors the Al-Assad government, which relies heavily upon minority sects including Shias, Alawites and Christians (Heneghan 2012). The Syrian regime will survive the civil war in some form, as external actors in the war either support the regime outright (Russia and Iran), or are focused on defeating the extremist Sunni group Da’esh (the US-led military coalition and Turkey). Iranian influence will be secured in Iraq as Da’esh is slowly pushed out of the northern part of the country. Iran also has considerable influence in Shia-majority Lebanon through the militant group Hezbollah.

Most alarming to Saudi Arabia is encirclement through Iran’s support for the Houthis in Yemen. As noted by Heffron (2015), control over Yemen aids control over the Bab-El-Mandeb, the strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and allowing trade to pass quickly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Yemen also shares a long and porous land border with Saudi Arabia and has a large Shia minority. It thus serves as a geostrategic ‘back door’ into Saudi Arabia. The Houthis control the capital, Sana’a, as well as a large part of the Saudi-Yemeni border. They have seized Saudi border posts and regularly shell Saudi cities close to the border (The Economist 2016). They also have forced the Saudis to expend considerable resources attempting to overthrow them. A Saudi-led military coalition, active since March 2015, has captured the port of Aden but has not yet forced the Houthis out of Sana’a. Iran, despite its relative military and economic weakness, is winning round after round of proxy conflict even as Al-Nimr’s death raises the stakes.

The Saudi Response and the Oil Market

Outside Yemen, Saudi Arabia has relied on its wealth to counter Iranian influence. Saudi donors fund opposition groups in Syria (Bröning 2012) and the Saudis are rumoured to have replaced Iran as the principal donor to Hamas (Ramani 2015). Though both governments insist the events were unrelated, Saudi Arabia donated $50 million to Somalia on the day Somalia severed diplomatic relations with Iran (Blair 2016). Saudi Arabia depends on oil for ninety percent of its government revenue, and uses the money to ensure internal stability for its absolute monarchy as well as to further its interests abroad (The Economist 2016).

Saudi spending, however, is under pressure, as the price of Brent crude has fallen from almost $120 per barrel in mid-2014 to under $29 per barrel in January 2016. The oil price is expected to fall further as sanctions on Iran are lifted (see below) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that the oil market could “drown in oversupply” this year. Even Saudi-Iran tensions have not raised the oil price; the dispute makes an Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreement to cut production less likely. The Saudis are determined to maintain market share against American firms, Iran and other states, so no oil price rise can be expected in the short term. The Iranian government also relies on oil revenue but to a lesser extent, and its short term fiscal position is improving as sanctions are lifted. The chair of the Saudi economic council, Prince Muhammad, is contemplating radical economic reform to cope with falling oil prices. This would include removing domestic subsidies  on oil and selling a minority stake in Aramco, the Saudi national oil producer (The Economist 2016). Saudi Arabian economic reform risks increasing domestic instability, and the country’s responses to Iranian action may become less predictable as its financial resources diminish.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action and Iran-US relations

Background

In past disputes with Iran, Saudi Arabia has been confident of American support. The US and Saudi Arabia have been allied since the Second World War, and the US has had poor relations with Iran since 1979. The US attacked Iranian oil platforms and naval vessels during the Iran-Iraq War in operations Nimble Archer and Praying Mantis (Roberts 1987). In the 2000s US-Iran relations were tense over Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme. The initiative gave Iran the capability to build an atomic bomb in a matter of months (though Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons). US-Iran relations have improved with the signing of the JCPOA on 14^th July 2015.

The JCPOA

The JCPOA was negotiated by Iran with six major world powers; Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the USA. The European Union was also a signatory. The terms ensure that it would take Iran more than a year to acquire an atomic bomb after deciding to do so, enough time for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to detect the attempt to build a bomb and for world powers to take preventive action. When the JCPOA was signed Iran was only two months away from a bomb (Kimball 2016). The JCPOA reaffirmed “that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons”. Iran had to reduce its stockpile of 3.67% enriched uranium to 300kg and eliminate any uranium that had been enriched further, ensuring that it has far less than needed to produce a single atomic bomb. It also had to dismantle more than thirteen thousand centrifuges and fill the core of its Arak reactor with cement. The IAEA gained considerable powers to monitor and verify compliance with the agreement. Some restrictions will be lifted over time, but others will apply indefinitely. In exchange, all UN Security Council sanctions and all other national and multinational sanctions on Iran were lifted.

Improving ties

The JCPOA’s effect on broader Iran-US relations is clear. On 12^th January 2016, two US Navy boats with ten sailors onboard were detained by the IRGC in Iranian waters after one of the boats developed mechanical problems. The Americans were taken to an IRGC base on Farsi island but released unharmed after fifteen hours (Reuters 2016). Iran was keen to avoid a diplomatic incident that might disrupt the implementation of the JCPOA, and the IRGC stated that the incursion was “unintentional” (Stuster 2016). The release of the sailors contrasts with an incident in 2007, in which the IRGC detained eight Royal Navy sailors and seven Royal Marines in disputed waters. The British personnel were detained for thirteen days, accused of espionage and paraded on state television before being abruptly released (BBC 2007).

The IAEA announced that Iran had implemented the terms of the JCPOA on 16^th January 2016, three days after the American sailors were released. This resulted in the lifting of international sanctions. Separately, the US and Iran announced a prisoner exchange; five Iranian-Americans were released from Iranian prisons and a number of Iranian-Americans detained for sanctions violations were released from American prisons. The improvement in relations is not unconditional; on the 17^th the US imposed new sanctions on eleven companies and individuals in response to a December 2015 Iranian missile test (Wroughton & Hafezi 2016). The US-Iran relationship remains untrusting and transactional. Nonetheless, US and Saudi policies towards Iran have diverged; the US is increasing its cooperation with Iran as the Saudis sever diplomatic relations. Cooperation with Iran is especially welcome to the US at present as it is focused on degrading and destroying Da’esh. Saudi Arabia cannot rely on the support of American diplomacy, worsening its security concerns. At the same time, the lifting of sanctions gives Iran additional resources with which to pursue proxy conflict (Heffron 2015). It can sell oil and other exports and obtain inward investment, expanding its economy. Saudi Arabia may have expected that the recent escalation in tension would derail the JCPOA and pull the US back to an anti-Iranian policy. If so, its expectations have not been met.

Conclusion

The execution of Al-Nimr triggered an escalation in tension, but the underlying causes are a combination of geostrategic competition and sectarianism. Both countries face a security dilemma. Iranian strategy is successful but the country feels insecure as a result of underlying military weakness. Saudi Arabia is militarily strong but feels insecure as a result of strategic encirclement. At present, Saudi insecurities are worsened by the improvement in Iran-US relations, by the falling oil price, and by the prospect of domestic instability. Ongoing security fears will continue to sustain Saudi-Iranian strategic competition. Sectarian conflict in the region will worsen, and Saudi-Iran relations could deteriorate further.

Conclusions for Policy

• Stabilising Iran-Saudi relations should be a US priority, as proxy conflict makes it harder to defeat Da’esh, more difficult to reach ceasefires in Syria and Yemen, and harder to address the Israel-Palestine question.

• The US can exploit its new-found capacity for dialogue with Iran to discuss Iran’s role in proxy conflicts.

• The US should reiterate its commitment to Saudi security and its willingness to resist Iranian expansion by proxy.

• The US should argue privately that repressing domestic Shias and executing leading Shi’ite figures is counterproductive for Saudi Arabia, increasing both domestic instability and tension with Iran.

• Policymakers worldwide should expect further falls in the price of oil as Saudi-Iran tension prevents OPEC from cutting production.