Since 1979, few rivalries have affected Middle Eastern politics as much as the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, too often the rivalry has been framed purely in terms of ‘proxy wars’, sectarian difference, or the associated conflicts that have broken out in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen. In this book, Simon Mabon presents a more nuanced assessment of the rivalry, outlining its history and demonstrating its impact across the Middle East. Highlighting the significance of local groups, Mabon shows how regional politics have shaped and been shaped by the rivalry. The book draws from social theory and the work of Pierre Bourdieu to challenge problematic assumptions about ‘proxy wars’, the role of religion, and sectarianism. Exploring the changing political landscape of the Middle East as a whole and the implications for regional and international security, Mabon paints a complex picture of this frequently discussed but oft-misunderstood rivalry.

After coming to power in 2002, the AKP in Turkey took the country on a roller coaster from democratic reforms to authoritarian retreat. Starting off as a “conservative democratic” party with liberal tendencies, the AKP pivoted back to majoritarianism over the years. This chapter aims to make sense of this drastic shift and offers an account of the AKP’s swing from liberalism to electoralism. It discusses the AKP’s origins, its trajectory in government, and how it has taken a hegemonic direction despite its branding in its inception as a conservative party with an explicitly democratic agenda. To explain this transformation, the chapter identifies major forces inside the AKP, their diverging understandings of democracy, and describes how one wing prevailed over the other to take the party into a majoritarian direction. A key part of this process involves the rise of a dominant coalition under Tayyip Erdoğan’s leadership. His growing command over organizational resources weakened his rivals with more liberal democratic orientations. This chapter traces these processes and their political consequences for Turkish democracy, with specific focus on Erdoğan’s righteous majoritarianism.

This chapter seeks to ground what follows in debates within the International Relations of the Middle East, with a particular focus on how scholars have sought to characterize the rivalry between Riyadh and Tehran. In a departure from these debates, the chapter seeks to understand Saudi and Iranian efforts to exert order over space. Lastly, it brings together geopolitical, ideational, and spatial analysis to set out a (comparative) framework to understand the impact of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran on local politics, and vice versa.

This chapter synthesizes the similarities and differences among three Islamist parties – the AKP, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ennahda – in power and shows how internal dynamics matter more in charting their democratic commitments than do external forces. The chapter then assesses how far this theory travels to other cases of Islamist parties and regimes like Iran and discusses the implications of these findings for the relationship among Islam, Islamism, and democracy. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the rise of right-wing populism elsewhere in the world and the role of party capture in fueling such authoritarian trends.

Only a few weeks after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, Ennahda returned to Tunisia from exile. The same year Ennahda won Tunisia’s first free and fair elections in its history. On the night of the election, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, vowed to uphold the revolutionary goals of building a free and prosperous Tunisia. And his party kept this promise to build Tunisian democracy with other stakeholders. Why did Ennahda adhere to democratic principles in power and became a force for compromise, deliberation, and engagement? This chapter shows that competing political visions have coexisted within the party organization since its establishment in the 1980s, and since the 1990s liberal Islamists pulled Ennahda towards democratic commitments not only when they were in opposition but also after coming to power in 2011. To explain this process, the chapter first turns to the origins of the Islamist movement in Tunisia and its political and ideological evolution over time including Ghannouchi’s philosophical contributions. Then it explores the shifting balance of power among factions and factors, determining this balance with a specific emphasis on organizational resources and implications for Tunisian democracy.

The modern history of Saudi–Iranian relations (dating back to the formation of the Saudi state in 1932) can be characterized broadly into five distinct phases. The first is between 1932 and 1979, which is characterized by regional distrust yet a willingness for the two states to engage with each other. The second is the period after the revolution until three years after the end of the Iran–Iraq War – where a catastrophic earthquake provided an opportunity to reset relations – which was driven by existential concerns about the nature of political organization and competition over Islamic legitimacy. The ensuing period from 1991 to 2003 was one in which a burgeoning rapprochement began to unfold, driven by domestic factors across the Gulf. The fourth period ran roughly from 2003 to 2011, in which the bombastic nationalism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president (2005–13) ran up against the belligerent ‘Axis of Evil’ narrative within the US War on Terror. The fifth period emerged after the Arab Uprisings in 2011, providing the two states with opportunities to exert influence across the Middle East through the provision of support to groups across the region. The events of the Arab Uprisings provided further opportunities to increase their influence, particularly in those states where regime-society relations began to fragment. In this chapter I offer a brief genealogy of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran with a focus on the construction of competing nomoi – visions of regional order – which play out across the transnational field and resonate within states.

