The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been unfolding over a long period, influencing the politics and conflicts in the Middle East. The dynamics, content, and form of the rivalry have changed dramatically following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Sectarianism is frequently seen as the constitutive element of the conflict between the two countries. This paper brings a new light into the literature on the nature of the evolving Saudi–Iran rivalry. Specifically, it explains Saudi Arabia’s ideational balancing and threat perception against Iran by highlighting the ontological security narratives under which the Saudi–Iran rivalry evolves. In doing so, it draws on the fatwas (i.e., religious opinions), issued by Saudi scholars, as an empirical object of investigation, and explores how they constitute and reconstitute Saudi Arabia’s ontological security narratives. In this way, this work critically explains the ontological security regime in Saudi Arabia and the nature of the political struggle and antagonism between the two countries.
AbdoG. (2017). The new sectarianism: The Arab uprisings and the rebirth of the shi'a-sunni divide. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
2.
AbdullahM. (2019). Them vs us: The ontological significance of identity and (in)security in the cold conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Unpublished Thesis, University of Gothenburg. Retrived from: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/62857/3/gupea_2077_62857_3.pdf (Accessed 17.10.2022).
3.
AdisonmezU. C. (2019). When Conflict Traumas Fragment: Investigating the Sociopsychological Roots of Turkey’s Intractable Conflict. Political Psychology, 40(6), 1373–1390. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12631
4.
AdisonmezU. C.OnursalR. (2020). Governing Anxiety, Trauma and Crisis: The Political Discourse on Ontological (In)Security after the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey. Middle East Critique, 29(3), 291–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2020.1770445
5.
AdisonmezU. C.OnursalR. (2022). “Strong, but Anxious State”: The Fantasmatic Narratives on Ontological Insecurity and Anxiety in Turkey. Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 19(73), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.1094402
6.
Al-AtawnehM. (2009). Is Saudi Arabia a Theocracy? Religion and Governance in Contemporary Saudi Arabia. Middle Eastern Studies, 45(5), 721–773. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263200802586105
7.
Al-KandariA.DashtiA. (2014). Fatwa and the internet: a study of the influence of Muslim religious scholars on internet diffusion in Saudi Arabia, Prometheus. Critical Studies in Innovation, 32(2), 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1080/08109028.2014.998929
8.
Al-RasheedM. (2010). A history of Saudi Arabia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
9.
Al-RasheedM. (2011). Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Responses to the Arab Spring. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11(3), 513–526. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-9469.2011.01129.x
10.
Al-RasheedM. (2013). A most masculine state: Gender, politics, and religion in Saudi Arabia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
11.
Al-RasheedM.Al-RasheedL. (1996). The Politics of Encapsulation: Saudi Policy toward Tribal and Religious Opposition. Middle Eastern Studies, 32(1), 96–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263209608701093
12.
Al-SarhanS. (2020). Political quietism in Islam: Sunnī and Shī‘ī practice and thought. London, UK: I. B. Tauris.
13.
AlghashianA.MenshawyM. (2022). “Discoursing sectarianism” approach: What and how to analyze in sectarian discourses. Digest of Middle East Studies, 31(2), 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/dome.12265
BarzegarK. (2008). Iran and The Shiite Crescent: Myths and Realities. The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 15(1), 87–99. Retrived from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24590951
BBC, (British Broadcasting Company) (2019). Mecca 1979: The mosque siege that changed the course of Saudi history. Retrived from: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50852379 (Accessed 17.10.2022.
24.
BehraveshM. (2018). State revisionism and ontological (in)security in international politics: the complicated case of Iran and its nuclear behavior. J Int Relat Dev, 21(4), 836–857. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0149-x
25.
BerenskoetterF. (2014). Parameters of a national biography. European Journal of International Relations, 20(1), 262–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066112445290
ComminsD. (2006). The Wahhabi mission and Saudi Arabia. London, UK: I.B. Tauris.
31.
CordesmanA. H. (2003). Saudi Arabia enters the twenty-first century. Connecticut, USA: Praeger.
32.
DarwichM. (2016). The ontological (in)security of similarity: Wahhabism versus Islamism in Saudi foreign policy. Foreign Policy Analysis, 12(3), 469–488. https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orw032
33.
DoumatoE. A. (1992). Gender, monarchy, and national identity in Saudi Arabia. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19(1), 31–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/13530199208705547
34.
EberleJ. (2019). Narrative, desire, ontological security, transgression: fantasy as a factor in international politics. J Int Relat Dev, 22(1), 243–268. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-017-0104-2
FreerC. (2019). The Symbiosis of Sectarianism, Authoritarianism, and Rentierism in the Saudi State. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 19(1), 88–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12287
GhattasK. (2020). Black wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the forty-year rivalry that unraveled culture, religion, and collective memory in the Middle East. New York, USA: Henry Holt and Company.
40.
GiddensA. (1990). The consequences of modernity.
41.
GiddensA. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. California, USA: Stanford University Press.
42.
