Resolving the Rivalry Between Iran and Saudi Arabia

Ibrahim Fraihat is an associate professor in international conflict resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He previously served as senior foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution and taught conflict resolution at Georgetown University. He is the author of Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring (Yale UP, 2016) and co-author of Libya's Displacement Crisis: Uprooted by Revolution and Civil War (Georgetown UP, 2015). His analysis on Middle East politics has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Newsweek, and Al Jazeera. Graduate of George Mason University in 2006, he is the recipient of the University's Distinguished Alumni Award (2014) for his achievements in the field of conflict resolution in the Middle East. Fraihat is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Studies Forum at Deakin University in Australia. He consulted for numerous international organization on Middle East affairs like conflict resolution, national reconciliation, national dialogue, mediation, post-conflict reconstruction, and political transitions.

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction2. History of Iran-Saudi Arabian Rivalry and Peacemaking efforts3. Conflict IssuesSecuritySectarianismGeopolitics and leadershipThe external factor4. Conflict ManagementCrisis management systemConfidence building measuresDialoguePeace zones5. Conflict Resolution Restoring the Regional Order’s Balance of PowerReforming conflict strategiesFormal Track 1 Government MediationTrack twoOther approachesBottom-up rapprochementPeace plans – Gestures of conciliationShia Arab role 6. ConclusionBibliographyIndex

This is a thorough account of one of the most important interstate rivalries in recent decades, one that has done much damage in the wider Middle East and Islamic World. This book stands out for not only providing a lucid analysis of the drivers of conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but also for offering concrete suggestions for reducing tensions between those two regional powers. - Toby Matthiesen, University of Oxford; In this eminently fair and balanced assessment of the intractable conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Fraihat is in the unenviable position of trying to make sense of a nonsensical hostility between two ruling regimes that are wasting their respective nations’ resources and endangering an entire volatile region. By modestly subtitling his deeply informed and balanced intervention just ‘Taming a Chaotic Conflict’, Fraihat signals the working of a judicious mind that has wisely abandoned the search for ‘root causes’ and gently teaches us to be humble and human in our expectations. A superb strategic intervention on how to prevent a colossal calamity from happening.- Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University; This is exactly the book we need right now! Whereas much has been already been written about the causes and developments of the Iran–Saudi Arabia rivalry, we have precious little knowledge about how this conflict can be peacefully managed and ultimately resolved. Fraihat combines his own personal experiences of participation in dialogue efforts over the years with the scholarly insights of the large body of research on conflict resolution, in order to shed light on this. The book gives us a solid basis for analysing the prospects and challenges for how to transform the current destructive relationship between these two regional powers into more constructive interactions, a transformation that would radically change the Middle East region, and thereby the world. - Isak Svensson, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University