After 84 years of struggle, the Muslim Brotherhood rose to prominence in Egyptian politics in the wake of the Arab uprisings. On the night of his election, Mohamed Morsi promised to unite all Egyptians – Muslim and Christians, men and women – and to advance the revolutionary cause for democracy, human rights, and dignity. Over the next 365 days, rather than uniting and democratizing his country, he alienated large segments of the population through exclusionary politics, majoritarianism, and polarization. Why did the Muslim Brotherhood follow majoritarian and polarizing politics after coming to power? This chapter seeks to solve this puzzle by way of unpacking the Brotherhood’s internal power dynamics and disagreements regarding democratic politics. To that end, the chapter begins with a short historical account, tracing the Brotherhood’s changing relationship to politics and emerging splits within. Then, it turns to the shifting power balance between the old guard and liberal Islamists, and how the former sidelined the latter. The chapter discusses three critical episodes in this process: the Wasat Party initiative of 1996, the 2009–10 internal elections, and the post-2011 purge of the liberals. It concludes with a discussion of what the old guard’s perception of democracy looks like in action with details from Morsi’s year in presidency.

This chapter explores efforts to shape Bahrain’s political field and the ways in which its politically charged geographical location as the ‘epicentre’ of the struggle for supremacy between Riyadh and Tehran shapes these efforts. It explores the struggle for Bahrain’s political field and its social reality which has allowed a range of domestic and regional actors to become involved in the contestation over principles of vision and division, deploying economic, political, and religious capital in the process. Central to this is a number of networks and relationships that shape perceptions and behaviour, along tribal, ethnic, and religious lines. As Saudi and Iranian efforts to impose order on the region focused on Bahrain, they intersected with a complex set of intersectional phenomena bringing together tensions between rulers and ruled over social, economic, and political issues, all of which play out in the context of the transnational field.

To understand the way in which Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other groups have become involved in the conflict in Yemen, we must understand the complexities of both political life and the conflict itself. The existence of myriad groups with competing agendas reveals the parabolic pressures working broadly within the context of the Yemeni state. Although largely reduced to either a ‘proxy struggle’ between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or a conflict between the Houthi insurgents and the regime of President Hadi, events on the ground are far more complex. While there are aspects of both narratives that ring true, both require contextualization and must be located within the milieu of Yemeni politics.

The following chapter traces the history of Lebanese politics, reflecting on the structural factors that facilitate the involvement of external powers. It suggests that the structural organization of the state allows for external patronage in support of communal interests and, amid times of crisis, this patronage is seen to be a necessity. Moreover, the geopolitical significance of Lebanon means that external actors also seek local allies as a means of countering rivals who already possess influence across the state while local actors also seek to position themselves within broader regional currents. To understand the competition over Lebanon, we must trace the historical development of the Lebanese state which allows for identification of the structural factors conditioning – or limiting – the deployment of capital and foreign policy activities.

This introduction provides an overview of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Conflict across the Middle East has routinely been framed as a consequence of proxy wars, such as the conflict in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, albeit playing out in different ways. These proxy wars are often found as features of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, yet the ways in which Saudi Arabia and Iran develop relationships with local actors points to a more complex set of relationships than the model typically understood within a ‘proxy relationship’. Indeed, as work done by the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianization (SEPAD) project has observed, perhaps most clearly in a special issue edited by Edward Wastnidge and myself, trans-state relationships between states – in this case Saudi Arabia and Iran – and non-state actors are products of time and space, meaning that a range of factors influence the relationships, producing a number of different outcomes. This includes some local actors possessing far more agency than is often typically assumed, as observed by Amal Saad in the case of Hizbullah. This ability to exert influence independent of the patron actor’s wishes appears to push the borders of the concept. The introduction closes with a discussion of the foreign policies of Saudi Arabia and Iran.