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Paul Aarts teaches International Relations at the University of Amsterdam. His publications include Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (New York University Press2006, edited with Gerd Nonneman). His homepage is http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/p.w.h.aarts.
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Less Antagonism, More Pragmatism
The siege of the Grand Mosque in November 1979 came on the heels of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Juhayman al-‘Utaybi, the leader of the rebels, though, seemed not be very much inspired by what had happened next door. Whatever he may have noticed from Iran’s turmoil — and it might not have been too much because he never watched TV and rarely browsed newspapers — he deemed it to be irrelevant because Iranians were Shi‘ites, incorrigibly stuck in their heretic beliefs.
