Frontline has an excellent three-hour series on the conflict between Iran and Saudi-Arabia. They come off like minuature versions of the US and the Soviet Union- superpowers of the Muslim world enmeshed in an ideological and tribal battle that is fought through proxy forces throughout the Middle East, making a hash of smaller countries and making strange bedfellows with the likes of Israel.
The Shia-Sunni split was always an undercurrent in the Islamic world, but was sharpened by the advent of modern fundamentalism. While the Saudis have always been fundamentalist in theory and corrupt in fact, Iran plunged into total fundamentalism with the revolution of 1979. The documentary discusses how sharply this changed the dynamics in the Muslim world, with Iran suddenly vaulted into the vanguard of the fundamentalist movement. This perennial "back-to-basics" feature of religion became a deeply ideological and psychological response to the muddled end of colonialism and the general failure of modernity in the Muslim world. We hear mostly of its Sunni / Salafist incarnation, as ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. But for the Shia, it had an extra edge of tribal revolt against Sunni oppression.
Shia make up roughly 1/3 of Muslims in the Middle East, with populations in each country. They are a majority in Bahrain, though they have no role in the government. That was the situation in Iraq as well until recently. Iran's fundmentalism is sectarian, not pan-Muslim. Thus, despite ethnic divisions, it has been an instrument to unite Shia populations across the region, such as the Hezbolla party in Lebanon and the now-ruling parties in Iraq. Iran's reach is obviously limited by this sectarian character, but they have been willing to arm their friends to the hilt and send their minions into battle for the most dubious causes, especially the Assad government in Syria, which is composed of another Shia sect.
Saudi Arabia is petrified by all this, partly because they have their own Shia population, but more because their own power projection has been so bungled in comparison. They have assiduously funded fundamentalist madrassas and terrorists, and what do they have to show for it? Hatred from the West, yes, but also quite a lot of hatred from their own spawn, such as Osama Bin Laden, whose disgust with the top-heavy, spoiled, corrupt Saudi institutions was emblematic. Their best friend, the US, conquered Iraq and not only botched the whole project disastrously, but left the country in Shia hands. And in Pakistan, one of their most successful test beds of miseducation, does all the fundamentalism add up to a strong state or a good friend? No, it has led to chaos, double-dealing, and misery.
One of the themes going through this story is propaganda. No one in Iran gets Lebanese Hezbolla fighters to die in Syria for Assad without a very heavy dose of propaganda. A bunch of Saudis do not fly into the World Trade Center without lengthy indoctrination. Fundamentalism in general is the triumph of poorly thought-through ideals and archetypal images over reason and basic decency. The Palestinian cause, now in its twilight, was one long piece of performance art- of grievance and rage as policy and, occasionally, power. And the long Saudi / Wahhabi campaign of Jesuit-style fundamentalist eduction has only furthered the weakness and backwardness of the Muslim world in general, not to mention its violence, particularly against women. The record is appalling, but the mechanism teaches universal lessons- that people can be led in disastrous directions by well-crafted propaganda, based on supposedly profound fantasies.
It is something we are learning in the US as well, to our peril. Does free speech mean that private broadcast networks can spew the most pleasing, and scurrilous, falsehoods? Just how much bilge can the internet contain, and not blow up? Conflicts like the one above, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, are made possible by propaganda, which moves people to extraordinary emotion and effort. World War 2 remains a textbook example, with Germany and Italy transformed by deeply emotional, false, and effective, propaganda. We are in the US at a tipping point, with half the population feeling themselves part of the Republican team, whose life support comes from propaganda that seems, at least to this biassed observer, unworthy of any political discourse or intellectual respect, headed by a President who lies so casually and habitually that we now take it as absolutely normal. How can reason and empathy penetrate this jungle of mean self-righteousness?
Returning to the topic, the current administration's support for Saudi Arabia and hatred for Iran is not easy to understand, on the face of it. Saudi Arabia is at least as destabilizing a force in the world and in the Middle East. Both are explicitly fundamentalist, and both seek to export their ideologies abroad. Both are sources of oil, though the Saudis have far more and play the lead role in world oil prices. We do not care that much on our own behalf anymore, but have strong interests in keeping the oil infrastructure (political, military, and physical) of the Middle East intact on behalf of the developed world, for much of which (Europe, Japan) we have explicit defense responsibilities. So sure, we want to be friendly with Saudi Arabia and continue to have military bases in the area. But we have interest in friendship with Iran as well, which has far greater human and intellectual potential. Both countries have a fraught relationship with Israel, though Saudi Arabia has of late been much more accommodating, in its cynical and conservative/authoritarian way. But Iran's problems with Israel seem similarly superficial, just a way to gain credibility with the Palestinians and other disaffected Muslims. And our own difficult history with Iran, and their vitriolic propagada against us, is hardly reason to fall in line with Saudi Arabia's sectarian program. It would be better to turn the other cheek, as the Obama administration started to do.
If the struggle for supremacy in the Middle East were prompting a flowering of cultural, scholarly, and scientific advances, that would be one thing. But the reality is far more tawdry, where the Saudis just buy more arms from the US to dump on Yemen, and Iran coopts and arms Shia communities in the neighborhood, destroying Lebanon in the process, and bidding to do the same in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The collision of irrational ideologies, served by up-to-the-minute propaganda methods, run by governing structures ranging from dysfunctional to medieval, is a toxic brew not likely to enhance the culture or living conditions of those in the region any time soon.
- The next level for propaganda.
- What happens when police don't care.
