Divide that dates back 14 centuries

Washington: A longstanding regional rivalry lies behind the web of conspiracies that US authorities on Tuesday said linked Iranian agents to a plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington.

Few contests have defined the modern Middle East like that between petroleum power Saudi Arabia, ethnically Arab and Sunni, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is ethnically Persian and Shiite.

The Shiite-Sunni divide stretches back 14 centuries; the conflict between the Persian Empire and its Arab neighbours many centuries before that.

But the modern incarnation of the regional struggle casts Iran as leader of an anti-US, anti-Israeli "Axis of Resistance" that includes Syria and backs Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Saudi camp is more pro-Western and backs Fatah in the West Bank and has a peace plan that would accept the Israeli state if it withdrew to 1967 borders.

Nuclear concerns

The regional battle is engaged at every level, from diplomacy to nuclear ambitions. Saudi officials have told their American counterparts that if Iran one day acquires a nuclear weapon, it will feel it also needs one.

But Wikileaks revelations from a 2008 meeting between Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel Al Jubair — the man who US officials said on Tuesday was the target of the alleged Iran-linked assassination plot — and American diplomats indicate that Riyadh had much more strategic aims.

Secret US Embassy cables from Riyadh indicate that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urged the US to attack Iran to stop its nuclear programme.

The permutations

One cable quoted Al Jubair, who "recalled the King's frequent exhortations" to end Iran's nuclear programme. Al Jubair is quoted as saying: "He told you to cut off the head of the snake."

The permutations of this rivalry have spiked repeatedly in recent decades. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of the 1996 Khobar Towers explosion, which killed 19 US servicemen in the eastern city of Dhahran.

Though Iran has not invaded another country for 200 years, fear of Iran's regional ambitions — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini insisted that Iranians "export" their revolution worldwide — has prompted Saudi Arabia to lead the Gulf states with billions of dollars of weapons purchases from the United States alone, to "defend" themselves from potential Iranian predations.

Saudi-owned Patriot anti-missile systems ring the regions, ostensibly to stop any Iranian missiles attack, and Saudi Arabia and other key US allies in the region today operate under a nuclear umbrella agreement — even though Iran is years from building a nuclear warhead, if it were to chose to do so.

— Christian Science Monitor