HashemiN.PostelD. (2017). Introduction: The Sectarianization Thesis. In HashemiN.PostelD. (Eds.), Sectarianization: Mapping the new politics of the Middle East (pp. 1–22). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
43.
HomA.SteeleB. (2020). Anxiety, time, and ontological security's third-image potential. International Theory, 12(2), 322–336. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971920000135
IsmailR. (2012). The Saudi Ulema and the Shi‘a of Saudi Arabia. Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies, 5(4), 403–422. https://doi.org/10.1353/isl.2012.0066
47.
IsmailR. (2016). Saudi clerics and Shī‘a Islam. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
48.
JoobaniH. A.AdisonmezU. C. (2018). Turkey’s volte-face politics: Understanding the AKP’s securitization policy toward the Syrian conflict. New Middle Eastern Studies, 8(1), 42–62. https://doi.org/10.29311/nmes.v8i1.2897
49.
KamravaM. (2018). Troubled waters: Insecurity in the Persian Gulf. New York, USA: Cornell University Press.
50.
KinnvallC. (2004). Globalization and religious nationalism: Self, identity, and the search for ontological security. Political Psychology, 25(5), 741–767. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00396.x
51.
KinnvallC. (2018). Ontological Insecurities and Postcolonial Imaginaries: The Emotional Appeal of Populism. Humanity & Society, 42(4), 523–543. https://doi:10.1177/0160597618802646
52.
KinnvallC.Nesbitt-LarkingP. (2011). The political psychology of globalization: Muslims in the west. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
53.
KoranyB.DessoukiA. E. H. (1984). The foreign policies of Arab states. Westview Press.
54.
KostnierJ. (1993). The making of Saudi Arabia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
55.
LaclauE. (1990). New reflections on the revolution of our time. Verso.
56.
MabonS. (2013). Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft power rivalry in the Middle East. I. B. Tauris.
MatthiesenT. (2015). The other Saudis: Shiism, dissent and sectarianism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
59.
MirzaM. N.AbbasH.QaisraniI. H. (2021). Structural Sources of Saudi–Iran Rivalry and Competition for the Sphere of Influence. Structural Sources of Saudi–Iran Rivalry and Competition, 11(3), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211032642
60.
MitzenJ. (2006). Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), 341–370. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066106067346
PalaÖ.ArasB. (2015). Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in the Turkish and Qatari Foreign Policy on the Arab Spring. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 17(3), 286–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2015.1063274
PiscatoriJ.SaikalA. (2019). Islam beyond borders: The umma in world politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108666589
RossA. A. G. (2014). Mixed emotions: Beyond fear and hatred in international conflict. University of Chicago Press.
71.
RumeliliB. (2015a). Ontological (in)Security and Peace Anxieties: A Framework for Conflict Resolution. In RumeliliB.. Conflict resolution and ontological security (Ed.), (pp. 10–29). Routledge.
72.
RumeliliB. (2015b). Identity and desecuritisation: the pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security. J Int Relat Dev, 18(1), 52–74. https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2013.22
73.
RumeliliB. (2018). Breaking with Europe’s pasts: memory, reconciliation, and ontological (In)security. European Security, 27(3), 280–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2018.1497979
74.
RumeliliB.AdisonmezU. C. (2020). Uluslararası İlişkilerde Kimlik-Güvenlik İlişkisine Dair Yeni bir Paradigma: Ontolojik Güvenlik Teorisi. Uluslararası İlişkiler, 17(66), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.720630
75.
RumeliliR.StrömbomL. (2021). Agonistic recognition as a remedy for identity backlash: insights from Israel and Turkey. Third World Quarterly, 43(6), 1361–1379. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1951607
SteeleB. J. (2007). Ontological security in international relations: Self-identity and the IR state. Routledge.
80.
SteeleB. J.HomolarA. (2019). Ontological insecurities and the politics of contemporary populism. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32(3), 214–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1596612
81.
SteinbergG. (2005). The Wahhabi Ulama and the Saudi state: 1745 to the Present. In P. Aarts & G. Nonneman (Eds.) Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy,Society, Foreign Affairs (pp. 11–34). Hurst & Company.
ValbjørnM. (2019). What's so Sectarian about Sectarian Politics? Identity Politics and Authoritarianism in a New Middle East. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 19(1), 127–149. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12289
84.
ValbjørnM. (2020). Beyond the beyond(s): On the (many) third way(s) beyond primordialism and instrumentalism in the study of sectarianism. Nations and Nationalism, 26(1), 91–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12581
85.
ValbjørnM.BankA. (2012). The New Arab Cold War: Rediscovering the Arab dimension of Middle East regional politics. Review of International Studies, 38(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210511000283
86.
VassilievA. (2013). The history of Saudi Arabia. London, UK: Saqi Books.
87.
VieiraM. A. (2018). (Re-)imagining the ‘Self’ of Ontological Security: The Case of Brazil’s Ambivalent Postcolonial Subjectivity. Millennium, 46(2), 142–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829817741255
ZarakolA. (2010). Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan. International Relations, 24(1), 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809359040
