Rebellion in Yemen and the fateful quadrangle

The Middle East
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Saudi Arabia has sent troops into Yemen to aid that country's government in fighting a Shia Muslim rebellion. Now the Saudis are warning the rebels to retreat from areas near the Saudi border or face continued bombing. At the same time, Iran is also issuing warnings, but their warning would seem to be directed at Saudi Arabia and that message is "Hands off Yemen."

What's going on in Yemen and why do Saudi Arabia and Iran care? Andrew E. Mathis

On its face, the rebellion in Yemen is a fight between Shia and Sunni Muslims. This is, in theory, nothing new. We've been told for years that this schism in Islam, based on succession to the Prophet Muhammad, is nearly as old as Islam itself, and we've further been told that many of the ills in the Middle East, e.g., the Lebanese Civil War, have been caused by the schism.

It's actually more complicated. For one thing, while the religious Muslims of the world genuinely believe that there was a real issue regarding succession from the Prophet, Shia vs. Sunni Islam has largely been a political rather than a religious issue.

For one thing, declaring itself a Shia régime was part of the way in which the Fatimid Caliphate challenged the authority of the Abbasid Caliphate in the Middle Ages in North Africa. Similarly, when smaller dynasties sought secession from the Fatimids, they declared themselves to be Sunni. Whether these changes in official religion were based on genuine shifts in points of view on leadership succession is highly doubtful.

Iran is the current world center of Shia Islam and one of two theocracies in the region. The other theocracy is Saudi Arabia, which is very Sunni and very fundamentalist. The two theocracies are essentially locked right now in a power struggle that has amounted to, among other things, the current proxy war being fought in Yemen.

This isn't the first time, incidentally, that the Saudis have involved themselves in Yemeni affairs. In the Yemeni Civil War in the '60s, fought between the north (Western-aligned) and south (Soviet-aligned) parts of a then-partitioned Yemen, the Saudis sent soldiers in on the side of North Yemen. Egypt, then under Nasser, sent in troops to help South Yemen.

This was another power struggle, but in that case, it was between secular pan-Arabism and Islamic fundamentalism, symbolized by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

That's a struggle that hasn't gone away either, by the way. Egypt, which is home to one out of four Arabs, views Saudi Arabia as its chief rival for regional hegemony and supremacy in the Arab world.

Iran didn't enter the power struggle — making it a triangle — until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Since then, as marked most recently by the rebellion in Yemen, Iran has been positioning itself as a regional power based on its Shia Muslim identity.

The fourth side of the quadrangle is Israel, which has de facto regional hegemony by virtue of its nuclear arsenal, although if Iran gets a bomb, that hegemony could be compromised almost immediately. But notice something: While the Saudis and Egyptians, to some extent, fight one another for regional primacy, they are united in pushing for a solution to the Palestinian crisis that includes recognition of Israel.

Iran, for its part, refuses to recognize Israel under any circumstances. In this way, Iran can essentially earn the "street cred" it needs among those Sunni Muslims that oppose Israel's existence. These Sunnis may not become Shia, or even become observant if they are not already, but they'll look to Tehran rather than Cairo or Riyadh for direction.

In all likelihood, the rebellion in Yemen will end with the rebels being crushed. But it's not likely to be the last place that Iran clashes with either Egypt or Saudi Arabia over factional issues.