The Guardian view on the Saudi execution: unjust, and an unwise provocation

Bitter rivals for predominance in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iran are waging proxy wars against each other in Syria and Yemen, but have so far avoided direct conflict. Yet they have been playing with fire for years, so it is no surprise that their latest clash has quite literally sparked a conflagration in one of their capitals. It remains unlikely that there will be any head-on military confrontation between the two. Yet Saudi Arabia’s execution at the weekend of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a leading Shia cleric, and the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran which was the response to it, must worsen what is already a toxic relationship. It could also weaken pragmatists and inflame internal differences in both countries at a time when efforts to bring about settlements in Syria and Yemen need all the help they can get.

The parallels between the Saudi kingdom and the Islamic republic are in some ways very close. Both are influenced by a sense of Islamic mission, a sense which has encouraged them in ambitions well beyond their means. Both are quick to violence, abroad and at home, where there is little to choose between them, for instance, in the high rate of public executions. Both have coasted economically and politically for years on the income from their oil resources, but are now approaching a day of reckoning. As oil prices fall, their populations rise and the aspirations of their peoples increase, the strains are beginning to show.

In Saudi Arabia there are fissures between the religious and the monarchical establishments which go back to the beginning of the state, another between most Sunnis and jihadists such as al-Qaida, and a further divide between central Arabia and the western region, where there are memories of an independent past under the Hashemites. Then there is the Shia community, which makes up between 10 and 15% of the population, suffers discrimination in state employment and education, and is regarded as apostate and potentially disloyal by a significant number of Saudis. When the Arab spring reached Saudi Arabia in 2011, Shia discontent came into the open. Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, already known for his views on the unfair distribution of wealth in Saudi Arabia (most of the oil is in areas populated by Shia), emerged as a leader of the protest movement in the eastern, Shia area. The Saudis reacted harshly and the sheikh was among those arrested and charged with terrorist offences, although he had always publicly abjured violence. His trial in 2014 was a farce. Under a previous government, a discreet way of avoiding his execution might have been found. King Abdullah, cautiously inclined to reform, had made conciliatory gestures toward the Shia community. But his successor, King Salman, and his inexperienced son, deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, have made a virtue out of being tough and aggressive both at home and abroad. As protests and demonstrations threaten to spread in Shia areas, there will be a price to be paid for that now, in the shape of the further alienation of the Shia community.