No one knows where the accusations leveled against Iran by US Attorney General Eric Holder might lead. If true, the claim that Iran planned to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington would amount to an act of war against the United States. And that would require a response beyond the jumble of “new sanctions” proposed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
That the Islamic Republic plots terrorist operations abroad is neither new nor surprising. In 1980, the mullahs organized the murder in Bethesda, Md., of Ali Akbar Tabatabai, an Iranian diplomat who’d turned against the regime. The assassin, Dawoud Salahuddin, a US convert to Islam, claimed that the murder was “an act of war” and fled to Iran where he later emerged as an adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The United States was not the only place where the mullahs carried out “acts of war.” Between 1980 and 1995, the Islamic Republic planned and carried out 112 political assassinations in 22 countries across the globe.
France alone saw the murders of 17 Iranian exiles. In 1994, a French court issued arrest warrants against nine senior Iranian officials. In 1997, a German court issued warrants for the arrest of a number of Iranian officials charged with participation in the murder of four exiled Iranian politicians in Berlin five years earlier. Among those named were Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei and former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. At trial, former President Abolhassan Banisadr testified that a four-man committee, headed by Khamenei, was orchestrating the murder of dissidents abroad.
The Islamic Republic has always regarded Saudi Arabia as an enemy, a sentiment amply reciprocated. The two neighbors market rival brands of militant Islam and have been engaged in proxy wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, among other places.
In Pakistan, Iran finances and arms the militant Shi’ite Jaafari Movement (Tehrik Jaafari), while the Saudis back the equally militant Sunni Lashkar Tayyibah (Army of the Pure). The two groups are responsible for more than 40,000 deaths in sectarian fighting in Pakistan over the past 20 years.
In Afghanistan, Iran backs the Hazara Shi’ites while the Saudis, having backed the Taliban until 9/11, support militant Sunni groups. In Iraq, the Islamic Republic backs Shi’ite armed groups such as the Mahdi Army; meanwhile, until 2008, thousands of Saudis fought on the side of Sunni militants.
The two are also fighting over Syria. Tehran is trying to preserve the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the heterodox Alawite branch of Shi’ism. Saudi Arabia has just concluded a deal with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to help the opposition get rid of Assad.
In Bahrain, the roles are reversed. Iran, declaring support for the Shi’ite majority, is trying to overthrow a minority Sunni government, while Saudi Arabia has sent 20,000 troops to keep it in power.
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have been rattled by the “Arab Spring” and are trying desperately hard to define a place for themselves in the emerging Middle East political landscape.
Another source of contention: control of Mecca and Medina, the two major cities of pilgrimage in the Muslim world. Since the 1980s, the Saudi monarch has dubbed himself “Guardian of the Two Noble Precincts” and regards Mecca and Medina as two Saudi cities before anything else. Iran, however, claims that the two cities belong to the whole “Islamic Ummah” and should be administered by an international committee appointed by the Islamic Conference Organization.
The two neighbors have been engaged in a bitter propaganda war. Iranian media are calling for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy while the Saudis have established contacts with dissident figures within the Khomeinist establishment. “This is a fight to the finish,” declares Khamenei’s mouthpiece, the daily Kayhan.
That part of that fight might be fought in the streets of Washington, DC, need surprise no one.